Using the web to empower dissidents and even overthrow governments remains the exception, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

ALONGSIDE THE myth that the internet was created primarily in order to have a communications apparatus in the case of nuclear war sits the corollary that it is virtually impossible to block it as a communications channel.

As a new study makes clear, it is not only possible for regimes around the world to tightly control their citizens’ use of the internet – this can also be a highly successful way of monitoring and manipulating a national population.

Internet-based tools and techniques, including blogs, discussion boards, Twitter, mirrored websites and internet relay chat, can empower dissidents and form the basis for protest and, as we have seen in Egypt and Tunisia, even drive an overthrow of a government.

But, as the report from Freedom House International, Freedom on the Net 2011, makes clear, these are recent and extraordinary – and for many of us looking on, deeply moving and inspiring – exceptions.

The trend is for greater control, not for greater freedom.

The report notes: “a growing number of governments are moving to regulate or restrict the free flow of information on the internet. In authoritarian states, such efforts are partly rooted in the existing legal frameworks, which already limit the freedom of the traditional media. These states are increasingly blocking and filtering websites associated with the political opposition, coercing website owners into taking down politically and socially controversial content, and arresting bloggers and ordinary users for posting information that is contrary to the government’s views.”

But lest people think this is purely a question of authoritarian regimes literally closing the net on dissidence, the report also notes that western democracies are moving to exert greater control and limit freedoms that internet users have had since what was once the US government-controlled Darpanet came into the public domain.

Among these democracies is Britain, which has slipped down the league table of internet freedom by several points in comparison to a more limited report done last year by the same group.

“Even in more democratic countries – such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and Britain – internet freedom is increasingly undermined by legal harassment, opaque censorship procedures or expanding surveillance,” summarises the report. Created by pooling information from organisations, academics and analysts in various countries, the study rates countries on a freedom index that runs from 0 to 100, with zero being most free and 100 being least free.

While Britain, with a score of 25, falls into the category of “free” on this evaluation, it is now only five points shy of moving into the realm of “partly free” countries which includes nations such as Kenya, Turkey, Egypt and Russia.

The United States runs second most free, with a relatively low score of 13. It may surprise many to find that the number one country is Estonia, with a score of 10. Number three is Germany (16), four is Australia (18), five is Britain, six is Italy (26), seven South Africa (26) and eighth Brazil (29). After that, the classification moves into the “partly free” countries.

How did Estonia make it into the number one slot? “Estonia ranks among the most wired and technologically advanced countries in the world” where “restrictions on internet content and communications are among the lightest in the world”.

As for Britain, the report notes that while free expression is widely respected and the country has a high rate of internet penetration, “both the government and private parties have presented challenges to free speech in connection with anti-terrorism efforts, public order, and intellectual property. The biggest recent controversy was the adoption of the Digital Economy Act in April 2010. The law allows for the blocking of websites and the cutting off of user accounts based on claims of intellectual-property rights violations.”

While Ireland is not included in the report, our own governments, past and present, as well as some business organisations and the Garda, have indicated support for similar efforts in the area of blocking sites and cutting off user accounts.

Although such measures are presented here as reasonable efforts to control terrorism, child pornography, and the downloading of copyright material, these “remedies” are not straightforward and frequently have serious and undemocratic knock-on effects with a heavy and unwarranted impact on basic internet freedoms.

At the very bottom of the freedom table lie nations such as China (83), Cuba (87), Burma (88), and, last, Iran (89).

China is identified as having become severely repressive after a period of initial comparative openness in the 1990s. Now, says the report, it is one of the world’s most restrictive internet environments, “characterized by a sophisticated, multilayered control apparatus” that in the past two years has become “further enhanced, institutionalised, and decentralized” with permanent blocks on many social networks and even a total shutdown of the internet for many months in one region.

The report on Egypt is interesting, noting that while the (now previous) government strove to aggressively expand internet access as an engine of economic growth in the country, the security forces at the same time “intensified attempts to curtail the use of new technologies for disseminating and receiving sensitive political information”.

The period of evaluation for the report ended in 2010, so it doesn’t include the subsequent uprising and overthrow of the Egyptian government – the dramatic culmination of events fuelled by anger at government repression and by internet freedom, and then facilitated by dissidents’ use of the net to co-ordinate protest.

Overall, the report makes for fascinating and sobering reading. And it is a caution against being complacent about what is happening in one’s own country. As it makes clear, simply living in a western democracy is no guarantee against state manipulation and attempts to control citizen use of the internet.

Download the report at: http://bit.ly/gsKcPn