May 19, 2015 • 42 mins
Some of it seems innocuous enough: protecting kids from unseemly sites or intellectual property from piracy. But the tools to protect these things are the same that governments can also use to censor ideas and quell dissent.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant's Stuff you Should
Know with Jerry. Depending where you are in the world,
you may not be hearing this right now. Yeah, I've
(00:22):
heard tell that we are banned in China. I don't
know that that's true. I bet it's true. We're not
FETs in first Yeah, but well we'll get that. I'll
bet you couldn't find our Chinese pollution Sniffer episode though. Well,
that's what I'm saying about. There are certain things um
or the one child policy episode. I bet you couldn't
(00:43):
find that, which, by the way, probably banded China. It's
a little weird that we didn't even mention that episode
in the zero population episode. Did we not? Not only
did we not mention that episode, apparently we didn't even
mention China's one child policy at all. I thought it.
It doesn't seem like us. Actually, it seems exactly like us.
(01:05):
You know what I did though public service announcement. I
said it was okay for poisonous spiders to bite your dog,
And that's not true. I don't know where I got that.
I definitely didn't make it up like I read it,
and I couldn't find it and it's wrong. So um,
it is not good for your animals to get bitten
by poisonous spiders, and of all people, for me to
(01:27):
say that I was shamed. Okay, that's right. I just
want to correct that up front, because I think that's good.
That's as long as you correct yourself when you find
out like, that's great. Chu. Yeah, it just bothered me
that I couldn't find out where I did it and
people just thought I was just free wheeling. You know,
it doesn't matter. Uh, So Okay, you feel better now
you got that off your chest. Are you ready to
(01:49):
talk about in a censorship in all of its vicious, pernicious,
nefarious forms. Okay, let's do it. So um. In researching
this article, fine article by John Strickland, hosts of tech Stuff,
who has probably covered this eight ways from Sunday. So
if this floats your boat, go check out tech Stuff
(02:10):
as the podcast. It's good stuff and it's tech stuff. Um.
The I found that I knew most of this stuff already,
but I also found in doing like external research that
he followed pretty much the standard of explaining censorship on
the Internet, and that it takes a number of different forms,
(02:31):
but ultimately its goal is the same. It's just restricting
access to information, whether that information be in the form
of a neuty picture or a picture or an essay
that is that controverts some sort of official policy of
a government. Um, there's all sorts of different ways that
(02:54):
you can restrict access to information, and we've been doing
it for a very very very long time. Like this
is nothing new. It's just censorship in a new form
in a new medium. That's right, because I mean we
did when I book Banning pretty old way form of censorship,
the m p a A. That was another censorship episode.
(03:15):
And so now that we have the Internet, there's this
big struggle over just how much access should people be allowed.
And a lot of people say unfettered, total access to
everything all the time. Everyone should have. If you don't
want your kids looking at stuff, buy a web filter,
do it yourself. But it's not the role of anybody
(03:36):
else besides parents specifically with their children, to fetter access
on the Internet. And I kind of agree with that.
Well yeah, well, and it's apparent like I wouldn't want
to leave that to someone else anyway, you know. Point
like I think a parent should decide when and where
(03:58):
their kids discover certain things, just have that in their control,
you know. So I get that part of it for sure. Um,
so I guess we should go ahead and start there.
That is One form of Internet censorship is apparent saying
I've seen the web. I know it's on that thing.
It gets kind of dark, it gets super dark, like
by accident sometimes you know, like you've typed the wrong
(04:22):
thing in in Google images before and been shocked at
what you found. Imagine like havn then like a ten
year old kids seeing that kind of thing. Yeah, no,
good no, And you can't stand over your kid and
put your hand over their eyes or hand over their
ears or anything like that all the time. So there's
software for this kind of thing. Yeah, And again I
don't think it's about like raising your child in a
(04:43):
bubble where they think that the world is roses and rainbows.
But um, as apparent, you probably want to be in
control of what kind of disturbing images they see at
what age, you know. So Yeah, there's things, uh CYBERsitter. Um,
there's programs called net nanny and uh right, Now, what
they do is, um, they have a series of options,
(05:04):
generally that you can select as a parent on what
sites that your child can access, and then those options
till the program to enable certain filters. Then all of
a sudden, your kids goes to type and YouTube and um,
a big frownie face pops up like a crying baby's face.
Shame on you. What did you want to do on YouTube?
Your man? Um, So what you're talking about is a
(05:26):
web filter program. Yeah, it's a software add on, right,
and um. Web filters use one of two techniques to
censor the Internet. Right. They use blacklists, which is a
list of specific domain names that you are not allowed
to access keywords um. And then there's also well no,
(05:47):
that's different. That's the other one is keywords. Okay, So
a blacklist is like, um, how stuff works dot Com?
Yea on the list, and so if your kid tries
to go to how stuff works dot com or any
of its subdomains, it's gonna be blocked. Yeah, those are
the filter options that I was talking about, but with
the keyword yeah, it's a different type of filter option
(06:07):
where um, there's keywords, Uh that if when, when the
kid tries to go to a website this um. The
web filter scans the page to see if there's any
of these keywords, and if there are, then it'll block
that site. Yeah, because those keywords are what are put
there so you can find those things. Like if you
(06:28):
see the keyword to like some porn video, it'll have
a whole list of words describing what you're seeing. And
so if you have those keywords, um, it'll it'll root
it out. And so you can't go because that site
said I had the keyword ejaculate. It's probably once. It's funny.
I meant to tell you when we did the male
Puberty UM episode. I went onto the computer, the public
(06:52):
computer at the clubhouse. UM, and my clubhouse, right, why
don't you do that? It's a print. I don't have
a printer at home. You still don't have a printer. No,
that's a good printer at the clubhouse. There's a big
difference between printer at home and like a good printer
and the clubhouse printer. This printer is a good printer.
You know what they say, club can't beat the clubhouse printer. Right.
But I tried to go on and it was like, no,
(07:13):
you can't. You can't open this web page really because
it was had I'm sure it was erection is what
blocked it. And it said Josh Clark and unit can't
go on to read about male puberty. Uh. But then
I tried it again, I refreshed and it was like okay,
and it let me on. So it wasn't the best
web filter ever. But and you didn't get a strongly lettered,
(07:34):
uh worded letter shoved under your door that night, not
that night. All right, that's good. So yeah, blocking out
these keywords, um these blacklist keyword blocking, that's a It's
a great way to filter out nefarious websites. There's also firewalls,
and I've been trying to get to the bottom of
the difference between a firewall and a web filter. I
(07:56):
heard you in Strickland talking about it earlier. Oh yeah,
you had to ask that the pro Yeah, and uh yeah,
it's pretty cool. I can go to the author of
the article and ask Yeah. I almost went down there
and I was like, Josh, I'll tell me. So. A
firewall basically protects the computer or the local network from
the rest of the Internet, not just websites, but um
(08:19):
internet relay chats like instant messaging, uh, email, all that stuff.
