The wild west days of the Internet are nearly at the end.
One of the projects I have run, involved establishing a Corporate surveillance system for a South Australian Government. A System that tracks web usage habits of 20,000+ workers. Though at the time I felt a little bit like the train driver of cattle trains to Dachau. It was a job, a job I did well. Bread on the table. The system I delivered would be used to terminate the employment of some people. My actions were driven by necessity. Both personal and corporate.
Corporations need systems like this principally to mitigate exposure to litigation. At the time it was thought that Personal surfing at work impacts productivity negatively, these days facts however tell a different story.
Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote an appropriate poem about where ultimately any kind of prosecution leads.
Recent events in Iran, where people have risen up to dispute election results highlight how Internet control can be used for evil. Evil spelled with a capital 'E'.
No longer the consequence of such control is a stern talking to or the loss of a job, execution is a very real consequence.
Why is it particularly relevant to us, Business and Information Technology practitioners?
The systems used to control access in Iran were delivered by Nokia and Siemens, the Chinese firewalls, up until now considered most sophisticated have significant CISCO involvement.
The tools delivered and implemented by us. May very well be used to make people's lives worse. Even the Google motto of 'Don't be evil.' has melted away under the pressure of all present and prospective profits.
One of the arguments used by opponents of Internet Censorship regimes is that once a system is established, it is a trivial matter to expand its scope.
In the words of one Network Engineer in Tehran (Iran); "We didn't know they could do this much,"
Of the Countries in the world that have a robust or expanding Internet Censorship Regime; the inauspicious list includes; Syria, Iran, China and now Australia.
The Rudd Government is continuing the policy initially established by the previous Howard regime of establishing national Internet Censorship regime.
Its proponents state it is to protect the nations children from the most vile of human expression.
Its opponents sometime posting on Whirlpool say that the system is just an excuse to emplace infrastructure that can be used in the future to 'turn the taps' and control the topic du-jur in the future. Already there has been some credibility given to those claims by the Government expanding the proposed ban regime from nasty porn to mature (15+) games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft.
At the end of the day, an Internet control regime for a business certainly makes prudent sense. When such systems become common place and begin to impact the freedoms for which our forefathers have died. Freedoms such as freedom of expression for its mature citizens and freedom to dissent, then we must begin to ask hard questions.
In a corporate world, the balance between prudent deployment of technology and losing your valuable workforce to overly onerous regime is the name of the game.
Call Mr. Wulf at NOMEONESTIQ to talk how we can help you.
Edit: An interesting article on the progress of global Internet censorship.
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