Yesterday a group of forty security, privacy and human rights advocates and organizations from 19 countries, including Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, Palestine, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan and the United States, released an open letter to \u00d6gmundur J\u00f3nasson, Iceland’s Minister of the Interior, regarding the ongoing discussions on the possibility of establishing internet pornography censorship in Iceland.<\/p>\n
The text of the open letter is reproduced in full below.<\/p>\n
\u00d6gmundur J\u00f3nasson
\nInnanr\u00edkisr\u00e1\u00f0uneyti\u00f0
\nS\u00f6lvh\u00f3lsg\u00f6tu
\nReykjav\u00edk<\/p>\nRe: Open Letter to \u00d6gmundur J\u00f3nasson, Icelandic Minister of Interior, regarding Internet censorship<\/p>\n
Dear Mr. J\u00f3nasson,<\/p>\n
As security, privacy and human rights advocates and organizations from around the world, we are writing to express our deep concern with your current proposals to attempt to restrict Internet access in Iceland to pornographic content.<\/p>\n
Iceland is a liberal democratic state which should not serve as a role model for Internet censorship. Regimes, totalitarian and democratic alike, can use these proposals as an example in order to justify censorship of the Internet, practiced or proposed. It has already jeopardized longstanding efforts to prevent or abolish censorship in totalitarian regimes and protect civil liberties and human rights worldwide.<\/p>\n
The current discussion of blocking pornographic content has offered no definition, no evidence, and suggested no technology. This is an affront to basic principles of the society, and while we acknowledge that this discussion is at a starting point, we feel that the way it is being conducted is harmful.<\/p>\n
Traditionally, censorship has involved preventing publication and persecution of people with unpopular opinions. On the Internet, censorship has taken a new guise. It doesn\u2019t merely prevent publication, but also restricts people\u2019s access to the information they seek. Rather than silencing a voice, the result is depriving the population of material they can see and read. This is censorship, as it skews the way people see the world. It is tempting to regard filtering the internet as a quick and easy way to restrict unwanted speech, opinions, or media, which the government regards as harmful for either them or the people. The right to see the world as it is, is critical to the very tenets and functions of a democracy and must be protected at all costs.<\/p>\n
It is technically impossible to censor content delivered over the Internet without monitoring all telecommunications. Not just unwanted communications or inappropriate material, everything must be examined automatically by unsupervised machines which make the final decision on whether to allow the content to continue or not. This level of government surveillance directly conflicts with the idea of a free society.<\/p>\n
Internet censorship is used by totalitarian regimes in order to restrict people’s access to various information and material on the internet. The methods used to conduct this censorship are technically identical to the methods that would be employed by Iceland if these plans were to be implemented. The act of censoring pornography in Iceland differs in no way from repression of speech in Iran, China or North Korea. By stating that Iceland is considering censoring pornographic material on the Internet for moral reasons, they are justifying rather than condemning the actions of totalitarian regimes.<\/p>\n
The internet is not the source of violence, it is merely a medium by which violence is made apparent. If the government of Iceland is genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of victims of violence, there are many more effective ways. The prohibition of pornographic content may create demand for an underground porn industry, unregulated and most certainly affiliated with other illegal activities, as we have seen in the case of drugs or alcohol prohibition. Hiding the problem is not a solution and may in fact make things worse.<\/p>\n
If the Icelandic Government worries about children getting their sexual education from pornography on the Internet, the solution should be better sex education in the home or through schools. Sex education that deals not only with conception, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, but also relationships, communication and respect.<\/p>\n