It protects it and it says you can come through,
you can come through, but you can't come through, and
protects from viruses and malware and attacks and that kind
of stuff, whereas a web filter is um it more
says you can't go onto these things, so they still
(08:42):
exist like technically on your computer. Right, is that the difference,
like the firewall is further upstream. No, no, am I
misunderstanding it. It's it's actually the nuances is difficult to understand.
If you go and type been difference between firewall and
web filter, it doesn't bring up a lot of stuff,
(09:03):
and this stuff that does bring up, it's it's kind
of hard to understand. So basically, the firewall protects your
entire computer or network from the rest of the Internet.
A web filter restricts access from your computer to the
rest of the Internet. It's almost directional difference going out
or coming in. We don't have to bring him in
here doing I'm gonna go kid, no, no, it'll be
(09:25):
like the necronomic episode all over again. So um. One
of the problems with web filtering software that opponents like
to harp on is that they don't. Um, it's just
like keywords and things. They can't talk about context and
filtering context. So you might not be able to get
a recipe for chicken breast because as we're breast in it, um,
(09:46):
which you know, I guess if your kid let's cook
chicken breasts, he's out of luck, right, you know, because
it's only like the network, it's just for the kid, right,
Like they have to log on and that enacts the software.
It's probably on all the time. And then if you're
the parent, you can be like, uh, no, I need
(10:06):
this chicken brest recipe, right, or you're you have it
on the one computer that your kid uses and you
trust them to not use your philip frog, your filthy computer.
You know. Uh, it's got flies buzzing around. That's um,
that's the home version. When you're just trying to protect
your kiddies from seeing the darkness that is the web.
(10:30):
A lot of people can't argue with that. Um. There's
also business censorship, which we don't have really here because
we have to research all kinds of things. Part of
our job is to be on social media. But um,
if you work for a big corporation, you may not
even be able to get on Facebook at work. Well,
from what I could tell, Facebook is probably the most
(10:50):
censored website on the entire Internet. Yeah, I believe that. Um,
like far and away, Yeah, there's like, uh, there was
this list from I think it was like two thousand
leaven which is just totally out of date for this
kind of stuff. Sure, but Facebook was like four and
the rest of them. I think the next one was
maybe my Space or something like that, and like ten
(11:14):
of all businesses banned that or something. So like far
and away, Facebook is the most banned, which makes sense
because it's a time suck. Yes it is. And if
you if your job has nothing to do with social
there's no reason for you to be on Facebook for
any reason whatsoever. Now they really didn't um and uh,
since we're talking about Facebook. For the followers of stuff
(11:37):
you should know who are listeners to this show, I
apologize for all the non listeners that have invaded our
Facebook page. Oh what happened every there? Well, we just
we really grew a ton remember on that like one
year span, and I don't know how, but we got
blasted out and a lot of people who have no
idea who we are that we even have a podcast.
(11:59):
Just started following the page. I guess it's like, oh,
this is interesting things, you know? And just follow the feed?
And are they a lot of fun to have on
their jerks man And you can spot him a mile
away because the stuff you should know. Army is well
known to be very understanding, smart, compassionate, forward thinking people,
and these people are trolls. And it really stinks because
(12:20):
I have to heavily moderate it now and I used to.
It just used to be a fun place for open
minded people to exchange ideas in a respectful way. And
it's just not like that anymore. No, shut that one
down and start over. No, you shouldn't shut it down.
But I was talking with someone on one of our
fans on Facebook the other day because they were commenting
(12:40):
about that, and I said, I wish there was a
brief quiz you had to pass um in order to
like like this page, like where Josh and Chuck what's
the largest manufacturer of tires in the world? Now even easier,
like what's a podcast? Because they be they throw up
some meme that says like you you know, yeah, anyway,
(13:01):
I just want to throw that in there. I'm sorry
for people have had a bad experience there lately. That
is why our fans are so nice to us, because
stuff like that we care. Um. So anyway, it's a
big time suck emphasis on suck. Uh. And so that's
the reason they shut it down the others to avoid harassment,
which makes sense. Um, your co worker might bring up
(13:24):
a porn image. Uh, you know, some dude might say,
who took this out? Hostile work environment? Hostile work environment,
and a company cannot risk that at all because they'll
get sued, sued, sued, And so the easiest thing to
do is just to shut it down. YEA restrict access.
Restrict access. So that makes sense in a way. It does.
And if you want to know more about your employer
(13:47):
governing your work computer, yeah, you go check out our
episode is your employer Spying on you? That was a
good one. It was a good one. Um. We're gonna
keep going right after this, so chuck, We've we've covered
(14:16):
parents censoring the Internet for their kids, employers censoring the
Internet for their employees. Kind of difficult to argue with
either one of those, especially if the employer is censoring
the Internet for their employees work computer. That the employer
provided during work hours. It's tough to it's tough to
be like, no, it's wrong, it's wrong. But again, we're
(14:39):
coming from a place where we have like basically unrestricted
access to the Internet, so it might suck to work
under those draconian measures of stuff. We look up you know,
it's drawn some lists made for um the third censorship,
the third level, I guess is much greater. And this
(15:00):
is the one where people really start to go berserk.
And I think rightfully so. And that's government control. Government
censorship of the Internet. And pretty much every country that
allows access to the Internet, which is basically every country
these days. Um, there's some level of censorship to some degree.
(15:21):
Some are much worse than others, but basically, all governments,
in one way, shape or form censor what there citizens
can access on the Internet. Yeah, and um, even before that,
like search engines themselves sensor because if like Google and
Yahoo didn't censor anything, the search results you would get
(15:43):
would just be no good, it would be like something. Yeah,
so they do their own censorship. But that's um. As
far as the government goes. Uh, there's something called the
Open Net Initiative. Oh and I and they're an organization
that UM. Their dedication is to inform the public about
web filtering and surveillance around the world. I want to
(16:04):
dedicate this to the UH. And they have four categories
of UM web filtering. Political, which is when you, let's say,
you want to speak out against your leaders and your
country may not allow that. You know, if you have
a blog, they may censor your blog. UH. Yeah, there's
a pretty good UM example of this recently in China
(16:27):
and India. They both followed the same trajectory but two
different ends. UM. In China there was a documentary about
Chinese pollution called Under the Dome. It went viral and
like it got two hundred million views in the first
day or something like that, and it was government approved.
The documentary was right, but it took off, and UM
(16:49):
the Chinese government took it down and they did so successfully,
Like you couldn't find that anywhere in China after that.
India there was a documentary around the same time that
was about that very infamous UM public transportation rape case UM,
and it went viral and got a ton of us too,
and it also got people talking in India about this
(17:11):
again and UM the government tried to take that down,
but in a very clumsy manner, and it was very
ineffective as well. But both both both governments tried to
do the same thing. There was something that was going on,
it was stirring up the populace, and they tried to
center it by taking down a restricting restricting access to it. Yeah,
(17:32):
and the China one, to me is just crazy because,
like I said, it was government approved, the documentary was,
so they didn't even have a problem with the documentary.
