China

On January 12, 2010, internet company Google announced it would no longer censor search results on the Chinese Google.cn. The decision was made as a result of its Gmail accounts being hacked from accounts based in China, specifically targeting Chinese human rights activists. The official Google blog stated, “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

China however has defended its right to censor the internet, with Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman, Jiang Yu stating at a weekly media briefing, “China's Internet is open and the Chinese government encourages development of the Internet." With so much government censorship, however, one must wonder how much development can actually occur.

Freedom of speech and expression is something most of us living in democratic societies value. It is viewed as a basic human right. But of course, not everyone would agree. A worker at a software company in China, referred to by his last name, Cui, told the Age newspaper, “Every nation restricts the Internet. China has its laws. If you want to leave China, it's your own business but you have to respect the laws here."

However another internet company employee told The Age, the government was concerned about pornography on the internet, but he also believed they were mostly concerned with political content, “They talk about pornography, but with 1.3 billion people, who has not seen pornography?” he said. Clearly the people are not happy.

The anti-terrorist battle inside Canada's borders
by David Parker
July 17th, 2008.

HALIFAX - In Canada since 9/11, the domestic climate of rising national security fears, fanned by a sensationalist media trumpeting the “War on Terror”, has led the government to justify practices which undermine long-standing principles of human rights.

In December 2001, Canada passed the Anti-Terrorist Act (ATA) to deal with threats to national security. The ATA makes changes to the criminal code that “aim to disable and dismantle the activities of terrorist groups and those who support them”. It destroys civil liberties and gives police vast new powers, eroding due process and privacy. [1]

According to Gary Kinsman, professor at Laurentian University, the concept of ‘national security’ is doubly problematic. Nation refers here to groups who fit the image of the Canadian state - white heterosexual males, construed as ‘safe’, while racialized communities are excluded as ‘outsiders’ and enemies of the state. [2] Despite purported concern with security, state initiatives have only endangered non-citizens and criminalized legitimate social protest.

The arrest of 21 South Asian Muslim men for allegedly plotting to blow up a nuclear reactor in 2003 (known as Project Thread) garnered wide media attention. All were eventually deported on minor immigration charges, not one was charged with a terrorist offence [3]. They were detained up to 5 months, interrogated about their faith and threatened with deportation to Guantanamo Bay, infamous torture camp of the United States, where Omar Khadr, youngest detainee and Canadian citizen, remains after 6 years, subjected to torture methods detailed in leaked FBI files [4].

Naomi Klein's investigation (published in Rolling Stone) of China's massive surveillance project, the "Golden Shield," is well worth the read.

The crackdown in Tibet has set off a wave of righteous rallies and boycott calls. But it sidesteps the uncomfortable fact that much of China's powerful surveillance state is already being built with U.S. and European technology. In February 2006, a congressional subcommittee held a hearing on "The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?" Called on the carpet were Google (for building a special Chinese search engine that blocked sensitive material), Cisco (for supplying hardware for China's Great Firewall), Microsoft (for taking down political blogs at the behest of Beijing) and Yahoo (for complying with requests to hand over e-mail-account information that led to the arrest and imprisonment of a high-profile Chinese journalist, as well as a dissident who had criticized corrupt officials in online discussion groups). The issue came up again during the recent Tibet uproar when it was discovered that both MSN and Yahoo had briefly put up the mug shots of the "most wanted" Tibetan protesters on their Chinese news portals.