Internet Censorship: Positive And Negative Impact On Society

Evolution of Internet Censorship in Last 5 Years

Internet censorship is the control program which is deployed by the regulators for accessing, publishing, and viewing of initiatives taken by them on the internet. “The individual can develop the self-censorship program for organizing their moral, religious, and legal believes associated with the activities performed by them” (Wang, 2017). The internet censorship program usually occurred during the time of election, protest, and other anticipation program. There are different tools and technologies which are used for deploying censorship on the internet which can be classified as DNS server, proxy server, website mirrors, cached web pages, and others. The sensitive information can be safely interchanged on the internet by making use of internet censorship technology.  It is used for managing copyrights of the organization. The structured framework of policies is prepared for deploying the website under the legal laws. The internet censorship is capable of limiting the criminal activities and helps in increasing national security. In this paper, we are looking forward for analysing the positive and negative impact on the society. The government and organizations are used for securing their confidential information from accessing.

Internet censorship is the method which is used for putting restriction on the information which is viewed and published on the internet. The internet censorship is commonly used by government and big organization to restrict the copyright of the information and to prevent confidential information of the business. It is the propaganda method for promoting religions and political agendas.” Traditionally, the traffic management on the internet was done by the internet community but with the passage of time and evolution of internet censorship than the traffic management goes in the hand of the government and organization” (Erixon, 2009). They can manage the flow of data and put restriction according to their requirement and confidentiality. It helps in putting restriction on the interference and freedom of speech. The internet censorship is capable of limiting the criminal activities and helps in increasing national security. The self-monitoring system helps in resolving many issues of the government such as limiting the growth of criminal activity, provides the cultural diversity in the internet user, deployment of political doctrines, and others. Internet censorship is responsible for managing the accessing of information related to copyright and intellectual property of the organization, non-disclosure of sensitive and private information, generating new political ideas for promoting religion and political agenda, controlling the internet related crime, monitoring the discussion between billions of people over the network, and others. The internet censorship is useful for analysing the big data of the organization. It helps in reducing the occurrence of fraud and theft of identity. Filter bubbles are used for managing the views and opinions between different units. The online censorship is responsible for maintaining the email privacy. With the increasing complexity of the internet and associated technologies, it is required to deploy the fundamentals of internet censorship. The new technologies can be securely deployed on the internet by using the technique of internet censorship for putting restriction to the confidential information. This helps in the non-disclosure of confidential information and maintains the privacy of the information. Various types of filtering methods are used for managing decentralised communication between different units. The censor intelligence technique is used for deploying traffic analysis and snowball sampling. The strategies should be developed for implementing wiretapping system, intrusion detection and prevention methods, and firewall. The internet censorship helps in strengthening the national security program. It is capable of predicting and punishing the hackers and the violators. There are number of software used in relation with internet censorship such as CGI proxies, HTTP proxies, Application proxies, re-routing system, and others. The CGI proxies are used for performing the proxy function on the script running deployed on web server. The HTTP proxies are used for sending requests to the intermediate proxy server. Application proxies are associated with different applications. The re-routing system is used for sending request and response to the encrypted data for managing proxy on various proxy server. Peer-to peer relationship should be developed between client and server for managing trust between them.

There are two types of internet censorship program one is the technical censorship and other is the non-technical censorship which are explained below in the table:

There are wide range of comprehensive tools to establish internet censorship to prevent the system from denial of service attacks and other. The following table shows the list of tools used in deploying censorship:

• Criminal activities are minimised: it has been seen that implementation of internet censorship has limited the occurrence of criminal activities such as terrorist group recruitment, personnel bank account hacking process, phishing attack, theft of identity information, online spamming, and others. “In the last few decades many innocent people were become victim of such activities and have faced many troublesome problems” (Sorak, 2013). The internet censorship is the best solution to overcome the problem of fraud and other related illegal activities. The malicious content can be removed from the website which can be the cause of suspicious activity.
• Protection to children: The increasing demand of internet in the youth and children for surfing related with their education helps in increasing the knowledge of the children because the internet is the medium of presenting information which is collected globally. The parents can use internet censorship to protect their children from the negative impact of the internet.
• Provides online security to data: “The internet censorship is capable of blocking the harmful sites which can access the reliable data of the website” (Vivan, 2014). The sensitive information can be safely interchanged on the internet by making use of internet censorship technology.
• Standards for publications: “The structured framework of policies is prepared for deploying the website under the legal laws” (Majette, 2012). The discrimination of the website can be protected by indulging the technique of censorship. It is capable of restricting the violated message present on the internet.
• Limitation can be set to the free society: no absolute freedom is given to the individual by using the technique of internet censorship. The racist speech can be avoided on the internet.
• National security: The internet censorship helps in strengthening the national security program. It is capable of predicting and punishing the hackers and the violators. The terrorist information can be easily accessed by using the method internet censorship. The nation can be overcome by the threats of the terrorist attacks.
• The theft of identity can be minimised: The violators can be easily accessed and scanned who are attempting for hacking the information related to the identity of the individual. The anti-phishing software is used for preserving the personal information of the individual. 

The internet is the common platform to cover all the activities of day to day life. The censoring techniques are used for removing the ubiquity from the internet. The negative impacts of internet censorship on society are listed below:

• Right violation: “The rules should be followed for doing amendments in the data available on the internet” (Khattak, 2015). The rights of the web master can be violated when the website is not under use and its content are modified by the hacker without following legal rules.
• Limitation put on educational resources: “The implementation of filter with good intention is used for hiding inappropriate data but due to this the student cannot able to read the complete content of books” (Chandio, 2014).
• The social gaps can be increased: The global meetings can be easily organized on the platform of internet. The intellectual and ideological levels can be organized on the single platform. This is used for recognizing different cultures of the participating units. The implementation of internet censorship limited the prediction of difference and similarities between the participating units.
• Cost: The implementation of internet censorship increases the cost of the organization in terms of time and resources. The maintenance cost of upgrading the system periodically should be associated with the project deployed on the internet. The distribution of cost should be effectively done for resolving the issue of the cost.
• Business issue: The internet censorship have the negative impact on the business and organization. The application cannot be accessed by all the consumers. The organizations are not able to access the best websites associated with supplier information and other related services. The global scale of the internet is not fully utilized by the business owner due to the association of internet censorship because it put restriction on some of the website from accessing of the third party.
• Loss of freedom of expressions: The limiting use of internet increases the violation of right to express and speech. The internet is the platform of sharing of information, views, and opinion globally but use of censorship takes the right of discussion and expressing ourself freely on the internet.
• Control of information: The people can take advantage of controlling the information available on the internet. The implementation of censorship can be taken as in the disruptive form.

Conclusion:

Internet censorship is the method which is used for putting restriction on the information which is viewed and published on the internet. The internet censorship can be created by using the virtual private network which provides secure connection for browsing the internet globally. It has been seen that implementation of internet censorship has limited the occurrence of criminal activities such as terrorist group recruitment, personnel bank account hacking process, phishing attack, theft of identity information, online spamming, and others. The internet censorship is useful for analysing the big data of the organization. It helps in reducing the occurrence of fraud and theft of identity.

References:

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Vivan, M. (2014). Surveillence and internet censorship: The impact of technology on human right. International Conference paper for information and communication, [online] 4(3). Available at: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2015/549034/EXPO_STU(2015)549034_EN.pdf [Accessed 2 Jun. 2017]. 

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