NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Why Search Matters - and Fighting Internet Censorship with Technology
Why Search Matters - and Fighting Internet Censorship with Technology
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000862.html
I've been talking about censorship and free speech quite a bit lately,
especially in the context of link criminalization and government
mandated censorship of search engine results (e.g. targeting Google
and others) as envisioned by PROTECT IP legislation.
Censorship easily rises to the top of information-related civil rights
concerns, since it impacts your ability to even realize how much
information is being hidden from you in the first place. Remember
"double-secret probation" from "Animal House"? Censorship is
something like that, only with far more serious ramifications.
In response to my related comments in "Blinded by the Light: The
Internet Enemy Within" and referenced articles
( http://j.mp/iv2ttN [Lauren's Blog] ), one of my regular
readers took me to task for my assessment of censorship risks
associated with PROTECT IP in particular.
His premise is that PROTECT IP is much like prohibitions against
"yelling fire in a crowded theater" or actions taken against
pornography involving children, and so is justifiable and reasonable
legislation.
I'd actually been waiting for someone to bring up these examples. The
former of course has been a traditional rational for speech controls
for many decades, the latter a convenient "hook" more recently for
proposing all manner of restrictions on speech.
It's interesting though to note that both of these cases directly
involve situations where human life and health is immediately at
stake. If speech restrictions are to be tolerated under any
circumstances, these are the sorts of situations that would come
immediately to mind.
Yet all too often, we see that these are merely the jumping-off points
for a vast array of other restrictions, built "brick by brick" through
ever expanding rationales.
So we're now faced with a veritable explosion of cases where
governments are attempting to impose censorship, especially on the
Internet, as ever more common events are declared to be "censorship
worthy" in one way or another.
In the U.S., the economic concerns of giant entertainment
conglomerates would be elevated to the level of government mandated
link and search engine censorship, by the PROTECT IP legislative
thrust.
In Thailand, an American citizen has been arrested for a four-year-old
link from his blog to a book critical of Thailand's king
( http://j.mp/miuwUn [Denver Post] ). In India, the government is
moving to block Web sites that furnish child "sex selection"
information ( http://j.mp/m0Plzp [Times of India] ). Both Thailand
and India are rapidly moving toward expanded Internet censorship
regimes, with what most observers would call "political" speech firmly
in the crosshairs.
Europe may be even worse in some ways. In Spain, a push for a right
to be forgotten ( http://j.mp/lDPBTT [AP/SCPR] ) would dictate the
removal of search engine listings seemingly pretty much on demand, an
inane concept that I discussed in some detail last March in
"Deleting History: Why Governments Demand Google Censor the Truth"
( http://j.mp/dOE4Vw [Lauren's Blog] ).
The list goes on and on.
Which brings us back to the U.S. and PROTECT IP. It's difficult see
how -- if Congress succeeds in invoking search engine censorship to
protect the profits of (for example) the Disney empire -- Congress
could then say "no" to censorship for a broad range of other topics
that most people would consider to be of more importance than money at
the "Mouse House."
After all, Congress has tried in the past to impose broad Internet
classification and censorship regimes on a "Think of the children!"
basis before -- such as the Child Online Protection Act. With
changing court compositions, there's every reason to assume that
Congress will keep on trying to impose Internet speech restrictions.
PROTECT IP is just the beginning ( http://j.mp/legUSl [Lauren's Blog] ).
The focus on government censorship of search engines is critical,
because search engines have become the key tool for our access to --
and understanding of -- the ever growing enormity of information on
the Internet.
If we can't find relevant information, if we don't even know that it
exists, it might as well not exist in the first place as far as most
of us would be concerned.
Back in January, author Malcolm Gladwell suggested that we really
didn't need continuing improvements in search technology, seeming to
imply that our current ability to access information is "good enough"
for all purposes ( http://j.mp/jdDPqc [Big Think] ).
Nothing could be further from the truth. Current search technology is
indeed very good, but the vastly expanding volume of information on
the Net, in some cases coming from sources not even dreamt of ten or
twenty years ago, will always be in need of new and improved ways to
look at Internet data, to process and rank it, and to make it
available to searchers in the most useful possible forms. The high
quality of today's search tech isn't a sign of search evolution's end,
it is rather a harbinger of important, additional ways of looking at
knowledge, methods that are in many cases yet to be.
So search engines are central and crucial -- and that's why
governments around the world are now racing to try find ways to
dictate how search engines operate, with a likely result being an
expanding "black hole" of topics that will ultimately be declared
verboten.
Search engines such as Google must obey the law. They can fight in
court against government or private demands that they view to be over
broad or otherwise inappropriate, but ultimately they must operate
within national government rulings if they're going to stay in any
given country.
A practical alternative of course is to withdraw certain services
from the countries in question -- such as occurred (to Google's
credit) with Google in China. But ultimately, countries that force
such a state of affairs are usually damaging their own citizens, in
the purported false guise of protecting them.
There may be other approaches that search engines can employ that
will mollify some government concerns short of accepting censorship
edicts ( http://j.mp/c4RvWs [Lauren's Blog] ).
But enough writing is on the wall already that we should be actively
planning for means to help assure that overreaching government
censorship plans -- aimed in particular at search engines -- will not
be unopposed.
As I've suggested previously, I believe we should be actively
considering how best to leverage the inherently distributed,
international nature of the Internet to help assure that crucial
knowledge cannot be effectively buried by any national government's
link censorship edicts to major search engines or other major sites.
Would it be be possible for such a distributed "knowledge backup"
infrastructure to be abused? Could information location data that is
genuinely harmful by most standards find its way into such distributed
repositories?
Yes. But we know that crooks and other evildoers of all stripes will
always find ways to access "forbidden" information in one way or
another.
PROTECT IP and its international ilk ultimately do not threaten the
real bad guys, but rather set the stage for much broader restrictions
on the knowledge accessible to law-abiding citizens.
It is access to information by honest persons -- who make up the vast
majority of the world's population-- that is most at risk of being
targeted by censorship in the long run -- collaterally at first, but
later much more directly.
Government ordered censorship of links and search engines is the
"hydrogen bomb" of government control over the Internet, and so of
information and knowledge in general.
But unlike real nuclear weapons, the deployment of censorship as
anti-knowledge armament will occur little by little -- first visible
only as relatively small puffs of smoke, that only later will combine
into enormous and encompassing mushroom clouds of control.
"Censor to protect the children."
"Censor to protect the profits."
"Censor to avoid criticism."
"Censor to bury whistleblowers."
"Censor to preserve the status quo."
"Censor to honor our glorious leaders."
"Censor to protect our Fatherland."
"Censor to honor Caesar."
- - -
"You can cage the singer, but not the song."
-- Harry Belafonte (1988)
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com