But in China they will censor things. They will censor
anything that seems likely to spur any kind of activism
at all. Right, Well, there was a study that UM
found that a post if you have a couple of
(17:55):
posts that are say, critical to the government, but one
so both are critical of the government, but one of
them advocates collective action like getting people rolled up, like
let's go meet in Tianamen Square or something like that,
that's the one that's gonna get taken down. So they're
they're really concerned not necessarily just with criticism, but more
(18:18):
so about um fomenting popular unrest. And China gets picked
on all the time, and and rightfully so. They probably
are the world's most prolific censor at least biggest because
of the size of their population and the measures they take.
They they have what's called the Great Firewall of China.
(18:38):
But I think especially in countries in Western democracies, it's
a bit of a red herring because it's kind of like, God,
look at what China is doing, Look at how much
it really kind of detracts from the censorship that goes
on here in the United States and other Western democracies. Um,
that's just as pernicious, if not worse, because this is
taking place in what's supposed to be an open, liberal democracy.
(19:01):
Yeah you know, Yeah, you're right, But it is kind
of easy to pick on China. Well, of course it is. Um.
They also will There was a post in two thousand
eleven that, um, there was a rumor that salt could
stave off radiation poisoning from the Fukushima reactor, and China
quash that because people were going out and buying a
(19:23):
bunch of salt. I remember that. So again, Um, they
just squashed that because people are buying up too much salt,
because it would supposedly pack your thyroids so full that
your thyroid couldn't absorb the radiation. That was why Yeah,
and it basically just bounced off. If you're famous in China,
you're going to be heavily scrutinized, so you gotta watch
(19:46):
what you post and if you're way away, oh yeah, yeah,
that's a good point. Um. And then the thing I
saw said that like small time users and bloggers that
that complain about the government, it's not like, uh, such
a police state that they'll like take down all of that. Um,
if you have some influence, you're much more likely going
(20:08):
to be censored. You know, like if you're not getting
a ton of web hits and you're speaking out about
the leadership, then uh, the you probably will just go unnoticed,
you know. So that was the open net initiatives. That
was just one of the four political Um. The next
one is social and that's web pages that are have
to do with like drugs, gambling, sex, poor and all
(20:32):
that stuff. UM that's very frequently censored. For example, like
in um a lot of Muslim countries. Iran supposedly is
working on what they're calling a Halal Internet, which is
very much sanitized version of the Internet with all of
that that stuff. The social censorship being enacted um, and
(20:54):
from what I understand, Iran is not so. Uh. I
don't know if am business is the word or deluded
maybe that they're thinking they can replace the actual Internet
in Iran. I think their ultimate goal, of what outsiders
are thinking. Uh, their ultimate goal is to create like
a side by side Internet. Yeah. Like, here's the Halal
(21:17):
version that any like any practicing Muslim can can access
and feel good about. Here's the other one that um
is connected to the rest of the world economically and informationally. Yeah,
and that was um you sent in this great article
web censorship colon the Net is closing in wherein the
(21:37):
writer basically proposes that this is the future of the
Internet is a bunch of separate internets. Yeah, it was um.
Eric Schmidt from Google his bff Jared Cohen wrote it. Yeah. Yeah,
and they basically envisioned a future where there isn't a
worldwide Web so much as there is a Russian Internet,
an American Internet, a Halal Internet. And uh, it used
(22:01):
to be I didn't even know this. There was an
English only language standard for a while, but um, that's
all changing now. Uh. And now you have internationalized domain
names that uh, you know, like they can have a
Sunni only Internet that they can read in their language
and their characters, and UM has no English whatsoever. So
(22:23):
where are people going to go? If they speak that language,
They're going to go to that internet, right, And Eric
Schmidt foresees this time when the UM the Internet very
much resembles the world. So if you want to go
on to another country's website, you're gonna need some sort
of virtual passports something like that. It's super interesting, UM.
And you may have to pay a fee to go
(22:43):
on there, and you're gonna be subject to that country's
rules and laws and regulations, just like you would if
you were traveling physically to that country. UM. And that
all of this is going to arise from censorship from
this society saying we value you this, and we find
this evil, UM, some government saying this challenges our official stance,
(23:07):
so we have to have that taken out. So all
of these competing different international interests UM will ultimately fracture.
The Internet will will still be interconnected, but it will
be compartmentalized. Yeah. He even envisioned the future where someone
would have to seek Internet asylum, which was I don't know, man,
(23:28):
it's just it's crazy. He I mean, he basically says
this is already underway, uh in some in some former fashion.
So where it goes, we'll see. Oh yeah, definitely is
He was saying. The ultimate outcome of this will be
when some government or some country can figure out an
alternate to the domain naming system, which is the directory
(23:51):
for the entire Internet right now, if you can figure
out a way to not have to use that, you
can disconnect from the Internet, and you would basically create
a separate Internet just for your society, and that would
be that would lead to the ultimate censorship. Yeah, it
almost It's not even the Internet at that point. It's
like a set of widely published guidelines and things. That's
(24:17):
all it is. It's just a big collection of articles
and things they deem Okay, because to me, internet means access,
so whatever. Yeah, I mean, but you're you're you grew
up as the Internet grew up, so you understood what
it or you understand what it was originally meant to be. Yeah, Like,
you can't just publish the World Book Encyclopedia online and
(24:39):
call it the Internet. That's just a specific set of information,
you know what I mean? Good point, Now there's anything
wrong with World Book Encyclopedia. It's a great encyclopedia. They
should sponsor us. All Right, we're gonna take another break,
and right after we're gonna talk a little bit more
about some of the the countries that are the biggest
defenders in Internet censorship. All right, before we left, we
(25:13):
were talking about China. Uh. There's a group called Reporters
Without Borders and they cover much more than Internet censorship,
but they do have a list of offending countries and
uh it reads like this, Belarus, China, Cuba, which have
some more stuff on Cuba, Iran, um Minimar, Me and
(25:34):
mar Me and mar What I say, Minimar Minimar Apparently
they've gotten a lot better, Um Burma has well, they
opened up big time their society. Yeah, in September two
thousand eleven is when they really like made a bunch
of big reforms and um. But the problem there is
only one percent of the country our internet users to
begin with. Well, supposedly those people that do use the
(25:56):
Internet are have um screenshots taken of what their computer
use every couple of minutes by government sensors. Yeah. I
think that a lot of that's changing now though. Great
since two thousand eleven, UM, a few more Saudi Arabia,
North Korea, Avi, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, and Uzbekistan. That's
(26:18):
where you're gonna find a lot of censorship going on.
And Cuba is really interesting. Um. They used to not
have private internet at all, Like you had to go
to an internet cafe, government run internet cafe and everything
was monitored, cameras in there. Even Um. Apparently Cuba is
even coming into the New World a little bit because
(26:39):
now five percent of Cubans have home access. UM. But
it is slow. Yes, this one writer went there and
he said it took him an hour to upload a
thirty megabyte image. Um, that took like five seconds at
home on Google Drive. So they don't have broadband obviously.
Now when that embargo gets lifted, there's no telling how
(27:01):
fast things are going to change there. Well, the U
S and the U N are already working with them
to try and improve their internet in their internet access.
But um, as a nation, they rank a DW five
out of one in telecom development. So um, they're uh.
