Technology and Repression

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Should western companies supply repressive regimes with ways to control the internet? Ten years ago, only a handful of countries carried out political censorship of the internet. Today, it's reckoned that more than three dozen governments take steps to exclude from the internet facts and opinions they disapprove of, or to prevent bloggers and web-users from exchanging information with each other and with the outside world. The London-based group Index on Censorship says the internet has made it possible for authoritarian regimes to monitor their citizens' activities, as never before. The same could be said for mobile phone technology. The BBC's Julian O'Halloran reports on whether companies based inside Western democracies have provided repressive regimes with the technology they may use for suppression of human rights. Stonemason Damon Ayer tells us why he thinks he has a dream job. And our business of sport commentator David Goldblatt reports on an industrial relations crisis in American football.