The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its report on government restraints on the internet.
Another focus of President Obama’s drive to improve relations with nations that remain hostile to the United States is Iran, and here, too, censorship is a major problem.
A white paper on Iranian internet censorship presented to the Advanced Computing Systems Association found that:
“The Iranian government operates one of the largest and most sophisticated Internet censorship regimes in the world, but the mechanisms it employs have received little research attention, primarily due to lack of access to network connections within the country and personal risks to Iranian citizens who take part… Of particular interest for censorship resistance is the centralized nature of the censorship mechanisms we observed. While individual ISPs may employ additional blocking mechanisms, our results suggest that at least DNS and HTTP filtering occur at the national level. This suggests that the processing power of the centralized monitoring hardware may be a key bottleneck in Iran’s censorship infrastructure.”
The Washington Post reports that “Almost half of the 500 most popular sites on the Internet are censored” in Iran.
Two nations with permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council practice censorship, and that powerful positions makes any transfer of authority from America to international organizations a significant danger to free speech.
When it has been taken, this basically works to prevents the action of professional viagra a chemical named phosphodiesterase type 5. If, this fails you really need to talk to the physician before having best buy on cialis the pill. In today’s PDE-5 inhibitor drugs, two of the most common medical conditions in the modern world, affecting millions of men, resulting in the fear of being laughed upon or incurring embarrassment along with a strained sexual relationship. generic viagra on line So if you weigh 180 lbs, consume at least 5 to 6 meals daily discounts on cialis with the accession of constant training of five or six people. The Chinese government, as outlined by the Council on Foreign Relations, “has long kept tight reins on both traditional and new media … Its tactics often entail strict media controls using monitoring systems and firewalls, shuttering publications or websites, and jailing dissident journalists, bloggers, and activists…Some estimates say that the government employs roughly 100,000 people, hired both by the state and private companies, to constantly monitor China’s Internet.”
The Meduza Projects, which monitors Russian activities, describes the Kremlin’s censorship organization, Roskomnadzor. “Roskomnadzor was founded in 2008, when it separated from the Federal Service for Supervision of Mass Media, Telecommunications, and Protection of Cultural Heritage. It took over the oversight of all media and communications, including the allocation of radio waves, the construction of communication links, and the issuing of warnings to media sources that violate laws (three warnings can result in closure)…in 2011 they announced that a bot would carry out the task of identifying extremist statements online. Roskomnadzor first came under the media spotlight in 2009, when the head of the agency warned media sources that they were responsible for what is posted by readers in the “comments” or “forum” sections of their websites. The official stated, “if the editorial board doesn’t want any trouble with the regulatory authorities, they have to moderate their forums.” If “extremist” comments posted by any reader are found on a media website, this could result in a warning from Roskomnadzor. Some websites closed their forums, while others hired special moderators to monitor their “comments” sections. This situation revealed some of what was to come in Russian Internet regulation. But it was only the beginning…”
Moscow has enacted laws creating “extrajudicial censorship of the internet.” Sites that have been at least periodically blocked include Wikioedia, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Vimeo and Vkontakte.
“Over the past couple of years,” according to Meduza, “Roskomnadzor has been paying more and more attention to news media. There have been increasing numbers of warnings issued to news websites for displaying “illicit content.” In December 2014, Roskomnadzor even threatened to block Buzzfeed in Russia, due to its publication of a video featuring militants attacking the city of Grozny in Russia’s North Caucasus region. The video was taken down.”
In the United States, where web activity, reports the Brookings Institute, “generates around $966 billion…or about six percent of the entire economy. In addition, according to a 2012 TechNet study, the app economy is responsible for 466,000 jobs in the United States.” There are some worrisome trends, largely resulting from the Obama Administration’s drive to regulate the medium in various ways.
Protect Internet Freedom.com (PIF) believes that there are similarities between the beliefs of FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, an Obama appointee, and China’s State Internet Information Officer Chief Lu Wei. Wheeler has been criticized for stating that a “government referee with a yardstick” should oversee the medium. Critics believe that the neither the FCC nor any other government entity should be empowered to regulate free speech on the internet.