The nice way to say it is there behind the curve,
you know what I'm saying. Well, that's um, that raises
(27:24):
a kind of a good point. You're talking about how
slow it is. You couldn't even buy a computer there
until two thousand seven, you could not purchase a computer.
Man A lie. Yeahn't crazy. Um, but with with very
slow internet, that in and of itself is considered a
form of censorship. Yeah, I guess so. So you know
this whole thing about net neutrality that was going on, Yeah,
(27:46):
so that deserves its own show, of course it does.
But let's just briefly say, with net neutrality the Telecoms UM,
the Internet service providers managed to petition the Supreme Court
basically say the f c C can treat you guys
in the same way that they you treat websites as
(28:07):
information services and an information services basically, it's like an
independent business that creates or provides content for the web. UM.
Under the Telecoms Act, the Internet service providers were what
are called common carriers and were to be treated just
like a telephone provider, which is, you have unfettered, unrestricted
(28:31):
access to the telephone lines. Yeah, not like I'm a
T and T. I'm gonna pay a lot for a
phone line that works. But this other company if they
don't pay as much you won't be able to get
your calls place exactly. Um. Or I'm a T and
T and I don't think you should be saying what
you're saying or talking to this person, so I'm going
(28:52):
to restrict your ability to call that person, right. Um.
That's what was going on with this, uh, the Supreme
Court decision, and with the idea that telecommunications companies were
anything other than common carriers. Right, So they were almost
getting to the point where they were going to be
allowed to restrict access to um throttle speeds so that
(29:14):
you could pay for a faster speed if you were
saying Netflix or something like that. But then a new
startup company wouldn't have that kind of money and would
be strangled in the cradle. Was was how the idea went. Well,
fortunately the idea was overturned by the SEC. The SEC
said what amounts to we're going to treat the telecoms
(29:36):
like common carriers from here on out, and that means
that they have to provide unrestricted access to the Internet
for everybody. And it was a really big deal. It
was very close. It was it maybe like the biggest
thing moving forward in in well clearly with like the
Internet but um, and it touches all kinds of business
(29:57):
and personal privacy and everything, like we need to do
a show on that. I agree in full, Yeah, that neutrality.
But the point was was that if you throttle speeds,
those things that load more slowly than others are going
to in effect be censored, because I mean, how long
do you sit around for a website to load before
(30:19):
you just close the tab and move on six or
eight minutes? What? Okay, I met six or eight nano
second and you got me. Um. So that in and
of itself, as a form of censorship that was avoided
by the SEC. Adopting this common carrier approach to the
I S P S well, would just create monopolies. People
would be squeezed out, Smaller companies would never have a chance,
(30:40):
true to you know. Yeah, well, I guess we should
talk about some of the opponents of internet censorship. UM.
The A c l U is a big one obviously. UM.
They have taken they pretty much squashed the Children's Online
Protection Act and its tracks. This was introduced, it was
actually passed the eight but it was never implemented because
(31:02):
it just was pounded on year after year basically, UM,
and as unconstitutional. And that was a law that made
it illegal to present materials that, um, we're deemed harmful
to minors, even if it was valid for adults. Right,
And they basically time and time again it was taken
to court and they said, no, you can't do that,
(31:23):
No you can't. And another one that they tried was
called SOPA to Stop Online Piracy Act, remember that, and
it basically said that if you even link to uh,
somebody that provides pirated material, your entire website can be
taken down, if you even link to that that site. Um,
(31:43):
and that came very close and you think, well, I mean,
what's wrong with with protecting copyrighted material? Seawan Austin's in
favor of it, you know, Yeah, he was like the
face of that campaign for a while. Um a Gooney
right or Rudy yeah? Or he was Um was he Froda? No,
(32:04):
he was Sam Wise Gamgees. I think, yeah, so, um,
you had the SOPA, you had COPA, you had SIPPA,
you had all these things that we're protecting the children
or protecting intellectual copyrights. But a lot of people kind
of saw through these as smoke screens and said, ultimately,
what you're doing is creating a law that gives blanket
(32:28):
right to governments, to the US government, to police what
we do on the internet. You're you can you're dressing
it up to protect intellectual property rights or to protect children,
but ultimately what you're doing is setting in motion government
censorship of the Internet. And it got stopped. But it's
a from what I understand, it's a there's no resting
(32:50):
on your laurels kind of stuff going on, Like you're
that this fight is not going away anytime soon. Yeah,
I mean that's that's how it always works, is that
will sell it to you as some thing that you
need and I think you should have, but what it
really is is something else. So chuck um. There's this
you win report recently, a special report that basically said
(33:13):
internet kill switches are a violation of human rights. Yeah
that was two days ago or yesterday. Hot breaking news,
breaking news, hot breaking news, fresh from the oven. So
an internet kill switch is kind of a misnomer because
it's not like there's a buttoner switch that any country
or government could just turn off the Internet. What you
(33:35):
can do is, especially say like with um cell phone providers,
it's usually self cell phone and internet access that's falling
under this. And in the United States, there is something
called Standard Operating Procedure three oh three s o P.
Three oh three. You might not have heard of it
because boy, it didn't have much banfare around it and
(33:56):
quietly passed. The Department of Homeland Security is UH fighting
tooth and nail to keep them the details of it
under wraps. Yeah, completely. But basically what happened is in
two thousand six, the Bush administration, and it was later
supported by the Obama administration, said the the federal government
(34:17):
needs to have the ability to turn off the Internet
in some way, shape or form whenever it deems an emergency. Yeah,
And the whole thing was borne out of these um
London bombings, London underground bombings. Yeah, in two thousand five,
when the subway attacks happened, we actually did this. We
threw the kill switch on in the Holland Tunnel and
(34:38):
the Lincoln Tunnel in New York on cell phones, cell
phone because these bombers used their cell phones to trigger
the bomb. That's right. So the problem was but that
it didn't work. No, it did, Like even the Department
of Homelands, I mean it worked. They cut him out
but the DHS even said there was disorder for both
governmental and private sectors at the time when the use
(34:58):
of communication infrastruct sure was most needed. Right. So, so
that is one very big argument against the an internet
or cellular kill switch. More chaos it does, and like
you really need to be able to get in touch
with friends, family, coordinate, absolutely to a safe place, what
have you. So to just cut out that kind of
that level of communication, that's one argument against it. Another
(35:21):
one is that it can be very easily used by
a government to quell um popular unrest to protest, which
happened as well in San Francisco. Yeah, with the h
at the the subway, the bart shooting of Oscar Grant
at fruit Bale station. Um, they learned in August two
thousand eleven that was going to be demonstrations going on,
(35:43):
so they shut off cell phone service at the subway
station so people couldn't organize. And that was, you know,
supposedly just going to be a peaceful protest, right, So
that was n dude, we're talking about that same exact
play was used by hose Ni Mubark during the popular
uprisings in Egypt. I mean, like the same exact thing.
(36:06):
So the upshot of this is that DHS is protecting
the secrets of s o P. Three oh three, but
it very much does exist, and the government does have
the power and the capability to turn off the Internet
in entire cities, uh, if it deems it necessary. Yeah.
