Mal Fletcher considers issues of regulation, repression, activism and anarchy

The internet is for everyone and therein lies its beauty and utility, but also its potential danger for governments.

Of the People, For the People?

There are governments aplenty who worry about the growth and pervasiveness of the internet. Some of them would like nothing more than to curb or control its power.

The OpenNet Initiative is an alliance of academic and consultancy bodies set up to investigate internet filtering and surveillance powers worldwide.[1] In 2010 it documented Internet filtering by governments in over 40 countries worldwide.[2]

The Initiative ranks Iran's as the worst government when it comes to using pervasive filters to block online political and social content as well as personal communications tools.

After Iran comes China, where a police service devoted to filtering the web reportedly consists of at least 30,000 officers.[3]

On April 12 of this year, Chinese web users were temporarily cut off from all foreign websites in what some experts saw as a government reconfiguration of the so-called Great Firewall of China. Amnesty International says that China has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents.

Meanwhile, in July the Russian parliament introduced bills that create a blacklist of websites deemed unsuitable.[4] The bills, which will become law in November, demand that servers take these sites down.

The Russian-speaking version of Wikipedia closed for a day just before the bills were introduced. Its home page simply read: "Imagine a world without free knowledge."

In the beginning, the Russian laws will deal mainly with sites carrying images of child abuse and other overtly illegal material. However, dissidents fear that the legislation will soon extend to ban or curtail political criticism.

Given the Putin government's heavy-handed response to the Pussy Riot incident their fears do not seem far-fetched.

It is not just recognisably repressive governments that seem inclined to increase their control of the web.

In the USA, concerns have been raised about the growth of what the New York Times calls the Great Firewall of America.[5]

Late last year, bills were introduced into both the Senate and the House of Representatives which would empower the attorney general to create a blacklist of websites.