The Internet and Censorship

In 2012, the BBC said: "About 70 countries throughout the world such as China and Iran have been known to use filters to cut their people off from the global web. Foreign news media, websites of political opponents, and pages flagging up human rights abuses are routinely blocked. Social media sites which allow groups to organize themselves online are also targeted and sometimes simply disconnected, as happened during the revolutions in Libya and Egypt."

In what we might term a theoretical New World Order-driven society, it is all but certain that numerous websites, blogs and social media outlets that are critical of government would suffer adversely – and to the point that, in all probability, they would very likely vanish. Indeed, a clampdown on this aspect of the Internet has already begun. Three years after its 2012 statement, the BBC offered the following:

"China's President Xi Jinping has called on countries to respect one another's 'cyber sovereignty' and different internet governance models. Mr Xi said countries had the right to choose how to develop and regulate their internet. He was speaking at the Beijing-sponsored World Internet Conference held in Zhejiang province. China has been criticized for its strict internet regulations where it blocks major sites and censors posts. The BBC's John Sudworth, who is at the conference, says the keynote speech by President Xi is a clear sign that internet security and control have been elevated to national priorities.”

Then, there is the matter of North Korea, and its leader, Kim Jong II. The Telegraph has commented on the current situation in Korea, on the matter of Internet access. Or, rather, in North Korea, the distinct lack of Internet access: "The only people to have true internet access are political leaders and their families, students at elite universities and members of the country's cyber warfare units. This is thought to amount to just a few thousand people. However, just as in the West, it is likely that the government monitors this access and keeps records."

Moving onto France, we have this from Heritage.org: "American Web users' access to Internet content may soon be limited, thanks to a recent decision by French regulators. France's National Commission on Informatics and Liberties (known by its French acronym CNIL) ordered Google to apply the European Union's bizarre 'right-to-be-forgotten' rules on a global basis in a June ruling. The search engine announced at the end of July that it would refuse to comply. If it is nevertheless forced to do so, the result could be unprecedented censorship of Internet content, as well as a dangerous expansion of foreign Web restrictions on Americans."

Is all of this censoring of the Internet, all around the world, merely coincidental? Or, are we seeing the early steps of something more sinister? Something to erode the Internet – and access to it – and effectively destroy its ability to keep us informed of the things we have a right to know about, and the things we have a right to discuss? Time may soon tell. To a degree, it already is.