censorship, computing

Banning of certain types of information from public access. Concerns over the ready availability of material such as bomb recipes and pornography have led a number of countries to pass laws attempting to censor the Internet. The best known of these is the US Communications Decency Act 1996, but initiatives have been taken in other countries, for example Singapore, which in 1996 announced new regulations bringing the Internet under the Singapore Broadcasting Authority and requiring all access providers and users to be registered and licensed. Less formal pressures have been applied against Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Germany and the UK to block specific types of material.

In 2006, a survey by US organization Freedom House found that 54% of countries restrict print and electronic journalists. The French monitoring service Reporters sans Frontieres has reported that the following countries totally or largely restrict Internet access: Belarus, China, Cuba, Iran, Libya, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. In the UK, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000, extended in 2003) increased the rights of security services to monitor personal communication (such as telephone tapping) to include electronic mail.