And there's very important ruly coming down here in the
(36:26):
next couple of weeks because in two thousand to the
Electronic Privacy Information Center follow the suit in federal court
seeking disclosure about the basic guidelines and policies of this
s o P. Three oh three, and they're gonna be
ruling on it soon. And they're not saying open the
books on everything because we want to compromise our safety.
They're saying, like what what what triggers this decision? As
(36:48):
one big question? Yeah, and who is who is doing this?
They're not, you know, basically right now it says that
there is um It can come from a state Homeland
Security advisor, their designies, or representatives of the d h
US Homeland Security Operations Center, nothing president or anything like that. Yeah.
And then there's a sub agency called the National Coordinating
Center for Communications and they are the ones that says
(37:11):
that are tasked with a series of questions to determine
if a shutdown is necessary, and like youre are these
people and what are the questions? And what are the questions?
And again they're not saying this um while some people
are saying this should never happen in any circumstances, including
the U. But um and in the United States, it's
a prior restraint on free speech. It's as simple as that.
(37:32):
So it's automatically unconstitutional to do this. But the fight
right now at least is for more transparency and an
understanding of the policy at least, so we'll see where
that goes. But man, that is scary. Yeah, it is
San Francisco shutting down. I mean it sounds like China
or Egypt. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And no one knows about
this stuff much because I don't know people are on Facebook, k.
(37:58):
Yeah they might be where you learn about something like that.
In fairness, but plus, I would say the national media
is at its lowest point as far as being a
public service in its history in the United States. It's
just shameful where the popular media is. They're just laptogs
and stenographers. Is disgusting. Yeah, it's pretty pretty bad. Scene
(38:20):
these days. Really, it's Chuck. I'm waiting for the pendulum
to swing in the other way towards responsibility, and yeah,
that's happening soon. Detected sarcastic. You never know, man, Sometimes
things go bad in one direction and people wake up
and go back to Uh, it's like a farm to
table now. You know, people like trash for so long
(38:41):
and now it's like the complete opposite. People really care
about the food they eat and where it comes from.
Oh that's true. Do you got anything else? Internet censorship
is just like the farm to table movement. That's the takeaway.
Just make that connection, and you're John Hawkinberry. If you
want to know more about that censorship, you should type
(39:02):
those words into the search part house to works dot com.
You should just type those words into some search engine
somewhere and learn more about it. Absolutely, you can visit
Stuff you Should Know dot com and the podcast page
for this episode, and it's got tons of links to
good stuff about this. Um And I said, search bart
in there somewhere. So it's time for listener mail. I'm
gonna call this you saved the beginning of my honeymoon.
(39:24):
Um Gods, we're from Seattle and We just got married
a week ago. This is a man and a woman,
he said. We left right away after the wedding for
a honeymoon. Flew to Maui on a six hour flight. Boy,
that's not bad at Seattle. Huh no, that's nice. Like,
what do you gotta fly that's like ten hours twelve
and you gotta stop in California probably. I think there's
direct flights from Atlanta this to say that along flight. Yeah,
(39:47):
it's about like twelve hour flight. One of the many
benefits of living in Seattle. My dad um So, we
flew to Maui and during the flight out to set
it in front of us was a Russian family with
three one year old triplets. I don't know why it matters.
They were Russian. They were crying in Russian, I guess,
and he said they were very disturbing. Uh. One would
(40:07):
set the other one off, and it led to the
mom rocking the kids, and then the kids would start crying,
and kids didn't like being rocked, and he ended up
kicking me in the head. He said, did I get mad? No, guys,
because I was listening to you the entire flight. On
the return flight, a woman in the row in front
of us, proceeded to get more and more drunk throughout
(40:27):
the entire flight, and ended up drunkenly shouting and other
passengers talking politics and religion, pushing other people's seats, and
staggering to the bathroom every couple of minutes. What is
wrong with people? Wow, you're on a plane. You're not
in your home. Put your shoes on. Don't get drunk. Hey, Hey,
there's nothing wrong with taking your shoes off on a plane. Yes,
(40:47):
there is. You're not in your living room. There's nothing
wrong with as long as your feet stay in your
little section while your feet are you should never take
your shoes off in public. All right, that's fine, she's
a rout right now. I'm disgusted. Um again, my stress
levels at zero because I was still learning about snakes
and water slides and clowns. Other than saving my sanity,
(41:10):
I wanna. I think you saved several lives. Without your
common voices, I would have undoubtedly thrown the woman from
the plane halfway over the Pacific Ocean. It would have
been like the good Shepherd. What's that that Matt Damon
movie about the beginning of the CIA? Or he throws
his sons. Oh yeah, seem to be wife out of
the plane. Yeah, and that was disturbing. What's wrong on
(41:31):
that day? And that was disturbing. I hope you guys
realized the public service that you do. Thanks Jesse and wife.
That clown episode was one of our better ones. If
you ask me, I have it all agreed. Chills, thrills, clowns.
H uh. If you want to get in touch with
us like Jesse and uh his wife, he didn't mention
(41:51):
her because Jesse is selfish. Well, congrats to you guys.
Yes regardless. Um. You can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, especially if you're
not a troll. You can send us an email to
Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has
always joined us at home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
(42:18):
of other topics, is it how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant's Stuff you Should
Know with Jerry. Depending where you are in the world,
you may not be hearing this right now. Yeah, I've
(00:22):
heard tell that we are banned in China. I don't
know that that's true. I bet it's true. We're not
FETs in first Yeah, but well we'll get that. I'll
bet you couldn't find our Chinese pollution Sniffer episode though. Well,
that's what I'm saying about. There are certain things um
or the one child policy episode. I bet you couldn't
(00:43):
find that, which, by the way, probably banded China. It's
a little weird that we didn't even mention that episode
in the zero population episode. Did we not? Not only
did we not mention that episode, apparently we didn't even
mention China's one child policy at all. I thought it.
It doesn't seem like us. Actually, it seems exactly like us.
(01:05):
You know what I did though public service announcement. I
said it was okay for poisonous spiders to bite your dog,
And that's not true. I don't know where I got that.
I definitely didn't make it up like I read it,
and I couldn't find it and it's wrong. So um,
it is not good for your animals to get bitten
by poisonous spiders, and of all people, for me to
(01:27):
say that I was shamed. Okay, that's right. I just
want to correct that up front, because I think that's good.
That's as long as you correct yourself when you find
out like, that's great. Chu. Yeah, it just bothered me
that I couldn't find out where I did it and
people just thought I was just free wheeling. You know,
it doesn't matter. Uh, So Okay, you feel better now
you got that off your chest. Are you ready to
(01:49):
talk about in a censorship in all of its vicious, pernicious,
nefarious forms. Okay, let's do it. So um. In researching
this article, fine article by John Strickland, hosts of tech Stuff,
who has probably covered this eight ways from Sunday. So
if this floats your boat, go check out tech Stuff
(02:10):
as the podcast. It's good stuff and it's tech stuff. Um.
