Writing in Policy Review, Daniel Calingaert on authoritarianism versus the Internet. An excerpt:
Email can be intercepted to monitor dissidents. China, Tunisia, and Iran conduct deep packet inspection, which enables state security to intercept email messages, deconstruct them, pick out keywords, remove or alter the content of these messages, and reconstruct them within milliseconds.
Authoritarian governments use general press laws against insult, blasphemy, leaking state secrets, etc. to punish online dissidents. Cuba prosecutes online journalists under generic charges such as presenting a “pre-criminal social danger.” China has issued more than 80 decrees that specifically address internet content and related issues. Vietnam introduced regulations in January 2009 to prohibit blogs from disseminating content that criticizes the government.
[HT: Arts & Letters Daily]
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