Online repression

As much as civil rights in this country have been eroded by things like the Criminal Justice Bill and the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill we still have it pretty easy, they may try to keep protesters away from Parliament and the G8 summit but we can still at least make our dissent known without risk of being prosecuted just for expressing a view that is against the government line.

So i do this blog and feel completely free to howl at the moon over what i perceive as the evils and injustices in the world without consequence, indeed my biggest fear re writing this blog is that certain people in the football team i play for stumble across it as i'm sure they would extract the urine big time. If you happen to know me and i've sent you the link it is because i consider you a fairly sophisicated cat :-)

But it was interesting to read that in countries around the world that don't share our freedoms blogs were being used as a method of expressing dissent and at serious risk to the people willing to speak out. The example of an Iranian couple, a man and his pregnant wife both facing jail and a huge fine just for "insulting the governments leaders and making anti government propaganda," and before i forget confiscating their computer incase they havn't learned their lesson not to criticise the government when and assuming if they get out, seems utterly alien to me, it sounds like something from 1984 by George Orwell.

Iran isn't the only country that has tight restrictions on it's citizens online activity. The Great Firewall of China restricts what the 100 million or so Chinese with internet access get to see online. The Chinese government is clearly going to great lengths to stamp out any sort of subversive ideas on the internet, living in the UK i thought to myself i probably do have a slightly prejudiced view of communist China and it's oppresive regime, but it is truly frightening some of the measures they are using to control dissent..

Although one wonders if here in the UK that one day the goverment might feel that it would like to slip in a similar requirement for domestic net srvice firms that make them responsible for what they publish in order to conduct business leading to self censorship of the internet, probably in the name of the fight against terrorism.