The I found that I knew most of this stuff already,
but I also found in doing like external research that
he followed pretty much the standard of explaining censorship on
the Internet, and that it takes a number of different forms,
(02:31):
but ultimately its goal is the same. It's just restricting
access to information, whether that information be in the form
of a neuty picture or a picture or an essay
that is that controverts some sort of official policy of
a government. Um, there's all sorts of different ways that
(02:54):
you can restrict access to information, and we've been doing
it for a very very very long time. Like this
is nothing new. It's just censorship in a new form
in a new medium. That's right, because I mean we
did when I book Banning pretty old way form of censorship,
the m p a A. That was another censorship episode.
(03:15):
And so now that we have the Internet, there's this
big struggle over just how much access should people be allowed.
And a lot of people say unfettered, total access to
everything all the time. Everyone should have. If you don't
want your kids looking at stuff, buy a web filter,
do it yourself. But it's not the role of anybody
(03:36):
else besides parents specifically with their children, to fetter access
on the Internet. And I kind of agree with that.
Well yeah, well, and it's apparent like I wouldn't want
to leave that to someone else anyway, you know. Point
like I think a parent should decide when and where
(03:58):
their kids discover certain things, just have that in their control,
you know. So I get that part of it for sure. Um,
so I guess we should go ahead and start there.
That is One form of Internet censorship is apparent saying
I've seen the web. I know it's on that thing.
It gets kind of dark, it gets super dark, like
by accident sometimes you know, like you've typed the wrong
(04:22):
thing in in Google images before and been shocked at
what you found. Imagine like havn then like a ten
year old kids seeing that kind of thing. Yeah, no,
good no, And you can't stand over your kid and
put your hand over their eyes or hand over their
ears or anything like that all the time. So there's
software for this kind of thing. Yeah, And again I
don't think it's about like raising your child in a
(04:43):
bubble where they think that the world is roses and rainbows.
But um, as apparent, you probably want to be in
control of what kind of disturbing images they see at
what age, you know. So Yeah, there's things, uh CYBERsitter. Um,
there's programs called net nanny and uh right, Now, what
they do is, um, they have a series of options,
(05:04):
generally that you can select as a parent on what
sites that your child can access, and then those options
till the program to enable certain filters. Then all of
a sudden, your kids goes to type and YouTube and um,
a big frownie face pops up like a crying baby's face.
Shame on you. What did you want to do on YouTube?
Your man? Um, So what you're talking about is a
(05:26):
web filter program. Yeah, it's a software add on, right,
and um. Web filters use one of two techniques to
censor the Internet. Right. They use blacklists, which is a
list of specific domain names that you are not allowed
to access keywords um. And then there's also well no,
(05:47):
that's different. That's the other one is keywords. Okay, So
a blacklist is like, um, how stuff works dot Com?
Yea on the list, and so if your kid tries
to go to how stuff works dot com or any
of its subdomains, it's gonna be blocked. Yeah, those are
the filter options that I was talking about, but with
the keyword yeah, it's a different type of filter option
(06:07):
where um, there's keywords, Uh that if when, when the
kid tries to go to a website this um. The
web filter scans the page to see if there's any
of these keywords, and if there are, then it'll block
that site. Yeah, because those keywords are what are put
there so you can find those things. Like if you
(06:28):
see the keyword to like some porn video, it'll have
a whole list of words describing what you're seeing. And
so if you have those keywords, um, it'll it'll root
it out. And so you can't go because that site
said I had the keyword ejaculate. It's probably once. It's funny.
I meant to tell you when we did the male
Puberty UM episode. I went onto the computer, the public
(06:52):
computer at the clubhouse. UM, and my clubhouse, right, why
don't you do that? It's a print. I don't have
a printer at home. You still don't have a printer. No,
that's a good printer at the clubhouse. There's a big
difference between printer at home and like a good printer
and the clubhouse printer. This printer is a good printer.
You know what they say, club can't beat the clubhouse printer. Right.
But I tried to go on and it was like, no,
(07:13):
you can't. You can't open this web page really because
it was had I'm sure it was erection is what
blocked it. And it said Josh Clark and unit can't
go on to read about male puberty. Uh. But then
I tried it again, I refreshed and it was like okay,
and it let me on. So it wasn't the best
web filter ever. But and you didn't get a strongly lettered,
(07:34):
uh worded letter shoved under your door that night, not
that night. All right, that's good. So yeah, blocking out
these keywords, um these blacklist keyword blocking, that's a It's
a great way to filter out nefarious websites. There's also firewalls,
and I've been trying to get to the bottom of
the difference between a firewall and a web filter. I
(07:56):
heard you in Strickland talking about it earlier. Oh yeah,
you had to ask that the pro Yeah, and uh yeah,
it's pretty cool. I can go to the author of
the article and ask Yeah. I almost went down there
and I was like, Josh, I'll tell me. So. A
firewall basically protects the computer or the local network from
the rest of the Internet, not just websites, but um
(08:19):
internet relay chats like instant messaging, uh, email, all that stuff.
It protects it and it says you can come through,
you can come through, but you can't come through, and
protects from viruses and malware and attacks and that kind
of stuff, whereas a web filter is um it more
says you can't go onto these things, so they still
(08:42):
exist like technically on your computer. Right, is that the difference,
like the firewall is further upstream. No, no, am I
misunderstanding it. It's it's actually the nuances is difficult to understand.
If you go and type been difference between firewall and
web filter, it doesn't bring up a lot of stuff,
(09:03):
and this stuff that does bring up, it's it's kind
of hard to understand. So basically, the firewall protects your
entire computer or network from the rest of the Internet.
A web filter restricts access from your computer to the
rest of the Internet. It's almost directional difference going out
or coming in. We don't have to bring him in
here doing I'm gonna go kid, no, no, it'll be
(09:25):
like the necronomic episode all over again. So um. One
of the problems with web filtering software that opponents like
to harp on is that they don't. Um, it's just
like keywords and things. They can't talk about context and
filtering context. So you might not be able to get
a recipe for chicken breast because as we're breast in it, um,
(09:46):
which you know, I guess if your kid let's cook
chicken breasts, he's out of luck, right, you know, because
it's only like the network, it's just for the kid, right,
Like they have to log on and that enacts the software.
It's probably on all the time. And then if you're
the parent, you can be like, uh, no, I need
(10:06):
this chicken brest recipe, right, or you're you have it
on the one computer that your kid uses and you
trust them to not use your philip frog, your filthy computer.
You know. Uh, it's got flies buzzing around. That's um,
that's the home version. When you're just trying to protect
your kiddies from seeing the darkness that is the web.
