Beirut 29-30 January
Mediterranean Conference on Censorship in the Arab World
Let me start with two examples in order to get problem of internet and censorship clear.
http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf
Turkey
The first example is based on the experiences of one of our correspondents of a national newspaper- de Volkskrant 2009-12-7- based in Istanbul. This story is about Turkey, country that is a stepping stone between Europe and the Arab world. Turkey is part of the Council of Europe ( and has signed the European treaty on human rights) and has also applied for membership of the EU. And Turkey shares religion, the Islam with the Arab world. This correspondent received a mail including a link to YouTube. He clicked on the link and saw a blue screen. At the bottom of the page was information of the Ministry of Information saying that this site was blocked. Probably YouTube contained offensive information about the army, or Ataturk, or gave information about the PKK. When he told the operator of the internet café about the blue screen and the censorship, he clicked a few times and the movie of YouTube appeared on screen. What he did was simple, connecting to a proxy server outside and avoided the fire wall. He said, everybody knows this trick, and even our prime minister, who put a video of himself on YouTube, watches this blocked site. I quote: “ Turkey has strict rules, but we are masters to go under the radar”.
During a summit of the Worldbank and IMF at Istanbul only the foreign correspondents could access the uncensored internet, the computers of Turkish colleagues were censored. Of course this causes trouble with the EU, about human rights. The government is using two standards. Therefore Turkish government has asked Google to build a special Turkish version of Google that filters for example critical information about Ataturk from YouTube. So far Google has only done this for China.
Egypt
The second example comes from Egypt, one of the Arab countries that has a strict security policy that hinders the quality of reporting. The case of blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil, who seems to have offended President Mubarak and the Prophet on his blog, is well known. (http://karam903.blogspot.com/ accessed 2009-12-30) Nabil was in 2007 convicted to imprisonment, that this verdict was confirmed according to Reporters without Frontiers. Reported by the NRC Handelsblad on December 23 2009. His followers started on a blog a campaign for the release of Nabil. (http://www.freekareem.org/ accessed 2009-12-30)
On the internet site of Reporters without Frontiers is detailed information about the situation in Egypt and in other Arab countries as well. See for example: http://www.rsf.org/en-rapport149-Egypt.html (accessed 2009-12-30).
Problem
What is the problem when we are talking about Internet and censorship?
Generally states have the jurisdiction and control over their territory. However the free flow of information on an international network like Internet transcends this control. Let’s take a simple example. When an offense to president Muburak is expressed on a machine-a computer server- on Egyptian territory , the Egyptian government is able to close down that server, because it is within the borders of Egypt. However if this server is in the US, where this type of information is protected by the first amendment, it can be published. However access to this information is not restricted to the US but because of the international character of internet, it can also be accessed in Egypt. There is nothing that the Egyptian government could do. Because the US server is outside the Egyptian jurisdiction. So the problem of controlling information on the internet is totally different from the spread of information by traditional system like newspapers and broadcasting. In this case, controlling the printing press or the broadcasting station will do the job.
Control
What is the solution to this problem?
Of course Egypt could disconnect from the internet, but that is not a good solution, simple because of the economic consequences.
Egypt could try to limit the number of computers and access to computers, but this also will restrict the economic development.
Or one can try to create an international organizations which controls the content. The WSIS, World Summit on the Information Society- a UN Conference – a few years ago (Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005), tried to go in that direction but failed. See for more details the website of WSIS: http://www.itu.int/wsis/index.html (accessed 2009-12-30) Of course because it will be impossible to come up with international standards.
Or finally Egypt could try to filter the information at the borders, by surrounding the Egyptian part of Internet with a firewall. That is an electronic border, which checks all the information coming in and going out.
Last US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized in her ‘internet speech’ at the Newseum in Washington, countries that hinder or block the free flow of information and the right to access. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f0c3bf8c-06bd-11df-b426-00144feabdc0,_i_email=y.html . She spoke about a new “information curtain (reference to Churchill iron curtain) descending on the world. ”
Arab World
The situation of the free flow of information on the internet in the Arab world is problematic. Clinton mentioned explicitly the case of 30 bloggers in Egypt which were detained, mentioning one of them Bassem Samir. She also mentioned Saudi Arabia, where blogs about Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism were blocked.
The following comes from the website of Journalists without Frontiers.
Bahrain: Against this background, the Internet gives the kingdom’s journalists a highly valued space for freedom of expression. But this space is now being brought much more under official surveillance and control.
