August 14, 2009
China and Malaysia backed off on controversial Internet filtering plans this week while Vietnam stepped up its own filtering of Catholic websites after protests. The news is mostly good, though free speech advocates would like to hear a lot more of it.
Asia has seen quite a bit of action on Internet censorship in the last week, with China and Malaysia scaling back their censorship plans while Vietnam increases its control. Although most of the news was good, the region still has some way to go before free speech advocates will feel comfortable.
The highest profile of the three countries is China with its once-mandatory client-side filtering software, “Green Dam Youth Escort.” China’s technology minister, Li Yizhong, claimed to the press this week that the whole alleged requirement was one big “misunderstanding,” and that the software would no longer be required to be installed either by PC makers or by home users.
This claim is disingenuous at best, considering that Chinese officials emphasized for months that the software would be mandatory and must be preinstalled or included on disc with every new PC sold in China—a plan that was suspended on June 30 in order to supposedly give manufacturers more time to comply. The software, which researchers have discovered sports numerous security vulnerabilities, isn’t dead, though, and will still be required in schools and Internet cafes. Some PC vendors are also including it voluntarily with their products.
Malaysia also backed off this week on a controversial plan to begin filtering pornographic websites so they could no longer be accessed from within the country. Communication and Culture Minister Rais Yatim had announced last week that Malaysia was already in the process of selecting software to carry out the task, but the reaction by bloggers and various Internet groups was so strong that the government was forced to reconsider.
“We will not filter the Internet but Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin (Tun Hussein), (Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department) Datuk Seri Nazri (Aziz) and I have been tasked to look for instances of sedition, fraud, and child pornography,” he told Malaysian newspaper The Star. “We will then provide the relevant law enforcement agencies with the necessary particulars for them to take action.”
The CCIA (a nonprofit US trade group representing tech companies that push for open networks) praised both China and Malaysia for their decisions this week. “We welcome the Malaysian government’s decision to sideline plans to implement an Internet filtering system. Such a broad attempt at censorship would have blocked the free flow of information and ideas on the Internet—a communication tool that has become an enabler of democracy and economic development,” said CCIA head Ed Black in a statement. “China’s decision to block enforcement of Green Dam for PCs breaks what would have been a logjam on the free flow of information. It’s a wise move and a win for free speech, access to information and trade.”
Not all the news is positive, though. Vietnamese Internet users began reporting that Catholic websites were being blocked by the government following a number of Catholic protests within the country. Although the Vietnam government claims it only filters the Internet for pornographic and obscene content, it’s an open secret among citizens and Internet-watchers that the filters are often used to regulate politically sensitive chatter while, ironically, porn can easily be accessed within Vietnam. Human Rights Watch, Writers Without Borders, Amnesty International, and other human rights groups are also blocked within Vietnam.
Indeed, Reporters without Borders identifies Vietnam (along with Burma, China, Cuba, North Korea, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) as the “Enemies of the Internet,” accusing them of “[transforming] their Internet into an Intranet in order to prevent their population from accessing ‘undesirable’ online information.”
Even if countries like China have made subtle changes, such as backing off on Green Dam, they still remain top offenders when it comes to dreaming up new and creative ways of stifling the flow of speech and information online.
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/08/asian-censorship-roundup-two-steps-forward-one-step-back.ars