(10:30):
A lot of people can't argue with that. Um. There's
also business censorship, which we don't have really here because
we have to research all kinds of things. Part of
our job is to be on social media. But um,
if you work for a big corporation, you may not
even be able to get on Facebook at work. Well,
from what I could tell, Facebook is probably the most
(10:50):
censored website on the entire Internet. Yeah, I believe that. Um,
like far and away, Yeah, there's like, uh, there was
this list from I think it was like two thousand
leaven which is just totally out of date for this
kind of stuff. Sure, but Facebook was like four and
the rest of them. I think the next one was
maybe my Space or something like that, and like ten
(11:14):
of all businesses banned that or something. So like far
and away, Facebook is the most banned, which makes sense
because it's a time suck. Yes it is. And if
you if your job has nothing to do with social
there's no reason for you to be on Facebook for
any reason whatsoever. Now they really didn't um and uh,
since we're talking about Facebook. For the followers of stuff
(11:37):
you should know who are listeners to this show, I
apologize for all the non listeners that have invaded our
Facebook page. Oh what happened every there? Well, we just
we really grew a ton remember on that like one
year span, and I don't know how, but we got
blasted out and a lot of people who have no
idea who we are that we even have a podcast.
(11:59):
Just started following the page. I guess it's like, oh,
this is interesting things, you know? And just follow the feed?
And are they a lot of fun to have on
their jerks man And you can spot him a mile
away because the stuff you should know. Army is well
known to be very understanding, smart, compassionate, forward thinking people,
and these people are trolls. And it really stinks because
(12:20):
I have to heavily moderate it now and I used to.
It just used to be a fun place for open
minded people to exchange ideas in a respectful way. And
it's just not like that anymore. No, shut that one
down and start over. No, you shouldn't shut it down.
But I was talking with someone on one of our
fans on Facebook the other day because they were commenting
(12:40):
about that, and I said, I wish there was a
brief quiz you had to pass um in order to
like like this page, like where Josh and Chuck what's
the largest manufacturer of tires in the world? Now even easier,
like what's a podcast? Because they be they throw up
some meme that says like you you know, yeah, anyway,
(13:01):
I just want to throw that in there. I'm sorry
for people have had a bad experience there lately. That
is why our fans are so nice to us, because
stuff like that we care. Um. So anyway, it's a
big time suck emphasis on suck. Uh. And so that's
the reason they shut it down the others to avoid harassment,
which makes sense. Um, your co worker might bring up
(13:24):
a porn image. Uh, you know, some dude might say,
who took this out? Hostile work environment? Hostile work environment,
and a company cannot risk that at all because they'll
get sued, sued, sued, And so the easiest thing to
do is just to shut it down. YEA restrict access.
Restrict access. So that makes sense in a way. It does.
And if you want to know more about your employer
(13:47):
governing your work computer, yeah, you go check out our
episode is your employer Spying on you? That was a
good one. It was a good one. Um. We're gonna
keep going right after this, so chuck, We've we've covered
(14:16):
parents censoring the Internet for their kids, employers censoring the
Internet for their employees. Kind of difficult to argue with
either one of those, especially if the employer is censoring
the Internet for their employees work computer. That the employer
provided during work hours. It's tough to it's tough to
be like, no, it's wrong, it's wrong. But again, we're
(14:39):
coming from a place where we have like basically unrestricted
access to the Internet, so it might suck to work
under those draconian measures of stuff. We look up you know,
it's drawn some lists made for um the third censorship,
the third level, I guess is much greater. And this
(15:00):
is the one where people really start to go berserk.
And I think rightfully so. And that's government control. Government
censorship of the Internet. And pretty much every country that
allows access to the Internet, which is basically every country
these days. Um, there's some level of censorship to some degree.
(15:21):
Some are much worse than others, but basically, all governments,
in one way, shape or form censor what there citizens
can access on the Internet. Yeah, and um, even before that,
like search engines themselves sensor because if like Google and
Yahoo didn't censor anything, the search results you would get
(15:43):
would just be no good, it would be like something. Yeah,
so they do their own censorship. But that's um. As
far as the government goes. Uh, there's something called the
Open Net Initiative. Oh and I and they're an organization
that UM. Their dedication is to inform the public about
web filtering and surveillance around the world. I want to
(16:04):
dedicate this to the UH. And they have four categories
of UM web filtering. Political, which is when you, let's say,
you want to speak out against your leaders and your
country may not allow that. You know, if you have
a blog, they may censor your blog. UH. Yeah, there's
a pretty good UM example of this recently in China
(16:27):
and India. They both followed the same trajectory but two
different ends. UM. In China there was a documentary about
Chinese pollution called Under the Dome. It went viral and
like it got two hundred million views in the first
day or something like that, and it was government approved.
The documentary was right, but it took off, and UM
(16:49):
the Chinese government took it down and they did so successfully,
Like you couldn't find that anywhere in China after that.
India there was a documentary around the same time that
was about that very infamous UM public transportation rape case UM,
and it went viral and got a ton of us too,
and it also got people talking in India about this
(17:11):
again and UM the government tried to take that down,
but in a very clumsy manner, and it was very
ineffective as well. But both both both governments tried to
do the same thing. There was something that was going on,
it was stirring up the populace, and they tried to
center it by taking down a restricting restricting access to it. Yeah,
(17:32):
and the China one, to me is just crazy because,
like I said, it was government approved, the documentary was,
so they didn't even have a problem with the documentary.
But in China they will censor things. They will censor
anything that seems likely to spur any kind of activism
at all. Right, Well, there was a study that UM
found that a post if you have a couple of
(17:55):
posts that are say, critical to the government, but one
so both are critical of the government, but one of
them advocates collective action like getting people rolled up, like
let's go meet in Tianamen Square or something like that,
that's the one that's gonna get taken down. So they're
they're really concerned not necessarily just with criticism, but more
(18:18):
so about um fomenting popular unrest. And China gets picked
on all the time, and and rightfully so. They probably
are the world's most prolific censor at least biggest because
of the size of their population and the measures they take.
They they have what's called the Great Firewall of China.
(18:38):
But I think especially in countries in Western democracies, it's
a bit of a red herring because it's kind of like, God,
look at what China is doing, Look at how much
it really kind of detracts from the censorship that goes
on here in the United States and other Western democracies. Um,
that's just as pernicious, if not worse, because this is
taking place in what's supposed to be an open, liberal democracy.
(19:01):
Yeah you know, Yeah, you're right, But it is kind
of easy to pick on China. Well, of course it is. Um.
They also will There was a post in two thousand
eleven that, um, there was a rumor that salt could
stave off radiation poisoning from the Fukushima reactor, and China
quash that because people were going out and buying a
(19:23):
bunch of salt. I remember that. So again, Um, they
just squashed that because people are buying up too much salt,
because it would supposedly pack your thyroids so full that
your thyroid couldn't absorb the radiation. That was why Yeah,
and it basically just bounced off. If you're famous in China,
you're going to be heavily scrutinized, so you gotta watch
(19:46):
what you post and if you're way away, oh yeah, yeah,
that's a good point. Um. And then the thing I
saw said that like small time users and bloggers that
that complain about the government, it's not like, uh, such
a police state that they'll like take down all of that. Um,
if you have some influence, you're much more likely going
(20:08):
to be censored. You know, like if you're not getting
a ton of web hits and you're speaking out about
the leadership, then uh, the you probably will just go unnoticed,
you know. So that was the open net initiatives. That
was just one of the four political Um. The next
one is social and that's web pages that are have
to do with like drugs, gambling, sex, poor and all
(20:32):
that stuff. UM that's very frequently censored. For example, like
in um a lot of Muslim countries. Iran supposedly is
working on what they're calling a Halal Internet, which is
very much sanitized version of the Internet with all of
that that stuff. The social censorship being enacted um, and
(20:54):
from what I understand, Iran is not so. Uh. I
don't know if am business is the word or deluded
maybe that they're thinking they can replace the actual Internet
in Iran. I think their ultimate goal, of what outsiders
are thinking. Uh, their ultimate goal is to create like
a side by side Internet. Yeah. Like, here's the Halal
(21:17):
version that any like any practicing Muslim can can access
and feel good about. Here's the other one that um
is connected to the rest of the world economically and informationally. Yeah,
and that was um you sent in this great article
web censorship colon the Net is closing in wherein the
(21:37):
writer basically proposes that this is the future of the
Internet is a bunch of separate internets. Yeah, it was um.
