Thread: Internet Censorship?

See map by "Reporters without Borders"?
What are they referring to here? In what way is there more internet surveillance in Russia than in Europe or the US? Do you see this as a problem?



For the record; there are issues with this in Western Europe and the USA too - for example torrent sites are being censored to varying degrees and people get fined or imprisoned.

Australia is under surveillance? Venezuela has no censorship?

What does under surveillance mean, and why it's (supposedly) worse than open censorship? I'm sure that Internet activity is monitored very closely in many countries, in the first place in the USA (as means of fighting terrorism among other reasons).
Also it's obvious that most "non-censorship" countries simply don't have resources for it.

Originally Posted by Nerms

Australia is under surveillance? Venezuela has no censorship?

Australia is extremely regulated by the government in all areas. It is even more bureaucratic than Russia. You must even give an ID with home address even to obtain a pre-pay cell phone.

what do all these terms mean? Enemy of the internet? Under surveillance - does that mean no censorship?
Who are reporters without borders? Another one of these "independant" "truthful" groups?

Originally Posted by sperk

Who are reporters without borders? Another one of these "independant" "truthful" groups?

For an American you show a remarkable display of common sense

Originally Posted by sperk

what do all these terms mean? Enemy of the internet? Under surveillance - does that mean no censorship? Who are reporters without borders? Another one of these "independant" "truthful" groups?

Good questions: I just saw the map when I wanted to check what the general view was on the internet in Belarus.
there were several alternative maps and not all were showing the same countries as monitoring. But this one was the most common and it was used on Wikipedia. Was surprised to see Russia as worse than Europe. I thought it was the other way around.

Reporters without borders is clearly taking the inspiration for its name from Doctors without borders (Medecins sans frontiers). These organisations are supposed to be non-political, but you never know.

Australia is actually pretty harsh on the internet monitoring. They had a law proposal saying that they would filter what comes in through their under water pipes (due to the cut-off location, they have that option). They made a list with hundreds of thosusands of sites that were supposed to be banned, including certain types of porn and some famous porn sites, as well as some political sites. This was covered quite extensively in tech media and many Australians were furious. Not sure what happened, whether the law was passed or not.

I have only come across internet monitoring when some of my favourite torrent sites were taken down by the US dept. of Homeland Security like This domain name has been seized by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations
I once tried to visit a cite called http://www.kavkazcenter.com which is possibly linked to terrorism. (just wanted to see some press release there). I can not get to it with my normal connection.

Originally Posted by Hanna

I once tried to visit a cite called http://www.kavkazcenter.com which is possibly linked to terrorism. (just wanted to see some press release there). I can not get to it with my normal connection.

Works fine for me.

And for me too, although I'm in heavily censored Russia, against wich that fvking site is working.

Ok so what's actually censored in Russia then?
Is anyone aware of any internet censorship?

For example:

Torrents or filesharing sites?
Extreme porn site?
Site selling drugs?
Extremely anti-Putin site?
Terrorist site? (i.e. that site that I linked to).
Rasist....

I can't think of anything else!
I mean for them to say that Russia is seriously monitored, there's got to be some kind of restriction or some problem?
Or where could they be getting it from?

Originally Posted by Ramil

For an American you show a remarkable display of common sense

LOL, unlike some others here, he's smart and didn't drink the Kool-Aid..... Good!
(to use one of my favourite American expressions.... I just like that expression, not sure if it's 100% applicable).

Internet is too big and too abstract to be censored. Governments (or any other concerned people) only can put some barriers on the information spreading way (ex. great firewall). But users always finds new and new ways to get their information. In Belarus we have laws (rather decrees) which adds some restrictions to internet usage. For example, anybody who want to use the service of internet cafe mush show his passport. Or, all companies must use Belarussian hosting for their official sites and all shops must be hosted in .by zone (with ~$60 per year payment for domain). Also all services which hosted in Belarus (or in .by zone) must fill special form and declare a lot of information about them (e.g. they should declare opened ports , used algorithms, used encryption algorithm e.t.c.).
So, in general we have only one company which has an access to Internet (Beltelecom) and can sell this access to internal providers. In this case Beltelecom always can supervise and filter all traffic. Sometimes they uses this ability (we saw this recently, on elections).

And a bit about torrents
Not so far ago Russians have banned the largest tracker in RUnet (torrents.ru). Tracker was opened on other URL (rutracker.ru) but there was a lot of noise (большая шумиха). Just one video on this theme (for Russian speakers more) YouTube - Torrents.ru .

Originally Posted by Hanna

Ok so what's actually censored in Russia then?
Is anyone aware of any internet censorship?

For example:

Torrents or filesharing sites?
Extreme porn site?
Site selling drugs?
Extremely anti-Putin site?
Terrorist site? (i.e. that site that I linked to).
Rasist....

I can't think of anything else!
I mean for them to say that Russia is seriously monitored, there's got to be some kind of restriction or some problem?
Or where could they be getting it from?

You can access all this kind of sites from Russia. I think the reason they called Russia "under surviellance" are cases like this (there were about 2 or 3 of such cases during last several years):

The journalist insulted Putin in the blog, brought a criminal case

The journalist Pavel Safronov, which is registered in LiveJournal as В«onchoysВ», a criminal case under article "insulting a government official" for the obscene expletive to the Prime Minister.
The blogger called the premiere of "n ... ace, commenting on the President's visit to the Republic of Komi. His guilt, he does not recognize, because they are not considered to be used expletive insult. Also, it requires that they told him, according to a person was initiated the criminal case.
In the magazine "Red Flag", which employs the journalist, had been searched, seized a laptop and iPad Safronova.
Recall, 28 September this year, Safronov in his blog expressed the view that Putin's visit had a negative effect on the work of service LiveJournal and Twitter. Disrespect to the prime minister provoked outrage from the Liberal Democratic Party activist Veronica Gorbachev, who on November 11 complained to a journalist in the branch of United Russia.

http://en.ura-inform.com/neformat/20...fronov?nocache

As I heard from the news, he called Putin "fag" and was charged with defamation, but he told at court that he sincerely thought that Putin had a gay sexual contact and case was closed.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Reporters without borders is clearly taking the inspiration for its name from Doctors without borders (Medecins sans frontiers). These organisations are supposed to be non-political, but you never know.

