Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering

Citation

Sturges, P. (2008), "Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering", The Electronic Library, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 924-925. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470810921682

As all of us, librarians and other information professionals included, base major elements of our lives (shopping, banking, research, communicating, social networking, and much more) on using the internet, the quality of the internet itself becomes more and more crucial. Of course, much of this comes down to issues of connectivity and the range of facilities offered, but it also matters a great deal that we do not merely get the access that we need, but that we can feel sure that there is no interference with the process and its outcomes. In other words, a successful information society depends on an unfiltered internet. Or does it?

Surveys of users in many parts of the world suggest that fear of pornography (particularly child pornography), terrorism, fraud, theft of intellectual property and other misuse leads large numbers to accept the idea that the system should be filtered on their behalf by government or other agencies. The downside, chiefly suppression of political comment and critical news reporting, is something that people are prepared to risk – trading freedom in return for “protection”. This makes it absolutely vital that we have very good information and comment on the dimensions and implications of filtering. This is exactly what Access Denied provides.

The wealth of data in this book was collected by teams of researchers all over the world, many of whom put their comfort and even their lives at considerable risk to find out and pass on what governments are doing. Coordinated by scholars from Toronto, Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford, the research is reasonably recent (2003 to 2006), full, and intelligently presented and interpreted. It deals chiefly with the filtering activity of governments. It does this in the form of eight regional overviews, and 40 country summaries dealing with particularly unfavourable regimes. Six substantial essays discuss the practicalities of internet filtering globally. The quality of the research and level of scholarship are both admirable.

What we learn from it is too complex to sum up briefly, revealing, as it does, enormous regional and national variations. Perhaps the key generalisation would be that filtering of the internet works effectively in those cases where states, most notably China, take it seriously. In a memorable phrase, filtering as the implementation of censorship by computer code, “seems more like a force of nature than an exercise of political or physical power”. This is the true threat of filtering: it “seems” like a force of nature. However, it is not that at all. It can be opposed politically, and civil society can campaign against it in most parts of the world. We do not have to accept it, or if we accept it for specific purposes, we can insist that mission creep is not allowed to extend its remit into areas for which there is no true consent. For filtering to be opposed effectively, accurate information about its operation is required. Therefore it is important that the editors have announced the intention that Access Denied will be updated annually. It is an essential tool for dealing with the phenomenon of internet filtering.