Content Filtering and Surveillance

Research shows that Internet content filtering is increasing as new technologies allow governments and other entities to effectively target and block Internet users from accessing undesirable information. For example, in 2002 only two countries, China and Saudi Arabia, were known to actively filter Internet content within their borders. Presently, many more countries, including the United States, engage in such content filtering. Content filtering can happen at different levels.“About Filtering,” OpenNet Initiative, accessed November 8, 2012, http://opennet.net/about-filtering. Filtering or blocking can happen at the Internet backbone level, which is the method most often used to limit information at the national level. In such cases, content is filtered out at an infrastructure or gateway point before it ever enters the country. Internet service providers can also block or censor content at the request of governments or other groups. Institutions can block certain content using software or other technical means. This type of blocking may be carried out to meet the objectives or values of a particular institution—for example, to block sexually explicit information from school computers. Finally, censorship can occur at the individual computer level. In such cases, parents or others may want to control the information available with filtering software that is customizable.

Typically, blocked content includes pornography or other materials deemed sexually explicit, information deemed harmful to national security or public safety (e.g., bomb-making information), and information that challenges a government or regime’s power.Ronald J. Deibert, “Black Code Redux: Censorship, Surveillance, and the Militarization of Cyberspace,” in Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times, ed. Megan Boler (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 144. In 2009, Bahrain was reported to make the most substantial increase in filtering of any country, as it limited many social, religious, political, and human rights sites.Robert Faris and Jonathan Zittrain, “Web Tactics,” Index on Censorship 38 (2009): 91. In terms of politics and human rights blocking, China blocked access to Twitter in the lead-up to the twenty-year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. Saudi Arabia has taken a more targeted approach by blocking the accounts of two prominent human rights activists.Robert Faris and Jonathan Zittrain, “Web Tactics,” Index on Censorship 38 (2009): 93.Religiously offensive material can also be blocked as evidenced by Pakistan’s practice of blocking information that is offensive to Islam. The “Getting Critical” feature explores in more detail the often controversial practice of censorship for religious reasons.

“Getting Critical”

YouTube and Free Speech: Should Religiously Offensive Material Be Blocked?

The issue of censoring information deemed to be religiously offensive gained worldwide attention in September of 2012 when a video trailer for an anti-Islamic movie made in the United States made its way onto YouTube, which sparked protests in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Tunisia, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, and many other countries. In response to calls from some of these countries for the United States to remove the video from YouTube, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton condemned the video but affirmed that the video is protected under the right to free speech promised by the US Constitution. Google, which owns YouTube, also stated that the video doesn’t violate US law or Google’s terms of service and would therefore not be removed in the United States. Google did make the unprecedented decision, in the wake of an attack on the US embassy in Libya that killed four US Americans including ambassador Chris Stevens and in the face of increasing protests, to block the video in Libya, Egypt, Indonesia, and India.Rebecca J. Rosen, “What to Make of Google’s Decision to Block ‘The Innocence of Muslims’ Movie,” The Atlantic, September 14, 2012, accessed November 8, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/what-to-make-of-googles -decision-to-block-the-innocence-of-muslims-movie/262395.

  1. Should the United States have completely removed the video from YouTube in the wake of the protests and violence it sparked around the world? Why or why not?
  2. Discuss Google/YouTube’s decision to block the video in several countries. Do you think this was the right or wrong decision on the part of the company?
  3. Review YouTube’s “Community Guidelines,” which can be accessed at the following link:https://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines. In your opinion, should anything be removed from or added to these guidelines?

To further limit information, some governments also block access to foreign news or information from human rights organizations.Robert Faris and Jonathan Zittrain, “Web Tactics,” Index on Censorship 38 (2009): 90–96. Blocking software can now also limit access to translation sites, which a person could use to get around the filtering since most of the information that is blocked is in the native language(s) of the country. This was the case in Bahrain, which blocked access to Google Translate in 2009. Web access can also be limited due to security reasons. In 2009, the US Marines announced that soldiers would no longer have access to social media networks, because they can lead to cyberattacks or allow people to leak information. Some of the major critiques of this practice include the collusion of corporations who own certain Internet platforms with governments that block content. For example, a company could turn over, at the request of a government, logs or archives of information about the Internet use of a dissident. At the request of the Chinese government, Yahoo! turned over e-mail records of three people, which led to their arrest. Additionally, people have raised concerns about the fact that US companies supply many of these countries, with whom the United States doesn’t have relationship with or with whom those relations are strained, with the software that is then used in ways that go against US and UN policies for the protection of free speech and human rights.Ronald J. Deibert, “Black Code Redux: Censorship, Surveillance, and the Militarization of Cyberspace,” in Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times, ed. Megan Boler (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 149.

Electronic espionage has been around since communication technologies like the telegraph, sound-recording devices, and radios were invented. Many countries, including the United States, have long had limitations on and protections against the use of electronic surveillance on US citizens, but after 9/11, these restrictions have been lessened, loosely interpreted, or only selectively enforced. With new media come new opportunities for electronic surveillance. Internet based “wiretaps”—the unauthorized and unknown monitoring or collection of e-mail, web-surfing data, or even keyboard strokes—are now employed, and that information may be shared with law enforcement or intelligence agencies.Ronald J. Deibert, “Black Code Redux: Censorship, Surveillance, and the Militarization of Cyberspace,” in Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times, ed. Megan Boler (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 151.

Such surveillance techniques are not just used by government or intelligence agencies; they are also used by companies. If you’re like many others and me, you are now used to clicking “accept” on those lengthy terms of use agreements and privacy policies without looking at them. What we may not know (and may not care about) is that who or whatever is asking us for our agreement or disagreement may want to track our usage of their program or product. Sometimes this tracking is meant to improve the functionality of the product or to connect us with services that we or the program has identified as useful to or relevant for us. The amount of data that exists on each one of us is now astounding, and more web users are demanding that browsers and other Internet services allow them to either opt out of tracking or monitor who is tracking them. A recent “add-on” called Collusion for Mozilla’s Firefox has received attention for allowing users to visualize who is tracking them in real time.“Collusion,” Add-ons, accessed November 8, 2012, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/collusion.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • New media have had a democratizing effect on society, as they help distribute power to people through their social and personal characteristics. Instead of media outlets having sole control over what is communicated to audiences, media-audience interactions are now more like a dialogue. The personal access to media and growing control over media discourses by users allows people to more freely express opinions, offer criticisms, and question others—communicative acts that are all important for a functioning democracy.
  • The digitalization of media products allows them to be more easily reproduced and disseminated. Due to increasing rates of piracy, media outlets have started a more aggressive campaign to reduce copyright infringement through threats of prosecution, collaboration with media providers to identify offending users, and digital rights management (DRM).
  • The democratizing nature of new media hasn’t been welcomed by all, as governments, institutions, and individuals engage in various types of content filtering.
  • The connectivity afforded by social and personal media also create more possibilities for surveillance in terms of electronic “wiretaps” by law enforcement and collection of web-browsing, consumption, and online communication data by corporations and organizations.

EXERCISES

  1. Discuss the ways in which new media have democratized access to information and allowed people to participate in more of a dialogue with media outlets, government officials, political candidates, and/or individuals.
  2. Democracy Now is an alternative media outlet that is accessible in many different new media platforms. You can visit their main page at the following link: http://www.democracynow.org. Take a few minutes to visit the website and watch or listen to the most recent broadcast. How does the content of this news differ from mainstream media?
  3. Discuss digital rights management (DRM). What are some of the positive and negative effects of limiting the ability of a digital media file to be reproduced or used on multiple devices?

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