Reporters Without Borders - Internet Annual report 2006 : Everyone's interested in the Internet - especially dictators
The Internet has revolutionised the world's media. Personal websites, blogs
and discussion groups have given a voice to men and women who were once only
passive consumers of information. It has made many newspaper readers and TV
viewers into fairly successful amateur journalists. Dictators would seem
powerless faced with this explosion of online material. How could they
monitor the e-mails of China's 130 million users or censor the messages
posted by Iran's 70,000 bloggers? The enemies of the Internet have
unfortunately shown their determination and skill in doing just that. China
was the first repressive country to realise that the Internet was an
extraordinary tool of free expression and quickly assembled the money and
personnel to spy on e-mail and censor "subversive" websites. The regime soon
showed that the Internet, like traditional media, could be controlled. All
that was needed was the right technology and to crack down on the first
"cyber-dissidents.
http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/internet_report.pdf
OpenNet Initiative - "The Internet and Elections: the 2006 Presidential Election in Belarus."
The report presents the findings of ONI's effort to monitor the Internet
during Belarus' recent presidential elections. Amidst fears that the
authoritarian regime of President Aleksandr Lukashenka was going to close
down Belarus political cyberspace during the elections, ONI testing found
little evidence of systematic and comprehensive filtering, despite earlier
ONI investigations that established the regimes capability to do so. ONI
monitoring during the elections showed that, on average, opposition and
independent media websites remained accessible throughout the monitoring
period. ONI testing revealed a number of serious irregularities that
disrupted access to certain opposition and independent media websites at
strategic moments during and after the vote.
http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/belarus/ONI_Belarus_Country_S...