"Online surveillance is set to overtake online censorship"

Such censorship can be defined as making it impossible to access certain content or people via the internet, and that can be achieved by filtering websites, preventing access to them or shutting them down. It's necessary to understand and distinguish between the reasons for which regulators, generally states, class content as sensitive material. Their reasons may be political, related to maintaining a regime's position of power, for example, or to the release of diplomatic and military material, such as in the case of WikiLeaks. There can also be religious grounds, such as criticism of a religion, and reasons related to moral values or questions of age.

China, with its content control and technological might, has not only managed to create internet control mechanisms, such as the Great Firewall of China, but also to make search engines and major companies wanting to operate in the country toe its line.

Censorship in France and other EU countries mentioned in the report is linked to copyright protection and whatever legislation preventing access to the internet they're promoting. Under France's HADOPI law, a user who downloads copyright-protected content can be prevented from accessing the internet, albeit after several warnings, and that's extremely dangerous, as it paves the way for other types of control. At the moment, in fact, President Sarkozy is talking about monitoring who accesses different pages that might encourage Islamic activism. The problem often lies in society being more inclined to accept the curtailing of basic freedoms in the name of collective security in the aftermath of an event that sends shockwaves through the public, such as the 9/11 attacks or the shootings in France these days. That's what happened with the Patriot Act in the USA. Spain is developing various laws geared to copyright protection, such as the famous Sinde Law. The controversial Intellectual Property Commission, which will be able to decide which pages can be shut down, is linked to copyright. It may be that, like others, Spain's intelligence services view surveillance as a better strategy than preventing access to specific content by filtering. It's a new strategy that makes more information accessible than filtering does. Anyway, bearing in mind that the court order to take the infamous issue of El Jueves out of circulation had the opposite effect of prompting the distribution of its cover image via the internet, it'd be more accurate to talk about online surveillance than online censorship in Spain's case. It could still be said that online self-censorship exists in Spain though. There are some subjects, such as those related to the royal family, that people are generally reluctant to discuss on the internet. The first thing states do is create legislation empowering them to apply such measures. After that, it's a question of having the technical know-how to actually be able to do so. So, some states opt to make the internet accessible to the people they want, or generate a 'national internet' closed to certain content. States have realised that, with there being havens on the internet, other laws and different views, the playing field is larger than the area they want to restrict. It all comes down to technical capability. There are examples of amateurish practices, such as in Belorussia, where users trying to access different social networks were redirected to sites containing malware.

Certain states promote their own social networks, as doing so enables them to apply restrictions to them and monitor them more closely than they could by telling Facebook or others what they can and can't authorise.

The report mentions something that's very worrying, albeit interesting, namely that different countries are creating what are referred to as cyber armies, professional or otherwise, with the aim of controlling content in such a way as to be able to generate a critical mass of comments. If they think they're losing the battle for public opinion on the internet, they use a massive volume of profiles and comments to give a certain impression. Social networks are the new means of gauging public opinion, hence the way journalists use them as a source of information, so it's important that the majority of comments corresponding to a hashtag or a Facebook group are favourable. Online identities and reputation are one way of conveying a view of states and dictators, although, evidently, like censorship, it's a distortion of reality. If you think of the original, almost libertarian and anarchic concept of the internet in the times of netiquette, when everything had to be self-regulating, you'll find that the internet can currently be considered a mirror of public opinion in terms of positive or negative views on states. What's clear is that all states are concerned about the internet's content from a political point of view, and every state's democratic values are being put to the test. All states may, to some degree, tend to want to avoid certain content appearing on the internet. According to RWB's Enemies of the Internet report, a third of users don't have unrestricted access to the internet and some 60 states engage in censorship through filtering or user intimidation. The problem is that the trend could rise, bearing in mind that some systems are exported and some states emulate the way others operate. RWB distinguishes between 'enemies of the internet' and countries that, having given them cause for concern, are 'under surveillance'.

I think online surveillance is set to overtake online censorship, and every state has its own mechanisms in that respect. The worst thing is that western businesses could be the ones making certain technological tools available to non-democratic states. The countries traditionally viewed as democratic and whose legislation guarantees basic freedoms have to take as much care internally as externally. That means they have to legislate so that their businesses are socially responsible both within their borders and beyond. Companies like Vodafone collaborating with political regimes to prevent networks or telephones from working has to be regarded as a restriction of personal freedoms. There was controversy and debate in the UK about the role of BlackBerrys in the London riots and their maker's collaboration with the state, and that ought to be the case across the world. It's not the first time human rights have been violated in the market's name. In states with democratic shortcomings, internet users might have initially felt free on the Web. Little by little though, they've been realising that they aren't. To quote Castells, "from a technical point of view, John Gilmore's famous statement that the Net interprets censorship (or interception) as damage and automatically routes around it is true". So, while it might be difficult, if you think of presence on the internet in terms of a war, as some states do, there are ways of making content visible, as we've seen with videos of the carnage in Syria.

In my opinion, the main problem lies in awareness of the traces we leave when we browse the internet. That's the invisible aspect that internet users gradually have to take into account, as what they say may have greater implications when considered in relation to the pages they visit and their network of contacts. Some states may prefer to allow someone to access the internet to find out whom they communicate with. Doing so provides a fuller perception and more information. Political regime change alone is no guarantee. Some states that have recently experienced a regime change may be tempted, due to structural fragility, to continue using any online censorship tools they find. There's always a boundary where ethics and basic freedoms are concerned. It's necessary to know where the boundary lies and on what grounds it can be crossed.

The internet is an extension of the street. However, surveillance tactics that wouldn't be used in the name of basic freedoms in the street, due to the possibility of them being discovered, might be harder to identify on the internet and are therefore more of a temptation for states. As citizens, we need to be fully aware and informed of our rights and duties on the internet. For a number of years, some countries reasoned that "if there's no internet, we don't have to police it". North Korea refrained from creating internet infrastructures so as to not have to police the Web. In Iran, as the report says, internet connection speeds have been deliberately slowed in homes and cybercafés to prevent people from downloading videos and images. In Africa, ignoring the states of the Maghreb, where there's very little or no infrastructure in some places, there's only one state, Eritrea, listed as 'under surveillance'. That's certainly to do with the fact that not everyone has access to the internet, so there's less concern and fewer violations, with the use of telephones being more widespread.

Personally, I think it's troubling that, with the Chinese investing heavily in Sub-Saharan Africa, it might now be much simpler for some African states to adopt filtering and surveillance methods like those that China uses. National internets are a deviation from the original idea of the Web, but they're very tempting for states. Their citizens demand access to the internet, and allowing controlled access is a compromise that gives the impression of being technologically developed. Each state determines what constitutes sensitive material. The intermediate solution they come up with is for users to find forums, social networks and other resources created to generate an image of modernity and freedom. However, a state internet is like a big library with a limited, vetted catalogue of books, so it isn't the answer.