Digital Dissident Disobedience - The UpStream

Digital Dissident Disobedience

posted Saturday Jan 16, 2010 by Jon Wurm

Digital Dissident Disobedience

We have it pretty good here in the U.S. if you think about it. Our government makes sure that our internet is unadulterated whether its research for academic reasons, implementation for commercial purposes or porn for more a more personal experience. If I couldn't wake up in the morning and check Facebook to see everything interesting people I know did last night while I was immersed in my textbooks I might not feel so connected with my friends or have the sense of self loathing I get sometimes.

Oddly enough the lack of some people in China and Iraq being able to check their facebook profiles among other things may be fostering some digital disobedience. We've seen this before, China's Internet oppression isn't new. In the past the government initiated an Internet cleansing of sorts blocking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

This has been met by Chinese citizens finding creative ways to use proxies and software to unfilter their webs. Jason Ng is a engineering school graduate who uses a remote proxy he has setup to a computer in another part of the world to "start his day of information" and participate in a global online community. Fortunately, the government rarely cracks down on individuals but spends its resources looking for bigger fish. Anchor Free and Global Internet Freedom (G.I.F.) are some of those bigger fish that offer creative solutions to fight for Internet freedom.

The Fauln Gong sect founded G.I.F in 1999 and is currently run by about 50 volunteers. Their intention is not to aggravate the Chinese Government but it seems they are doing exceedingly well in doing so. Michael J. Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, a conservative policy research group said,

Many of these guys are Falun Gong practitioners and the State Department doesn't want to aggravate China, he said. China goes more nuclear at the mention of Falun Gong than any other two words in the whole dictionary.

China is big but the Internet is bigger still and built to be an open network. They are sure making an effort to control the Internet within their borders but put simply they can either embrace the it or unplug it, regulation is a losing battle.

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