Fighting for freedom of the internet?
Amnesty International, with the support of the Observer newspaper in the UK, has launched a new campaign to fight for freedom of the internet. The group says that freedom of expression online now is a human right.
Countries around the world control the internet from China's Great Firewall and its thousands of internet police to western countries that monitor the internet for child pornography or terrorist communications. Do you believe 'net freedom is a human right? How do we balance freedoms with responsibilities?
Amnesty says on its new site Irrepresible.info:
Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Websites blocked. Search engines restricted. People imprisoned for simply posting and sharing information. The Internet is a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. Governments – with the help of some of the biggest IT companies in the world – are cracking down on freedom of expression.
You can go here and read the pledge. The Open Net Initiative has a map of internet filtering around the world. Amnesty wants to put pressure not only on governments but also corporations that help support internet censorship. Amnesty highlights the case of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist serving 10 years for sending an e-mail from his Yahoo! e-mail account.
It reminds me. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the case of Alaa Abdel Fatah, an Egyptian blogger and activist still under detention for participating in a protest to support activist judges. I just got this update in my inbox this morning. Alaa continues to blog from jail. (Thanks Andy for the link.) His 15-day detention has been extended.
Comments Post your comment