IRREPRESSIBLE VOICES

Posted by admin

July 20, 2006

IRREPRESSIBLE

I came across this Great tool & campaign by Amnesty International against censorship on internet. Amnesties press release says

From Iran to the Maldives and Cuba to Vietnam, governments are both cracking down on those who use the internet to communicate their views and denying their citizens access to its wealth of information. Web users are locked up, internet cafes are shut down, chat rooms are policed and blogs deleted. Websites are blocked, foreign news banned, and search engines filter out sensitive results.

“The internet’s potential for change is being undermined — by governments unwilling to tolerate this free media outlet, and by companies willing to help them repress free speech”

Sun Microsystems, Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems, Yahoo! and Google are among those companies implicated in helping governments censor the internet or track down individual users. In 2004, Microsoft released information about nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu to the Israeli authorities without his knowledge or consent. The data was initially used to prosecute Vanunu for having contact with foreign media.

The most interesting thing is they have a great script to display the censored data into any blog that using the script. see the irrepressible badge on my button list. Thesre is a way to take the online pledge also. The pledge is very relevent in current indian context.

I believe the Internet should be a force for political freedom, not repression. People have the right to seek and receive information and to express their peaceful beliefs online without fear or interference.

I call on governments to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression on the Internet â€“ and on companies to stop helping them do it.

To coincide with the launch of the international campaign, Amnesty International is released a report titled Undermining freedom of expression in China about the role of Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google in internet repression in China. I reached on this site through a wonderful article on The observer

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