News about Internet companies and their censorship deals are so becoming so common, it's triggering less and less of a reaction. Both Yahoo and Google have reached agreements with their Chinese business partners, and their government liaisons, to block access to sites. Skype's Chinese language client censors "politically sensitive" phrases like Tiananmen Square and Human Rights.
It's easy to become blasé about what's happening in China. It's far away, not a democracy and its peoples have never enjoyed a culture of press freedom or expression.
And, after all, it's not like there's any threat to freedom of expression or access to information closer to home, is there?
"In short, I think we have reason to be vigilant, but that overall the climate for free expression in North America is quite good," says Timothy Lee, Contributor to the site Tech Liberation.
Internet Links
- Writers’ Union of Canada
- Tech Liberation
- Powerpage
- Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE)
- Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ)
- Blogebrity
- Apple Insider
Lee's comments, however, surround a recent victory for freedom of expression. In a recent case Apple demanded that the authors of two blogs, Apple Insider and PowerPage, disclose their sources. In May, a California court ruled that web sites have the same rights and freedoms as other forms of press media. Lee calls the ruling "a great decision in defense of freedom of speech last month."
It's the vigilance side, of Lee's comment that resonates in the comments of other freedom of expression experts. Don't get too comfortable with your rights, they caution. Recent events point to threats to your freedom here too.
"Freedom of expression has been under attack in Canada, but at the same time, there have been, as always, voices that have spoken out against those attacks," says Paul Schneidereit, President of the Canadian Association of Journalists. "Like with a lot of issues, some people will only get exercised when it affects them directly."
As borders continue to open and the world becomes smaller, traditional notions of what "affects them (or us) directly" may have some catching up to do.
"If I was in China, I wouldn't be mildly annoyed, I'd be pretty angry (about censorship). But, as we saw with SARS, what is happening on the other side of the world can have a large and direct impact on us — and censorship was certainly a big factor in that crisis," says Julie Payne, Program Manager of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. "Perhaps it's time that we started to care more about censorship by countries like China, even if it is motivated by self-interest."
Payne worries that Canadians largely believe themselves to be unaffected by censorship, to the point that they may not even know about potential threats to their rights.
"How much access are CSIS and the RCMP getting to Canadians' e-mails and Internet usage patterns?" Payne asks. "Do we even know how much our privacy is being compromised, as is happening in the U.S.?"
A dismissal of censorship issues may be less pronounced among technology workers than among the user population as a whole.
"I think inside the tech community, people have a good idea of the potentially-damaging ramifications that content censorship can have, both to business and to society-at-large," says Kyle Bunch, Publisher of Blogebrity, a multi-author blog that consistently reports on issues of censorship from around the blogosphere. "However, outside the web/technology community, there are so many new content choices available thru TV, satellite, and the Internet that it can be hard to explain to the lay-person how content censorship is really affecting them."
According to Ron Brown, Chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, recent incidents of censorship should indeed have average Canadians worried about their freedoms.
"The current climate also involves the paranoia of the current government over public employees writing or speaking about current issues," says Brown. "The Union has come out strongly against the decision of the Environment Minister Rona Ambrose to prevent author Paul Tushingham from attending the launch of his own book, Hotter than Hell. (Ambrose's action) results in chill — or self censorship — on the part of other public servants who may wish to write and publish books, even works of fiction as Mr Tushingham's was. Writers should have the automatic right to attend their own book launches. The current practice of Harper and his ministers to barricade themselves from the press is decidedly a freedom of expression issue about which we are concerned."
South of the border, chill is an issue that is already affecting private sector employees. Blogebrity reports on a regular basis on people being fired for blogging.
"There are more documented cases of people being terminated for what they've said, or for what pictures they've posted on blogging sites," Bunch says.
It's a situation that, Bunch says, calls for more serious discussion and not just in forums and user groups.
"Just as companies have formal policies that dictate how they handle social circumstances like a sick or pregnant employee, I think we need to investigate some formal policies for employee expression, to ensure that people can speak their minds and share their experiences, without jeopardizing company secrets — not to mention their own livelihood."
