An Uncomfortable Question on Freedom of Speech

The world watched with piqued interest as Tunisians rallied to overthrow their government, success though, seems to be just out of grasp. And social media technologies it would seem, played no small part. Just over a week later, Egypt followed suit. Within two days however, the Egyptian government turned off Internet access in the country. Tunisia did not, interestingly enough. Egypt does however, have a very sophisticated internal security aparatus, likely far more in tune to the possible effects of social technologies and having watched Tunisia and the applied use of social media services.

All of this to say, an uncomfortable question is likely flirting the edges of established democratic Western countries in the minds of the people and their governments – “if this happened to us, would the government shut the Internet down?” and governments saying “is it possible to shut the Internet down?”

This question might be precipitated by the US government’s proposal of Net Neutrality, which in large part would meter Internet access in favour of major content producing corporations that have been battling to stay profitable. In Canada, similar issues arise with metered usage. The people it seems, are not happy. Largely this debate has been about people resisting a return to canned content that they don’t want and an inability to produce their own content.

The Internet grew largely because people wanted to access and create content that was “their own” and to socialize. Arguably, Facebook is a “channel” now, but may become a guide to the future potential of new media powerhouses – provision of a framework for freedom of expression wrapped in a shell that enables economic prosperity.

Western democratic countries will have an incredibly hard time to shut down Internet access, however. The cat is out of the bag and with the technologies readily available on the open markets today, a secondary or third Internet layer would be up in a matter of hours – a rough Mesh Network was up in Egypt in a matter of hours. Governments would have to shut down entire infrastructures. Add to that the many corporations making money from people accessing the Internet and that makes it harder again. That America, Canada or Western European countries would see riots and protests on the scale of Egypt is unlikely. Civil change here would likely be, well, more civil. The well established tenets of democracy and capitalism work in the favor of the people in this case, as it should.

For the paranoid conspiracy wonk these issues are certainly fuel for their fires. The reality however, is likely to be somewhat different. Still, it is an interesting question for both society and government to be asking. The CBC in Canada has asked the question and a quick analysis of the commentary shows people would not be amused should government choose the shut off button. Still, the question is rampant across social media channels in the West and many other countries.

We are beginning to see a rising tide in societal change I suspect, worldwide. One can hope that such actions hits Venezuela to depose despot Chavez or in Zimbabwe to get ride of Mugabe or “Mugarbage” as one sees him called by dissenters. There is an ancient Chinese curse that says “may you live in interesting times”…perhaps that too, could be a blessing for people in Egypt and Tunisia?