There exist decentralized technical measures that respect the rights and dignity of all citizens in a society which involves aiding families with providing an accessible way to make their own computer and internet access secure for their children, but technically speaking, it would still be possible to go around the blockage.<\/p>\n
Over the last years, Iceland has been regarded by the international community as a shining example of a free, democratic society. Iceland has positioned itself as a model democratic state in global context when dealing with freedom of the press, the open process of drafting a new constitution, and open review of information regulation. Therefore, we implore you to reject censorship as a viable option and seek more effective means of improving society, both in Iceland and abroad.<\/p>\n
Kind regards,
\nRenata Avila Pinto, Human Rights Lawyer (Guatemala)
\nJillian C. York, Director for International Freedom of Expression, Electronic Frontier Foundation (USA)
\nKim Pham, Principal, Expression Tech (USA)
\nSj\u00f3n, Author, President of Icelandic PEN (Iceland)
\nEthan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT (USA)
\nRichard Stallman, President, Free Software Foundation (USA)
\nMina Naguib, Human rights activist (Egypt)
\nKatarzyna Szymielewicz, Panoptykon Foundation (Poland)
\nTrevor Timm, Freedom of the Press Foundation (USA)
\nMicha\u0142 \u201crysiek\u201d Wo\u017aniak, President, Fundacja Wolnego i Otwartego Oprogramowania (Poland)
\n\u00c1sta Gu\u00f0r\u00fan Helgad\u00f3ttir, Free speech activist (Iceland)
\nStefan Marsiske, Hungarian Autonomous Center for Knowledge (Hungary)
\nBeatriz Busaniche, V\u00eda Libre Foundation (Argentina)
\nWalter van Holst, Vrijschrift (Netherlands)
\nAtanas Tchobanov, Balkanleaks (Bulgaria)
\nMazen Maarouf, Writer (Palestine)
\nA\u00f0alhei\u00f0ur \u00c1mundad\u00f3ttir, Lawyer (Iceland)
\nDouwe Korff, Foundation for Information Policy Research (United Kingdom)
\nArjen Kamphuis, Chairman, Open Source Working Group, Internet Society (Netherlands)
\nJames Vasile, Director, New America Foundation Open Internet Tools Project (USA)
\nTimo Karjalainen, President, Electronic Frontier Finland (Finland)
\nOt van Daalen, Director, Bits of Freedom (Netherlands)
\nAleksander Waszkielewicz, President of the Board, Fundacja Instytut Rozwoju Regionalnego (Poland)
\nGu\u00f0j\u00f3n M\u00e1r Gu\u00f0j\u00f3nsson, Internet Policy Institute (Iceland)
\nMargot Kaminski, Executive Director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School (USA)
\nSm\u00e1ri McCarthy, Executive Director, International Modern Media Institute (Iceland)
\nLaurie Penny, author and journalist (United Kingdom)
\nSunil Abraham, Executive Director Center for Internet and Society (India)
\nThomas Hughes, Managing Director, Media Frontiers (Denmark)
\nMiguel Morachimo, Hiperderecho (Peru)
\nAnnie Machon, former MI5 intelligence officer and civil liberties campaigner (United Kingdom)
\nDaniela Bozhinova, Bulgarian Association for the Promotion of Citizens Initiative (Bulgaria)
\nDariusz Grzesista, Chairman, Polish Linux Users’ Group (Poland)
\nMohammed Tarakiyee, Jordan Open Source (Jordan)
\nJ\u00f3zef Halbersztadt, Internet Society Poland (Poland)
\nZineb Belmkaddem, Free speech activist (Morocco)
\nRafik Dammak, Free speech activist (Tunisia)
\nOktav\u00eda J\u00f3nsd\u00f3ttir, Executive Director, Human Link Network (Denmark)
\nJosef Irnberger, Initiative f\u00fcr Netzfreiheit (Austria)
\nMarkus Beckedahl, Digitale Geschel schaft (Germany)
\nAlek Tarkowski, Director, Centrum Cyfrowe Projekt: Polska (Poland)
\nHugleikur Dagsson, Artist (Iceland)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yesterday a group of forty security, privacy and human rights advocates and organizations from 19 countries, including Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, Palestine, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan and the United States, released an open letter to \u00d6gmundur J\u00f3nasson, Iceland’s Minister of the Interior, regarding the ongoing discussions on the possibility of establishing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,9],"tags":[20,23],"class_list":["post-1326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-tech","tag-politics-2","tag-tech-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1335,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions\/1335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}