An opening in cyberspace closes

Asia Times Online

By Shawn W Crispin

BANGKOK - When a state-linked Cambodian Internet service provider (ISP) blocked access this month to a critical non-governmental organization report detailing the government's alleged mismanagement of natural and energy resources, the censorship closed the loop on the region's fast-closing cyberspace.

The Cambodian government has prioritized improving its Internet controls and legislation, despite the fact less than 0.3% of the population is online, one of the lowest Internet penetration rates in the world. The recent bust of an alleged terror plot against the government revealed that authorities had capability to hack into suspects' - and perhaps perceived other adversaries' - e-mail accounts.

It wasn't long ago that Asia's Internet was being heralded as an inexorable force for democratic change across the predominantly authoritarian-run region. Rising Internet penetration rates and the proliferation of websites that provided alternative news and critical views, particularly in countries where the state had long dominated information flows, marked substantial democratic gains.

Across the world, governments are now bidding to claw back those gains and assert tighter control over the Internet through improved surveillance and censorship capabilities. Meanwhile, new laws are granting state authorities in many countries new powers to block and censor online content, often in the arbitrary name of maintaining social order or national security.

The battle for Internet freedom is particularly pitched in Southeast Asia, where even nominally democratic governments are now cracking down on journalists, bloggers and ordinary Internet users. China has emerged as the region's Internet censorship role model, with its successful use of sophisticated filtering and surveillance technologies, widely known as Beijing's "Great Firewall".

Those capabilities have been widened through a new government-run computer monitoring information system, known as the "Golden Shield Project". Of the 28 journalists now imprisoned in China, as tallied by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 24 of them were charged and sentenced for articles and commentaries they posted online.

In its recently released "Attacks on the Press" compendium, CPJ contends that a growing number of Southeast Asian governments have moved to emulate China's cyber-censorship techniques. The advocacy group argues that as Western nations have moved to engage China's authoritarian regime, several Southeast Asian governments no longer feel obliged to follow through on the democratic reforms - including commitments to Internet freedom - the West had once pressured them to adopt.

Those pressures are expected to diminish further as the US looks towards China to help bail-out its bankrupt financial and banking systems through the continued purchase of US treasury bonds. The US's collapsing demand for regional exports and flagging outward investments is expected to eventually translate into reduced diplomatic clout in Southeast Asia, a retrenchment that will likely enhance China's already rising regional influence.

Long-time US ally Thailand stands as a case in point. The Thai government has launched one of the most aggressive crackdowns on Internet freedom seen anywhere in the world - so far without a peep of dissent from Bangkok's US embassy. The crackdown was presaged by the passage of the 2007 Computer Crime Act, which among other measures made the use of proxy servers to circumvent government blocks on websites an offense punishable by imprisonment.

The Information Technology and Communication Ministry has since earmarked millions of dollars to develop and deploy improved firewall technologies and the ministry now maintains an Internet "war room" where officials conduct surveillance over Internet content. The ministry said in early January that it had closed down 2,300 websites for posting materials deemed critical of the Thai royal family.

The Justice Ministry has since indicated it will seek a court order to block another 3,000 to 4,000 sites for the same reason. At least one Thai Internet user is currently in prison for posting materials deemed offensive to the royal crown, and two bloggers were temporarily detained but not formally charged on similar charges in 2007.

Cyber-backslider
Nominally democratic Malaysia is another prominent backslider. The government pledged in 1996 not to censor the Internet to lure foreign funds to the Multimedia Super Corridor project, an ambitious state gambit that aimed to incubate Malaysia's own version of the US's Silicon Valley. The no-censorship policy allowed online news providers and bloggers to report and comment on news that the state-controlled mainstream media either neglected or was instructed from above to ignore.

That commitment was symbolically dropped last year when the government ordered local ISPs to block access to prominent blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin's Malaysia Today news site, which has a larger readership than several established state-influenced newspapers. He has been charged and detained under both the Sedition and Internal Security Acts for online writings which were critical of the government.

According to the CPJ, it's still unclear whether Malaysian authorities have deployed the same type of filtering and monitoring technologies seen in China, but the government is known to monitor Internet content through three different state agencies, including the Prime Minister's Office. According to e-mail correspondence shared with this correspondent, Raja Petra, now temporarily released on Internal Security Act charges, is under family pressure to flee the country rather than stand trial in Malaysia's politically compromised courts.

The situation is worsening in less democratic countries. Vietnam, known to maintain some of Asia's most extensive Internet controls outside of China, has in recent months moved to introduce more stringent regulations governing bloggers and their postings. Singapore authorities recently harassed an Asia Times Online contributor for a November story that detailed the island state's mounting financial troubles.

Police claimed that the article had been sent with added malicious comments to the head of state, opposition politicians and newspapers from the reporter's e-mail account. The reporter denied the charge and police officials later indicated that an unidentified hacker had sent the message from her account. Either way, the reporter has been put on official notice that her online writings and e-mail activities are under surveillance.

Meanwhile, countries as repressive as Myanmar are dedicating significant resources to Internet censorship. The country's technological failure to control the Internet was apparent for all to see when undercover journalists sent footage and reports of the 2007 Saffron Revolution street protests to outside news organizations, forcing the regime to unplug the Internet altogether before its fatal, final crackdown. Still, it's unclear how many undercover journalists the authorities have been identified and jailed as part of their wider crackdown on dissent.

There are indications that Myanmar authorities have since received censorship training from Russian and Chinese officials. Some contend that this explains the mysterious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on a number of exile media groups' websites last year. Soe Myint, editor of the New Delhi-based Mizzima News, said during a recent presentation in Chiang Mai that the cost to effectively protect his website from future DDoS attacks is beyond his news organization's financial means.

Despite these growing attacks, there is some cause for hope. Human rights organizations, investors and several prominent US Internet companies, including Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft, agreed in a joint initiative last October to follow guidelines to protect online expression and privacy when faced with repressive government requests for user identities or assistance in blocking targeted websites.

Meanwhile, some regional media groups have received foreign assistance to locate their servers anonymously and remotely in second countries to guard against future DDoS attacks. And ever-evolving proxy server and other roundabout firewall technologies continue to put Internet users in countries as isolated as Myanmar a step ahead of government censors.

Yet even with those agreements and technologies, Asia's Internet is a substantially more dangerous space than it was previously. Southeast Asian governments are now responding with bigger budgets and heavier hands to the technological and political challenge presented by online expression. Under that mounting assault, previous high hopes for the medium's democracy-promoting potential have in large measure faded.

Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor and Asia Program Consultant to the Committee to Protect Journalists. He may be reached at swcrispin@atimes.com.