As Indian govt plans a
web filter, let’s see how Internet censorship works in Iran, China and Cuba
The report talks about
a meeting that was held at the Department of Electronics and Information
Technology (Deity) where the main agenda was discussion on how a web filter can
be implemented. What gives it more gravity is the fact that the meeting was
attended by 23 individuals including Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, head
of CERT-IN Gulshan Rai and representatives from NASSCOM, FICCI, IAMAI and so
on.
We have seen random
blocking of content in the past and that had led to a lot of outrage.Legit
websites had to face blocks thanks to the haphazard way in which
the government went about doing it couple of years back. But it looks like
content filtering will continue.
Things haven’t got so
bad, yet. You still get access to majority of websites from across the world.
You don’t have to register with government agencies before you decide to start
a blog. But citizens of some nations aren’t that lucky. Let us see how internet
censorship works in controlled regimes such as Iran, China and Cuba – three
countries that always come up in the top five of any list involving internet
censorship by nations.
Iran’s theocratic
regime controls majority of the Internet within Iran
Iran
Not much is known about how Internet is controlled in Iran, as any attempts to
find that out within Iran can lead to reprisals from the government. According
to a study
conducted by a University of Michigan last year (for publication
outside Iran of course), almost half of the top 500 sites on Alexa were
censored in Iran. While pornographic sites were the first ones to face the
axe under the theocratic regime, a lot of websites under the Art, Society and
News categories were also blocked.
Apart from blocking
entire sites, the Iranian internet filters also look for specific keywords and
block those pages. The traffic passing through the Iranian firewalls, if it is
not recognised, has its speed severely throttled and in certain cases gets
cut off altogether. This controls circulation of news, photos and videos, which
may be deemed political. During the June 2013 elections, the throttling was at
its peak to prevent dissent and anti-regime propoganda, which was later
relaxed. Twitter and Facebook accounts of many individuals as well as western
journalists were blocked in Iran. In fact, even though political leaders use
Twitter and Facebook, these
sites are banned in Iran for regular people. Instagram,
is the most recent addition to the list. Online messaging apps such
as WeChat
have also been blocked after Ayatolla Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme
Leader issued a fatwa banning online chatting between unrelated men and women.
A large portion of
Iran’s internet traffic has to go through a centralised facility which already
has censorship filters in place. Government decides on the speeds that will be
allowed to keep this facility from being overwhelmed with traffic. According to
the report, the government had set 128kbps speed limit. Academicians could
request the government for faster connections.
There have also been
talks in Iran of creating their parallel internet, which
will provide citizens with high-speed internet connection but where content
will be fully monitored and censored. The sites will be hosted on local Iranian
servers. Applications such as email, search engines and social networks will be
developed by government agencies.
China employs
technical as well as human elements to have a strong control over the internet
China
China ranks after Iran
as the country which exercises the most control over the Internet. Although it
is a country with the largest number of Internet users, content has to pass
through a multitude of filters before it reaches the regular population. The Great Firewall of China or
the Golden Shield keeps internet in China under control.
The Great Firewall, as
is evident from the name basically limits access to foreign websites and it was
started in the late 1990s. The Golden Shield is a domestic subset of the Great
Firewall, which basically sensors domestic content and it was set up in 1998 by
the Ministry of Public Security. China uses a whole bag of tricks to ensure
that the population is connected to the Internet, but at the same time the
control is squarely in the hands of the Chinese regime.
China censors content
that is critical
of the government and over the years it has mastered methods which
allow it to block certain URLs or pages containing a list of banned keywords,
instead of blocking entire websites hosting objectionable content. Words such
as “Tiannamen Square”
for instance will not throw up results
on Google. In fact if a user is searching only banned
words on Google, he or she will be blocked for sometime from
Google. Many Internet companies in China get a regular dossier of restricted
keywords. Banning blogs critical of government policies is the norm in China. Pornography
websites and even messaging
apps have faced routine censorship in China.
Restricting access to
foreign websites, has given rise of homegrown websites in China such as Sina Weibo which
is as influential as Twitter, which lets users communicate freely. Being
Chinese sites, the government is able to control and censor objectionable posts
easily. Apart from the lakhs of people hired by the government to monitor
content online, there are other who are allegedly paid by the Communist Party
to post pro-government messages on social networks.
Cuba has government
run Internet cafes which only give access to censored websites. Image:
Wikipedia
Cuba
Cuba may not have the
same number of Internet users as say Iran or China, but it still has major
censorship rules in place. According to 2013 estimates, only 25 per
cent of Cubans have internet access. But majority of these
internet users access the internet via government controlled Intranet which
only has state-approved websites. Only 5
per cent of Cubans access open internet. The fact that all of the
internet service providers are state-owned speaks volumes.
Accessing internet
from home for majority of the population is unheard of. Only those who can
afford it can access the internet from home. This includes government
officials, doctors, engineers, Cuban govt approved journalists and so on. Rest
of the population accesses it via government run cyber cafes which charge a
prohibitive hourly rate. Cubans have to provide an ID to use the internet, so
there is not question of anonymous internet use either. Internet speeds
are slow in most places. And uploading of content can only be done by
pro-government users.
Facebook and Twitter
are accessible but not YouTube. Unlike China, Cuba does not have smart filters
in place. Limited access and government run cafes take care of most of
the censorship. Bloggers who post anti-regime content are routinely
screened and may face severe punishment. But like China, there are government
appointed individuals whose job it is to promote the regime’s propoganda. There
were even attempts to make a Cuban version of Facebook, called Red
Social. The regime even has its own version of Wikipedia.
Looking at these three
nations which top Internet censorship lists year on year, it is safe to say
that Internet use in India is still relatively free from government control.
But the latest meeting which is proposing web filters in India, things may just
get bad. All we can do is wait and watch how the censorship drama plays out in
our country and how involved will the citizens will be in the final
drafting of guidelines.
