Imagine if an unknown person entered your home on a regular basis and removed books from your bookshelves. You would never be told which books were being taken away, and you would never be given a reason except that someone, somewhere, somehow, deemed them “extremist,” “indecent,” or simply “insulting,” or felt that they might “incite” some form of hatred. Imagine if the books removed included historical research on disputed facts, secular depictions of religious images, and irreverent accounts of the conduct or policies of political leaders.
Couldn’t happen in a democracy? Guess again.
Under the guise of protecting citizens from “smut” and “offensiveness,” Internet filtering programs routinely block access to thousands of World Wide Web search results, home pages, chat rooms, newsgroups, and other Internet options—in democratic countries as well as in authoritarian states. In most cases the criteria are based on an arbitrary and politicized understanding of what is “smut” or “offensive.”
Online surveillance and censorship are growing in scale, scope, and sophistication around the world. This growth is not surprising given the importance of the medium. But there is increasing cause for concern about the implications of these trends for media freedom, for unhampered discussion of matters of public interest, and even for political activism.
In charting these developments, surveys carried out by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) are indispensable tools in my own daily job of reminding governments of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) of their commitments concerning the free flow of information.
Published in 2007, ONI’s first global survey of Internet filtering, Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering,revealed that “state-mandated net filtering” was carried out in a only “a couple” of countries in 2002—but by 2007, it was under way in 25 out of the 41 countries scrutinized.
In its new publication, Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace,ONI goes further.
It shines a spotlight on filtering to help make the practice more transparent, or at least to divulge it as an acknowledged fact. And it also predicts a rise in more “subtle” forms of Internet censorship, such as blocking certain political Web sites during election periods or waging cyberwarfare campaigns such as those recently witnessed in the Russian-Georgian conflict.
One of the most regrettable aspects of net filtering is the fact that it is often invisible— and almost always happens out of public control. As a citizen, there is no place you can turn to get answers from your state authorities about how and why they are filtering, and about what is being blocked.
In the early days of the Web, a decade or so ago, it was taken for granted that freedom of expression online would inexorably evolve and progress. It was assumed that governments that did not uphold the fundamental human right to speak and write freely would be powerless against the spread of those values over the Internet.
By now, though, those early dreams have been dashed. The reality today is that Internet censorship is a growing practice both east and west of Vienna, with the filtering of Internet content carried out by both established Western democracies and transitional ones. Indeed, the countries where Internet matters the most as the sole carrier of real news media are the same countries whose governments, posing as “defenders” of the public, filter and block the most online content.
No one can rely on the Internet anymore as a self-healing mechanism that can defeat censorship or blocking on its own. It is for that reason that the Freedom of the Media office will continue to actively promote guarantees for freedom of the media on the Internet.
Let us be clear. The benefits of the Internet far outweigh the dangers of misuse. In some countries, the Internet is the only source of pluralistic and independent information, even if Internet penetration may still be low. Let us make sure that this unique source of unguided information does not dry out.
In light of these issues, I dedicate this foreword to Magomed Yevloyev, the publisher of the independent news Web site Ingushetiya.ru, who was shot dead on August 31, 2008, while in police custody. The Ingushetiya.ru Web site has been a torchbearer of what a free Internet stands for: access to a plurality of information and opinion.
I am grateful for the partnership with the ONI, as well as for the timely publication of this book, which would not have been possible without the generous contribution of the government of Ireland, for which I also express my gratitude.
Miklos Haraszti
OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media