News from WSIS: Web Censorship in Tunisia

Berkman Center representatives at the World Summit on the Information Society are seeing a common thread- censorship by a government that claims to protect freedom of thought and expression. In response to this censorship, many NGOs have canceled their events at WSIS. At 3pm Tunis time there will be a short press conference discussing the NGO boycott. More details can be found at the the WSIS group blog. The issue is being picked up by the Associated Press and Reporters Without Borders, as well as many Berkman bloggers.

Writing from Tunis, John Palfrey blogs that the wireless network at the ITU's Global Symposium for Regulators blocks anonymizers and protest sites, like Tunezine. Sites which are blocked return an error message which implies that there is a technical problem instead of admitting to the censorship. In email, Colin Maclay reports that the network in the UN forum's building is uncensored- but that next door, in the ict4all exhibit hall, the internet is filtered. In addition, Colin reports that the censors are efficient enough that in the past day the Citizen's Summit homepage has been blocked. Ethan Zuckerman reports similar efficiency- apparently an anti-presidential protest site was recently blocked within 18 hours of being put up.

Stay tuned to the Berkman Center blogs and Open Net Initiative for more details.