Tuesday, September 06, 2005
INTERNET CENSORSHIP
Michael Geist describes his experience with using the internet while staying in a hotel in China.
My hotel in Beijing featured high-speed Internet access much like that offered in hotels throughout North America. Logging onto the network was a snap and I quickly found that bandwidth speeds were comparable to those found at home.
It was once I sought to access common news sites that I found myself face to face with the “Great Firewall of China.” Google News, a popular aggregator of news stories from around the world, would not load into my browser, apparently blocked by a filtering system that employs 30,000 people to regularly monitor Internet traffic and content. Similarly, while the BBC website would load, attempts to access news stories on that site yielded only error messages.
My frustration increased when I attempted to download my own email. While I was able to access my Canadian-based mail server storing my messages, the download was short-circuited midway as I suddenly lost the connection. Although I initially thought that perhaps the error lay at the Canadian end, when the experience repeated itself, it became clear that the Chinese system was filtering my email messages and cutting off the connection.
Having experienced limits in accessing both news and email, it came as little surprise to find that the search engines were subject to similar restrictions. Searches for articles on circumventing the Chinese filters yielded a long list of results, none of which could be opened. Moreover, inputting politically sensitive words such as the “Falun Gong” cut me off from the search engines completely.
While I found using the Chinese Internet exceptionally frustrating, most people I spoke to were resigned to an Internet with limits. They live with the fact that in recent months the government has shut down thousands of Internet cafes, an important point of access for many citizens. Many noted that the censorship “only” affected political information, but that business could be conducted online unimpeded. At one academic conference, Chinese law professors even spoke of the desirability of increased content regulation and supported government limits on search engine results.
As groups such as Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders regularly seek to remind us, the Chinese Internet is not unique. Countries throughout the Middle East and in parts of Asia employ similar technologies to limit their citizens’ access to a medium that most Canadians now take for granted.
Lest we dismiss his experience because--well--it's China, he recounts an attempt to censor the internet in Canada as well.
