Fighting Net Censorship Abroad
from the what-about-at-home dept
A new bill has been introduced in Congress to allocate $100 million to fight internet censorship in countries like China and Saudi Arabia. The idea is that it would give this money to the same organization that runs things like Voice of America to support tools that get around localized censored internets. I find this somewhat ironic, since the government is still pushing for its own ability to censor the internet at home and forcing ISPs to block other sites while other "free" societies like as Australia routinely block sites without telling anyone which sites are being blocked. Are we going to use this money to fight internet censorship at home also? Or just in the countries we don't like?
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BT Censorship in the West
For some months now, I have been helping to co-author a book, The Ultimate Tragedy, with a Canadian Muslim, Abid Ullah Jan, who runs a website called the Independent Centre for Strategic Studies and Analysis (ICSSA), http://www.icssa.org
I use British Telecom as a server. Until recently I was able to access the site with no problem. About two weeks ago all that changed and the BT Server will not access it. After several lengthy sessions with their Technical Support people BT admitted to me that it was a server problem and promised to resolve the problem and get back to me. Well, that was about a week ago and I'm still waiting.
Meantime, I found it possible to access the ICSSA site using a proxy program called Circumventor as well as an IP anonimizer called Hid-My-IP. It appears that only the BT server is blocking this site which is otherwise accessible.
My concern is that BT is doing this for political reasons. Abid's site is clearly anti-imperialist and very critical of the US, UK and Pakistani governments. He tells me that, earlier on, ICSSA was being blocked by the Musharraf regime in Islamabad. As both the US and UK security services work closely with their Pakistani counterpart, the ISI, I wonder if someone in MIF has designated ICSSA as a "terrorist" site?
It appears that here is another instance where the "war on terrorism" is being used as an excuse for totalitarian behaviour. It's the kind of thing which I guess would NF hence my informing you of what's going on.
I would be interested in your views and advice as to what I can next do to help expose BT's censorship to the world.
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BT
BT subscribe to Otelo, the Office of the Telecommunications Ombudsman. I would contact them - BT will prob take notice as they will immediatel incur a 'polluter fee' of around £400 if Otelo do investigate, and it would draw some attention to the matter.
The link is www.otelo.org.uk
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