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Repression a virus on the internet, says Amnesty

Human rights campaign group calls the "Chinese model" of online controls will destroy the internet.

By Nicole Kobie, 6 Jun 2007 at 16:34

Repression is a virus which could destroy the internet, Amnesty International has warned.

The charity said the internet will "change beyond all recognition" because of the increasing use of it by governments to target critics and suppress anti-government material.

"The virus of internet repression is spreading. The 'Chinese model' - of an internet that allows economic growth but not free speech or privacy - is growing in popularity, from a handful of countries five years ago to dozens of governments today who block sites and arrest bloggers," said Amnesty's director of UK campaigns, Tim Hancock, in a statement.

Sami Ben Gharbia, a Tunisian blogger and cyber activist, escaped to the Netherlands as a political refugee.

"The internet is a bad thing for two groups: for governments who are realising that they are losing control of information and are trying to restrict the use of the internet; and for the victims of those governments, individuals who are imprisoned for simply using the Internet to post and share information," Gharbia said.

Amnesty said the latest Open Net Initiative (ONI) report showed 25 countries which used internet filtering, including India, South Korea and Thailand.

Aside from state-mandated filtering, Amnesty said some governments shut down websites and internet cafes, as well as threaten and imprison web publishers, in order to keep citizens inline while online.

"More and more governments are realising the utility of controlling what people see online," Hancock said. "And major internet companies, in an attempt to expand their markets, are colluding in these attempts."

Based on their own research, Amnesty has said companies such as Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have assisted the Chinese government by censoring and filtering web content, as well as by releasing data which has led to arrests.

"At the moment we turn on our computer and assume we can see all that there is online," Hancock said. "The fear is that we will only be able to access what someone wants us to see."

To highlight the issue, Amnesty will be running a webcast tonight featuring lastminute.com founder Martha Lane Fox, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and victims of online repression.