RSF is very political (and very right-wing actually). Basically what they do is going around and telling everyone the USA are the best country ever, and if you don't support free-market and CIA you are obviously a communist and an enemy of freedom.

Originally Posted by Zubr

RSF is very political (and very right-wing actually). Basically what they do is going around and telling everyone the USA are the best country ever, and if you don't support free-market and CIA you are obviously a communist and an enemy of freedom.

Really? They are just exploiting the good name of MSF then! I bet almost everyone will assume it's apolitical.. That map is all over the internet. How creepy! It's a bit like when people are quoiting Radio Free Europe as a reliable source of information about Russia and the CIS region.

Originally Posted by bsod

So, in general we have only one company which has an access to Internet (Beltelecom) and can sell this access to internal providers. In this case Beltelecom always can supervise and filter all traffic. Sometimes they uses this ability (we saw this recently, on elections).

Ok that's interesting. How ridiculous to restrict access to those sites on the election day! All they achieve is annoy young people more. What would happen if you started using a VPN or proxy? Do you think they'd get suspicious and come and check you out?

I agree with those who said that it's probably too much information to monitor unless they focus on specific sites or use some very smart software to pick up certain words or phrases.

Thanks to the control over DNS, the US can do exactly the same... That happened to quite a few torrent sites recently. They can take down any site ending with .com and .net and .org I think. There is a big debate going on right now because some people have started using encryptions that US intelligence don't have the resources to decrypt and they want to stop that.

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

What does under surveillance mean, and why it's (supposedly) worse than open censorship? I'm sure that Internet activity is monitored very closely in many countries, in the first place in the USA (as means of fighting terrorism among other reasons). Also it's obvious that most "non-censorship" countries simply don't have resources for it.

Yeah exactly. I agree with everything. you said.

Originally Posted by Basil77

You can access all this kind of sites from Russia. I think the reason they called Russia "under surviellance" are cases like this (there were about 2 or 3 of such cases during last several years).

That wasn't very serious I think... I think something similar would happen in the UK was slagging off the prime minister in an untruthful way. I don't think that's very shocking, although ideally he should NOT have been prosecuted at all. So basically this is all hyped up and the internet in Russia and Europe are equally free or unfree... but in slightly different ways. Anyway it's wisest for everyobe not to use their real name too much online, and to use a proxy or VPN I think.

Originally Posted by bsod

Just one video on this theme (for Russian speakers more) YouTube - Torrents.ru .

Плакалъ =))))))))))))))

Здесь, у нас нет цензуры, здесь просто в некоторых регионах запрещают youtube. Сразу и целиком.
Иностранная пресса: YouTube запрещен российским судом

Originally Posted by BappaBa

Плакалъ =))))))))))))))

LMAO

I say there is censorship. If you express something that causes friction for special interest groups or top levels of Government, you will find censorship.

The U.S. has initiated legislation for 'shutting down' internet access "in the event of an emergency."

Many more examples but it exists. There are many people in high places who have a vested interest in having internet under much more control. Think about it. Hint: Money and power.

Don't you like my first post? It's so serious....

Originally Posted by Pavelov

I say there is censorship. If you express something that causes friction for special interest groups or top levels of Government, you will find censorship.

The U.S. has initiated legislation for 'shutting down' internet access "in the event of an emergency."

Many more examples but it exists. There are many people in high places who have a vested interest in having internet under much more control. Think about it. Hint: Money and power....

Yes, I have the same view and I don't think it's anything special for Russia. When we read about this in media in Western Europe; if our governments do something, then it is "to protect copyright holders"/"protect society from terrorism" etc, etc.. But when something similarly dubious happens in Russia it would covered in media like "Putin censors bloggers!" or "State crackdown on internet sites in Russia" or something like that...


I just thought of something that probably WOULD be censored... Discussions about military information on forums. Don't you think?

Of course, there is no Cold War and no serious risk of invasions or attacks. But I doubt that it would be acceptable if people started discussing sensitive information in a forum regardless: For example - where the government would be evacuated to, in case of war (I came a across a discussion about this, somewhere else, concerning another country). Or for example detailed information about weapons system, military transport routes etc.

Some people who are very "geeky" think it's interesting to discuss such things and people may be tempted to start talking about sensitive information that they learnt in their military service, or things that they have observed near where they live, or through their work.

So say, for example that there was a big discussion about: Where is the secret location where the Russian leadership would be evacuated to, in case of an attack on Moscow.... People were speculating and were beginning to come to a solid conclusion.

Do you think it's right that the forum/thread should be deleted/censored and that the security service should go after people who revealed secret information on the internet?

Governments WANT to control the internet. As one of the last avenues of freedom and expression, this is one tool that the Government aim to control.

The Government will seek any excuse to stifle freedom and will find all sorts of ways to justify punishment.

There is money at stake and channels of power as well so you will hear all sorts of excuses and rationalization but make no mistake, they will gradually tighten controls. The other problem is the complacency of the populace. They are distracted as they're consumed by their own little worlds. It doesn't matter if it's capitalism or communism in the society, it's all the same.