• by Howard Gross , February 3, 2011

The Egyptian government's decision to block access to Twitter and Facebook should come as no surprise to students of history or physics.

 

Literary scholars can find ample precedence in the annals of publishing. Much like the Internet, Gutenberg's printing press gave voice to myriad dissidents and played a critical role in the Reformation and both the American and French revolutions. Just 50 years after the invention of moveable type, there were 1,000 printing offices across Europe alone, printing 35,000 titles - the equivalent of 10 million volumes per year. That's an extraordinary rate of growth for that time.

But the backlash was often just as swift.

By the mid-16th century, the Catholic Church had decreed that no book could be printed or sold without its permission, and published its Index of Prohibited Books, which it periodically updated until after the second World War. Likewise, the monarchies of England and France placed highly restrictive licensing requirements on all publications; while Spain destroyed almost all books written by Mayan scribes in the new world. 

For their part, physicists can argue that such infamous deeds -- past and present -- underscore Isaac Newton's third law of motion, to wit: "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." And though the Internet's role as a revolutionary force is still open to considerable debate, that is already the perception in many parts of the world where governments are responding accordingly:

*  Even before the Egyptian and Tunisian protests, Middle Eastern nations such as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had already begun locking up bloggers.

*  Last December, the Venezuelan National Assembly modified its telecommunications law to require all Internet providers to restrict access to messages and Web sites at the behest of regulators.

*  Hungary's recently elected government has introduced legislation allowing it to fine newspapers and Internet news sites it finds to be "unbalanced or offensive to human dignity or common morals.

*  In response to events in the Middle East, Chinese authorities have blocked keyword searches of the word "Egypt," on several of its largest portals.

*  (Similar efforts in the U.S. have largely been in defense of business, such as Department of Homeland Security's recent seizure of domains of sites it said were dedicated to illegal file-sharing.)

Heavy-handed techniques, like those currently on display in Egypt, are fairly common approaches to quelling dissent. Yet some governments are also responding in kind. According to Evgeny Morozov, a skeptic of the "Internet as revolutionary force" thesis, and author of the book The Net Delusion, dictators and despots are using social networks to identify troublemakers and co-opt their messages. He notes Iran, which monitored new arrivals in the country by looking them up on Facebook to see if they had links to known agitators. What's more, Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez is on Twitter, and China maintains a cadre of pro-government bloggers.

Ordinary citizens, too, have ways to shut down perceived adversaries.

Late last year, security experts were stunned by the ferocity with which a loosely tied group of anonymous "hacktivists" reacted to Wikileaks critics. In a matter of days, they effectively obstructed the online activities of Amazon, MasterCard, Sarah Palin, Sen. Joseph Lieberman and the government of Sweden. Research by Harvard University has found that organizations like the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and various human rights groups have also been targets of similar Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that disrupt Internet operations.

Given all of the above, one of the key buzzwords of 2011 will likely be "censorship." The causes of events in Egypt, as in Tunisia and elsewhere, are not social networks, but social discontent over deeply rooted, long-term issues. New media technology simply is a means to either address or stifle such discontent.

Moreover, Wikileaks and a host of imitators will carry on releasing embarrassing, if not damaging, facts about global institutions. Earlier this week, site founder Julian Assange announced his intention to enlist as many as 60 news organizations to help hasten the publication of U.S. diplomatic memos. Plus, The New York Times and Al-Jazeera are each developing means to make it easier for leakers to disseminate details. Just how affected governments and companies will react remains to be seen.

And in a nation as politically divided as the United States, it is not inconceivable that true believers at both ends of the spectrum will try to shut down their opponents.

The fact is, censorship is perennial, regardless of the circumstances or medium. History notwithstanding, it is this relative ease with which just about anyone can now either produce or suppress information that perhaps distinguishes this moment in time from any other in the chronicle of communications technology.