Internet Censorship

The article “The Evolving Landscape of Internet Control”, describes the censorship of Internet in countries such as China and Russia. Authoritarian countries like these usually censor the Internet, therefore severely limiting citizens’ freedom of speech, particularly regarding politics. The article looked at circumvention usage specifically. Overall, the use of circumvention tools to get to censored material is not very common. Upon further investigation, it was found that the reason these tools are not used is not due to lack of knowledge about how to get past the Internet filters, but lack of need to access the censored pages as well as the perceived risk associated with accessing censored websites. In severe cases, such as Libya and Egypt, the Internet has even been shut down completely for periods of time.

Such blatant control of the Internet by the government is used to help keep the citizens under government control. By keeping anti-government messages from surfacing on the Internet, it makes it easier for the government to stay in control. I can’t imagine not being able to access websites purely because the government didn’t like them. The United States is very different from these countries due to the fact that there is not Internet censorship.