“And of course, the information society’s very life blood is freedom. It is freedom that enables citizen everywhere to benefit from knowledge, journalists to do their essential work, and citizens to hold government accountable. Without openness, without the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers, the information revolution will stall, and the information society we hope to build will be still born.”
- UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
The freedom of speech is one vital issue among other social networking issues of the Internet. Among many topics regarding Internet Freedom of Speech, one conflicting and most dangerous is the Government Versus Citizens. Take the example of United States, the FBI has installed a system at many Internet Service Providers to spy on all incoming and outgoing emails.
The system was called Carnivore but later the name was changed to more innocent one DCS1000. The basic purpose of the systems was to keep a watchful eye on the internet users in order to find any illegal activities. This is clearly against the Fourth Amendment in the US constitution which forbids the government to spy on the citizens without any warrant.
Similarly, in countries like Vietnam and China the information on internet is censored before making it available for the users. The Chinese version of Google produces censored search results. Government, with the help of email service providers and website owners, keeps an eye on every activity over internet and puts those behind the bars who seem to be involved in anti-government activities. On many occasions many individuals have been bashed by the government for mere expression of personal opinion about the government’s policies. These cases have now been taken into notice very seriously by human rights protection agencies and campaigns have been conducted to persuade the government to carry out proper legal steps in such cases. Amnesty International has made separate sector which takes notice of such cases and tries to provide maximum legal protection to the victims. A list of prominent cases on internet freedom of speech has been described below for our interested readers:
1. 3 young Vietnamese people got arrested after taking part in an online chat room debate about democracy.
2. Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist is serving a 10 year prison sentence for ‘illegally providing state secrets to foreign elements;.
3. Zhao Jing, a Biejing based researcher for the New York Times, got arrested when he criticized the Chinese government’s policy to censor internet information.
4. Sayed Ahmad Sayed Sigarchi, an Iranian Blogger, received 30 lashes in Tabriz Jail in connection to his blog. He was accused of ‘insulting the leader’.
These are some the many stories in which individuals have been punished for expressing their personal opinion. Commenting on other people’s belief, religions, ideology, and pornography are totally unacceptable on internet but trying to stop your own country’s people about expressing their opinion but your policies is abuse of power. It’s dictatorship and is against the very basic principles of democracy, and it should be not tolerated in any case because you cannot stop people from saying what is right as Bob Dylan says:
‘ Don’t ask me nothin’ about nothin’
I just might tell you the truth’
Bob Dylan, ‘Outlaw Blues’, 1965.
Freedom of Speech on the Internet in Korea
Issues relating to freedom of speech for Koreans on the internet are almost continually in the news. According to the Korea Times, South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said on Wednesday.
Freedom of Speech Issues
“At some point, such concerns are so removed from the effective functioning of the public employer that they cannot prevail over the free speech rights of the public employee.” Rankin, 483 US at 391.” Still Good Law?
Internet Freedom Of Speech
Since they can’t burn the internet to cleanse it into conformity, let the lawsuits begin. Guys types; ”Can I lick you, Katie?” into the internet and get’s a front row seat in court.
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Tags: Cases On The Internet Freedom Of Speech, Internet Freedom Of Speech
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