The Great Firewall of China
Listening to NPR on the way home from work, I heard what I thought was a new term: The Great Firewall of China. Performing a search on one of those great firewalls, I found that the term isn't so new. To do business with China, the search engine companies do have to filter their results removing entries for the likes of Tibetan independence, Falun Gong, and Dalai Lama. Of course, search engine companies aren't the only ones that have to censor content. Microsoft blocks certain blogs and Cisco provides China's law enforcement much technology to block China from the WWW.
Some of those companies testified before Congress this week and draft legislation was introduced to Promote Global Internet Freedom and provide Minimum Corporate Standards for Online Freedom. Whether this Bill passes and how much it is watered down remains an open question, but the guests on NPR think something will come out of these hearings.
Censoring the internet is a game of cat and mouse. For every site blocked, 10 more spring to life. For every word blocked, a misspelling routes you around to blockage. As the internet expands to every corner of the globe with global communication at your fingertips, it's hard to see how countries are going to keep their users within national electronic borders.
For more information, RConversation leads the charge.