Posted on 03/04/2009 7:01:25 AM PST by Dr. Chaos
[...]The battle for Internet freedom is particularly pitched in Southeast Asia, where even nominally democratic governments are now cracking down on journalists, bloggers and ordinary Internet users. China has emerged as the region's Internet censorship role model, with its successful use of sophisticated filtering and surveillance technologies, widely known as Beijing's "Great Firewall".
Those capabilities have been widened through a new government-run computer monitoring information system, known as the "Golden Shield Project". Of the 28 journalists now imprisoned in China, as tallied by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 24 of them were charged and sentenced for articles and commentaries they posted online.
In its recently released "Attacks on the Press" compendium, CPJ contends that a growing number of Southeast Asian governments have moved to emulate China's cyber-censorship techniques. The advocacy group argues that as Western nations have moved to engage China's authoritarian regime, several Southeast Asian governments no longer feel obliged to follow through on the democratic reforms - including commitments to Internet freedom - the West had once pressured them to adopt.
Those pressures are expected to diminish further as the US looks towards China to help bail-out its bankrupt financial and banking systems through the continued purchase of US treasury bonds. The US's collapsing demand for regional exports and flagging outward investments is expected to eventually translate into reduced diplomatic clout in Southeast Asia, a retrenchment that will likely enhance China's already rising regional influence.
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
Coming soon to a United States near you.
Coming soon to a United States near you.
To be called the ZerOnetfilter.
Won’t it be irony if they were filtering out the liberal MSM crap that has ruined this country and Europe.
It probably won’t be as overt in the United States.
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