Help map our Western World censorship

So, the kind of censorship we've been hearing about most this past few weeks has been of the Iranian type. However, while it may be fashionable to carry your green Twitter avatar in support of free speech halfway around the world, we are all too quick to forget that on our own doorsteps public sector internet service providers regularly block free speech and tools that make this possible with their firewall policies. It's not any cleaner or more reasonable than Iran blocking Facebook or Twitter for their purposes, serving only to control what the public hear about their public services.

Join The Guardian's global challenge to crowdsource internet censorship of all sorts right now, and show how much of Britain's and North America's public sector ISPs are just as unreasonably restrictive of adults' web rights as Mr Ahmadinejad's Government.

Pic: Censorship

Comments

[Pau Evans]

Ewan,

I'm hoping that one of the sessions at the PICamp (political innovation camp) strand of NESTA's 'Reboot Britain' conference is going to provide a springboard for the launch of a obstacle-removing campaign in the public / voluntary sector.

Details are here:
http://blog.localdemocracy.org.uk/2009/06/30/never-place-100-of-the-blame-for-failure-upon-the-shoulders-of-someone-with-a-veto/

BTW, thanks for the inspriation behind the 'PICamp' name - we's have had to settle for something less concise without your help on the domain front ;-)

[CokieD]

Concerning censorship and education, I understand that censorship occurs in schools to protect the students and keep them safe from online predators who would pounce on children giving out to much personal information. However, most students have unsupervised Internet access when at home, wouldn't it be wiser to teach students how to safely use the web instead of blocking all access to sites that "might have" inappropriate material, regardless of the plethora of material that could be or is educational on that website? Should teachers be trusted to preview sites and determine on their own the educational value. What about using Facebook to talk with soldiers and the educational value there? What about the countless news videos that stream across YouTube(for example the Iranian type)? Should teachers decide or should the IT department or the district simply block access? What are your thoughts?

[sterndal]

aaaw....

i have to say censorship is very much needed nowadays

children of any age can access the internet

and there are a lot of sites that are not suitable for them

i think they have the right to be unresonably strict :(