I like Wikipedia and often find myself defending it and its articles against accusations of inaccuracy and bias (although, obviously, there’s going to be some of both).
So, when I was looking at the Wiki article on "Internet Censorship and Surveillance by Country"** and saw therein THIS MAP that seems to show at a glance the status of Internet censorship/surveillance by country, I was outraged. Surely, I thought, lumping the US in the same boat as China and Russia (and North Korea) was nothing but politically motivated bullshit. Exactly the type of thing that WIki critics emphasize.
After reading the the section on the US in the above article and then the more in-depth Wiki article specific to Internet censorship/surveillance in the US, I grew even madder. I mean, really, other than describing the US’s fairly strict copyright laws regarding online material, and government’s (very limited) ability to compel public libraries to filter certain types of material, I didn’t see much, if any, evidence presented there, of “censorship or surveillance”. Or at least nothing that isn’t pretty much universal across all countries.
So, my question/subject of debate: is it really the case that Internet censorship and surveillance in the US is more extensive than in most other countries? More than Canada’s? Sweden’s? Or is the Wikipedia article/map just BS (and I should stop deluding myself into thinking that Wikipedia is (relatively) politically unbiased).
(** and I thank tellyworth for pointing it out in his post (#5) in this thread)
I think it has been pretty well established that the US is right up there with others in regards to surveillance. Can you point out where the linked articles suggest we are close to China in terms of censorship?
Well… It’s quite universally know now that internet surveillance is extremely pervasive in the USA nowadays, no? I don’t believe there’s any country in the world right now that is monitoring communications so closely
Didn’t they recently build a brand new huge communication interception and analysis? Did you miss the Snowden case? Have you not heard of the main internet companies transmiting their data to the NSA? Or others having the choice between doing so, face prosecution and huge fines or closing down? And in fact being forbidden from communicating about it, even though they did?
American authorities think they should be able to monitor, spy on all communications. They don’t even seriously try to hide this fact.
What more do you want for the USA to be considered an extreme case of surveillance? :dubious: The fact that the internet isn’t censored in the USA doesn’t change the fact that surveillance there is at an Orwellian level. Frankly, try to tell me what more they could possibly do and that would make you think that the USA now qualify? Barring employing half the population to actually read every single email intercepted, I seriously can’t think of anything.
I’m not clear on what you find preposterous about this statement. The article you cite makes it clear that US internet censorship and surveillance is very pervasive. The article makes the point that removal of net content in the US is usually accomplished via legal pressure and economic threats to content and hosting providers and individuals vs government fiat, but in practical terms both methods amount to the same thing as the results are removal of objectionable (to someone) content. Both result in the censoring of content we just have different paradigm for it.
There’s no sane classification scheme that could rank the United States as “pervasive” and Canada as “Little to none”. The US and Canada share similar prohibitions on posting copyrighted content, child pornography and facilitating crime and it’s a huge stretch to label that as censorship. Both have strong legal precedents towards freedom of speech and contain stronger protections against censorship than most countries on this list.
As for surveillance, most of the NSA revelations concern surveillance of foreign targets and, despite questionable adherence, there’s still strong laws on the books prohibiting the NSA from participating in domestic surveillance. Arguably, Americans are the least surveilled people on the planet due to the NSA. Also, Both Canada and the US are part of the Five Eyes partnership which shares surveillance intel between them.
If you look at the sourcing for the map, it’s original research done by a Wikipedian using questionable metrics.
We are removing (violating) copyrighted material because we have legally supported policies in our nation regarding the ownership of intellectual property that we buy into and adhere to which gives us this authority. The Chinese have legally supported policies in their realm of influence paradigm that give them legal authority to remove content that they deem criticizes or threatens the state.
Although we claim legal authority over different things and removal of this content is accomplished via different enforcement mechanisms I don’t think “censorship” defined as the effective removal of objected to content is any less pervasive in the US than in China.
The fact that it is against the law for the NSA to be doing what it’s doing doesn’t mean they’re not doing it. Neither does the fact that it is against the law for the US government to use control of money to suppress constitutionally protected speech mean that they aren’t strongarming banks into blacklisting enterprises that they don’t like.
Like I said, the adherence is questionable but everything revealed still points to the NSA performing far more broad reaching surveillance against foreign targets than domestic ones.
That is some extremely bizarre logic in action. The NSA is breaking the law performing extensive domestic surveillance, but you would have it that Americans are the least surveilled people on the planet because the NSA does more foreign surveillance than domestic surveillance.
I call bullshit on this arguement for the following reason. Copyright is designed to protector the creator of content. So if Bob creates some content and Don posts it, it is not infringing on Bob to remove the content. Don, under copyright, has no rights to the content. The actual content is not the issue, it is who is legally entitled to disseminate that content. Bob can do whatever he wishes with his own content, assuming of course that it isn’t something along the lines of kiddie porn.
China, Russia and North Korea censor content based upon the actual content itself.
There is a fundamental difference in a government saying “You cannot post that content because you do not own it” and “You cannot post that content because we don’t like that content”.
From the link:
Now, the surviellance on the other hand. The U.S. is sucking in that regard even if I am convienced that the NSA can’t really do mucch with the data.
If you trace things through about three sites, you find that the US is only pink in the Reporters without Borders Enemies of the Internet list. If you trace back to them, you find that they have decided to emphasize surveillance in their censorship report. If you can find a real case of Internet censorship in the US, please let us know.
BTW I count censorship only for original content. Whatever you feel about copyright violations, it sure isn’t censorship in any meaningful way.
The surveillance is there, but by and large it’s passive. The FBI isn’t going to break down my door for criticizing the government online, for example. Can you say that of the PRC or other regimes that are overtly oppressive? I don’t think so, and this is why such comparisons with such countries tend to annoy us.
I’d rather have passive internet surveillance than have internet censorship. What’s the punishment or liability if you violate the right to be forgotten in the EU? What if it was accidental? What if you believed that there was an overriding social value in posting or linking to the information that generated the complaint?
I think the problem is the conflation of “censorship” and “surveillance” in the one measure. They are two very different things. My WAG would be that China is a world leader in censorship, but the US - by a long measure - in surveillance.
Not having read that whole giant article, I would guess that the main reasons why the US is lumped together with the likes of China are confirmation bias, and the fact that most Wiki editors live in the US
In China now they are finding and removing posts with symbols of the Hong Kong uprising like umbrellas. The NSA is very good at monitoring traffic and finding suspicious patterns (and doing it for more traffic than the Chinese, probably) but I haven’t seen any evidence that they can target individual posts in massive volumes like the Chinese do. If they are after you, definitely, but not for everyone.
