Internet : close collaboration between American Online corporations

and dictatorships

Some net surfers are facing the problem of being filtered all over the world. Most authoritarian regimes now have the technical means to censor the Internet. In Cuba or Vietnam, you won’t be able to access websites that criticise the government or expose corruption or talk about human rights abuses. So-called “illegal” and “subversive” content is automatically blocked by filters.

This has been made possible for these dictatorships, like China, with the help of big US companies, led by Cisco.

These firms, to get a fat slice of the enormous Chinese market of already more than 100 million people online, have closed their eyes to how their technology is being used. Some have probably worked directly with the regime to set up filters and surveillance.

Yesterday, we learned that a second cyber-dissident has been imprisoned because of data provided by the Yahoo company.

It had discovered that Yahoo ! customer and cyber-dissident Li Zhi had been given his eight-year prison sentence in December 2003 on the basis of electronic records provided by Yahoo.

Involved in so-called armed interventions for freedom, shouldn't the American Government better control the ethics of its companies ?