Egypt: In the face of such restrictions, the Internet has become a refuge for freedom of expression. With 20% of the population going online, Egypt has one of the highest rates of Internet penetration on the African continent. Out of concern for its image abroad, Egypt decided long ago not to block websites. But it has started to tighten is grip again as the online craze has grown. Since 2008, it has changed the conditions for using wireless (Wi-Fi) Internet….. Many bloggers were arrested as a result of the “6 April” protest movement launched on Facebook in 2008. The year was marked by hounding of the press and Internet users as the government sought to keep control over the country’s image.
Iran: Iran is also the most repressive country in the Middle East’s when it comes to the Internet, even though the Iranian blogosphere is one of the region’s most combative. The authorities have been stepping up control online in the run-up to presidential elections on 12 June 2009.
Syria: Syria is one of the world’s most repressive countries towards Internet users. The authorities have stepped up Internet filtering, making many websites inaccessible, including Arabic-language opposition sites and those linked to the country’s Kurdish minority.
There are also new developments, which create new possibilities.
Twitter
Internet technology develops fast. Ten years ago hardly anyone had ever heard of blogging. And this year Twitter experienced an exponential grows. Both technologies contribute to the free flow of information and are therefore important to journalists. Twitter has shown its value in two interesting cases in the Arab world. The first is related to the Israeli attack on the Gaza strip. And second one to the protest in Teheran in Iran after the elections in June this year and its aftermath even continuing this months.
During the Israeli attack on the Gaza strip, no journalist could enter the territory. Of course the Israeli government tried to control information about this operation. However mobile phones and access to the internet from mobile phones was still possible. Twitter became the source of information. Palestinians were sending short messages (140 characters) about the attack using Twitter based on their own experiences, acting like ‘citizen reporters’. Al Jazeera London collected these messages on a webpage which became the newswire from Gaza.
The second example is more or less the same. Student demonstration in Teheran after the elections could not be covered by the international press. Students were using Twitter as a tool for reporting. The collection of messages generally labeled with the #teheran, could be retrieved from the Twitter server and again give a newswire like overview of the events including photo’s and video.
There is also a counter tendency. A group claiming to be the Iranian Cyber Army managed to redirect Twitter users to its own site displaying a political message. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8420233.stm
Before I come to a conclusion and outlook for the future we have to look at on other example, outside the Arab world but very important for the future development.
China
China’s government censors have taken fresh aim at the Internet, rolling out new measures that limit its citizens’ ability to set up personal Web sites and to view hundreds of Web sites offering films, video games and other forms of entertainment. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/world/asia/18china.html?scp=1&sq=china%20internet%20controls&st=cse
Google is also under pressure. Google had accepted China’s preference and created a special, Chinese version of Google, www.google.cn which filtered information. Because of an attack on mailboxes of Google mail, Google considers to close down this search engines, and China will creates its own search engine Baidu.
In the Financial Times (20-1-2010) http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a7bdfbae-054b-11df-a85e-00144feabdc0,_i_email=y.html Kathrin Hille writes that Google does not understand, that “ China has developed its own cyberspace…..which include cultural preferences and social structures that were very different from those in the west.” For the average Chinese citizen even a filtered internet is “ the freest space in Chinese society”. And secondly the Chinese are more interested in music and games than information about Tiananmen( famous square in Being) and Zhongnanhai(the residence of the Communist party leaders).
Conclusion: regionalization
From the above I come to the following outlook.
There is a growing tendency among countries and groups of countries to control the flow of information on the internet.
1. First we have the economic reasons. I just mention the following EU countries:
Google looses a French copyright case, A French court ruled on Friday that Google infringed copyrights by digitizing books and putting extracts online without authorization, dealing a setback to its embattled book project. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/technology/companies/19google.html?scp=1&sq=google%20french%20copyright&st=cse
the Spanish Government published the latest draft for the Sustainable Economy Act, which would enable a Commission dependent of the Ministry of Culture to take down websites without a court order, in cases of Intellectual Property piracy http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/12/04/038259
2. Secondly we have ideological and religious motivated proposes for regulation. The Chinese and Arab examples belong to this case.
3. Third we have crime: for example the Russian mafia is using the internet for stealing money from credit cards. Also we have attacks from hackers on mailboxes and servers.
So the demand for regulation of the net comes from various area’s: economic interest, crime and political interest. Although their motives are quite different together the pressure for regulating initiatives is growing. For the Arab world I expect that these countries will create, like China, their own version on the Internet, adapted to their preferences and social structures. For lots of people in the Arab world a filtered internet is a very interesting place for finding new and different information. Like the new satellite TV channels which can be received by a dish, they open up the world.
We, as journalists, have to watch this process of growing regionalization of the Internet, and have to find out how much the free flow of information is limited.
