Sleepycatz

Access Freedom

Last week Citizen Lab released a kind of everyman guide to circumventing Internet censorship. The guide is by no means exhaustive, but offers some well known and simple methods for bypassing Internet content control systems used by some of the most repressive governments in the world. It has been said that we now live in the information age. Certainly this is what governments around the world believe to be true. The desire to control citizen’s access to information and uncensored media has become prevalent across more then half the globe. In places like China, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and others direct filtering of political and social commentary is common. Most governments seem to believe it is necessary to ‘protect’ their citizens from certain ideas or types of content. Here, in the United States, arguments about COPA and CIPA have lead to numerous court cases — CIPA is currently under review to see if it can be extended to block sites like myspace.com and facebook.

As governments and corporations extend their power and influence, their need to limit access to ideas which contradict theirs will continue to grow. The ability to bypass Internet filters or hide one’s identity will become more and more essential. This guide offers a helpful start for everyone.

The harlequin speech of suicide

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night. . .

So begins, arguably, one of the greatest American poems written in the last 100 years. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark ruling in People v. Ferlinghetti allowing the sale of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. In 1957 the local authorities in San Fransisco had charged poet, publisher, and bookseller, Laurence Ferlinghetti with obscenity over his publication and sale of Howl. On October 3rd, Judge Clayton Horn, who was a Sunday School teacher and had recently sentenced five shoplifters to read and write essays on the Ten Commandments, wrote:

Would there be any freedom of the press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid and innocuous euphemism? An author should be real in treating his subject and be allowed to express his thoughts and ideas in his own words. . . . If the material has the slightest redeeming social importance it is not obscene. . .

Fifty years after Judge Horn’s opinion New York Public Radio changed it’s mind and decided not to air the poem on the grounds that it might be deemed obscene by the FCC. With their new found power to fine stations hundreds of thousands of dollars under obscenity rulings, the FCC has created a climate of censorship which would make any authoritarian proud. How, exactly, the FCC can deem something obscene which the courts have explicitly held is not, is a leap of legal logic which boggles the mind. The great irony, of course, is that the society Ginsberg railed against in Howl is stronger today then when he wrote the poem — and that society which was able to tolerate his words fifty years ago seems unable to do so today. So what are we to say to the FCC and the puritans who would gladly sacrifice poetry, literature and art on the pyres of purity? Are we to acquiesce and accept their fatherly admonishments of what’s proper and decent, or are we to fight and cry, as William Carlos Williams did in his introduction to Howl: “Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell.”

Anime Big Brother

The Washington Post reported today that China will begin pushing images of cartoon police officers to Beijing Internet users beginning September 1st. The anime officers will remind users of their government’s all watchful eye. Specifically,

[t]he male and female cartoon officers, designed for the ministry by Sohu, will offer a text warning to surfers to abide by the law and tips on Internet security as they move across the screen in a virtual car, motorcycle or on foot.

The Internet in China is one of the most heavily monitored and censored in the world. Users are frequently banned from viewing material which is considered impolitic or immoral. The goal of this project is to further the specter of the all seeing and powerful government eye. But China’s Internet users have become adaptive and resourceful over the past few years, learning to circumvent and avoid their government’s controls. The AP noted that “[d]espite the controls, nudity, profanity, illegal gambling and pirated music, books and film have proliferated on Chinese Internet servers,” and a recent report on NPR highlighted the successes of Chinese online gamers in defeating government controls.

Governments, including our own, should know by now that censorship is pointless in an age where technology is plentiful. And that those citizens who are resourceful, curious, and adaptive enough to bypass government filters are the very citizens which have the necessary skills to lead their countries into the future. They should be lauded and not punished. If governments do not learn that lesson they will find themselves under siege by the best and brightest of their own citizens.