<DEFANGED_span style="font-weight: bold;">Host not found</DEFANGED_span><br><br><DEFANGED_span style="font-style: italic;">Dissidents must be protected from internet censorship, argues Hari Kunzru in an essay for a PEN anthology, Another Sky. </DEFANGED_span>
<br DEFANGED_style="font-style: italic;"><br><a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,2046857,00.html" target="_blank" DEFANGED_onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,2046857,00.html
</a><br><br>An extract:<br><DEFANGED_div style="margin-left: 40px;">Social panic about terrorism and paedophilia means that there is strong public support in most western democracies for mandatory state access to private communications. In the permanent state of pseudo-war under which we now live, interior ministers constantly remind us that civil liberties must be balanced against the exigencies of security. Technologies such as strong encryption and anonymous remailing must, they tell us, be kept out of the hands of the public. Employment of such technologies must constitute reasonable cause for surveillance. Encryption keys must be handed over on demand. Local ISPs must be forced to surrender data when required, preferably through real-time automated "black box" monitors, connected to their systems. Monitoring of voice and data traffic by the US (and perhaps, one day, by China) must be facilitated. The list goes on.
<br><br>Unfortunately for us complacent beneficiaries of liberal democracy there is a paradox at work here. The technologies that provide anonymity to the paedophile and the terrorist also protect the political dissident and the whistle-blower. The encryption that impedes government surveillance of its citizens is also vital to the global banking system - an interesting area where corporate and state interests are in direct opposition.
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