Eric Schmidt from Google his bff Jared Cohen wrote it. Yeah. Yeah,
and they basically envisioned a future where there isn't a
worldwide Web so much as there is a Russian Internet,
an American Internet, a Halal Internet. And uh, it used
(22:01):
to be I didn't even know this. There was an
English only language standard for a while, but um, that's
all changing now. Uh. And now you have internationalized domain
names that uh, you know, like they can have a
Sunni only Internet that they can read in their language
and their characters, and UM has no English whatsoever. So
(22:23):
where are people going to go? If they speak that language,
They're going to go to that internet, right, And Eric
Schmidt foresees this time when the UM the Internet very
much resembles the world. So if you want to go
on to another country's website, you're gonna need some sort
of virtual passports something like that. It's super interesting, UM.
And you may have to pay a fee to go
(22:43):
on there, and you're gonna be subject to that country's
rules and laws and regulations, just like you would if
you were traveling physically to that country. UM. And that
all of this is going to arise from censorship from
this society saying we value you this, and we find
this evil, UM, some government saying this challenges our official stance,
(23:07):
so we have to have that taken out. So all
of these competing different international interests UM will ultimately fracture.
The Internet will will still be interconnected, but it will
be compartmentalized. Yeah. He even envisioned the future where someone
would have to seek Internet asylum, which was I don't know, man,
(23:28):
it's just it's crazy. He I mean, he basically says
this is already underway, uh in some in some former fashion.
So where it goes, we'll see. Oh yeah, definitely is
He was saying. The ultimate outcome of this will be
when some government or some country can figure out an
alternate to the domain naming system, which is the directory
(23:51):
for the entire Internet right now, if you can figure
out a way to not have to use that, you
can disconnect from the Internet, and you would basically create
a separate Internet just for your society, and that would
be that would lead to the ultimate censorship. Yeah, it
almost It's not even the Internet at that point. It's
like a set of widely published guidelines and things. That's
(24:17):
all it is. It's just a big collection of articles
and things they deem Okay, because to me, internet means access,
so whatever. Yeah, I mean, but you're you're you grew
up as the Internet grew up, so you understood what
it or you understand what it was originally meant to be. Yeah, Like,
you can't just publish the World Book Encyclopedia online and
(24:39):
call it the Internet. That's just a specific set of information,
you know what I mean? Good point, Now there's anything
wrong with World Book Encyclopedia. It's a great encyclopedia. They
should sponsor us. All Right, we're gonna take another break,
and right after we're gonna talk a little bit more
about some of the the countries that are the biggest
defenders in Internet censorship. All right, before we left, we
(25:13):
were talking about China. Uh. There's a group called Reporters
Without Borders and they cover much more than Internet censorship,
but they do have a list of offending countries and
uh it reads like this, Belarus, China, Cuba, which have
some more stuff on Cuba, Iran, um Minimar, Me and
(25:34):
mar Me and mar What I say, Minimar Minimar Apparently
they've gotten a lot better, Um Burma has well, they
opened up big time their society. Yeah, in September two
thousand eleven is when they really like made a bunch
of big reforms and um. But the problem there is
only one percent of the country our internet users to
begin with. Well, supposedly those people that do use the
(25:56):
Internet are have um screenshots taken of what their computer
use every couple of minutes by government sensors. Yeah. I
think that a lot of that's changing now though. Great
since two thousand eleven, UM, a few more Saudi Arabia,
North Korea, Avi, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, and Uzbekistan. That's
(26:18):
where you're gonna find a lot of censorship going on.
And Cuba is really interesting. Um. They used to not
have private internet at all, Like you had to go
to an internet cafe, government run internet cafe and everything
was monitored, cameras in there. Even Um. Apparently Cuba is
even coming into the New World a little bit because
(26:39):
now five percent of Cubans have home access. UM. But
it is slow. Yes, this one writer went there and
he said it took him an hour to upload a
thirty megabyte image. Um, that took like five seconds at
home on Google Drive. So they don't have broadband obviously.
Now when that embargo gets lifted, there's no telling how
(27:01):
fast things are going to change there. Well, the U
S and the U N are already working with them
to try and improve their internet in their internet access.
But um, as a nation, they rank a DW five
out of one in telecom development. So um, they're uh.
The nice way to say it is there behind the curve,
you know what I'm saying. Well, that's um, that raises
(27:24):
a kind of a good point. You're talking about how
slow it is. You couldn't even buy a computer there
until two thousand seven, you could not purchase a computer.
Man A lie. Yeahn't crazy. Um, but with with very
slow internet, that in and of itself is considered a
form of censorship. Yeah, I guess so. So you know
this whole thing about net neutrality that was going on, Yeah,
(27:46):
so that deserves its own show, of course it does.
But let's just briefly say, with net neutrality the Telecoms UM,
the Internet service providers managed to petition the Supreme Court
basically say the f c C can treat you guys
in the same way that they you treat websites as
(28:07):
information services and an information services basically, it's like an
independent business that creates or provides content for the web. UM.
Under the Telecoms Act, the Internet service providers were what
are called common carriers and were to be treated just
like a telephone provider, which is, you have unfettered, unrestricted
(28:31):
access to the telephone lines. Yeah, not like I'm a
T and T. I'm gonna pay a lot for a
phone line that works. But this other company if they
don't pay as much you won't be able to get
your calls place exactly. Um. Or I'm a T and
T and I don't think you should be saying what
you're saying or talking to this person, so I'm going
(28:52):
to restrict your ability to call that person, right. Um.
That's what was going on with this, uh, the Supreme
Court decision, and with the idea that telecommunications companies were
anything other than common carriers. Right, So they were almost
getting to the point where they were going to be
allowed to restrict access to um throttle speeds so that
(29:14):
you could pay for a faster speed if you were
saying Netflix or something like that. But then a new
startup company wouldn't have that kind of money and would
be strangled in the cradle. Was was how the idea went. Well,
fortunately the idea was overturned by the SEC. The SEC
said what amounts to we're going to treat the telecoms
(29:36):
like common carriers from here on out, and that means
that they have to provide unrestricted access to the Internet
for everybody. And it was a really big deal. It
was very close. It was it maybe like the biggest
thing moving forward in in well clearly with like the
Internet but um, and it touches all kinds of business
(29:57):
and personal privacy and everything, like we need to do
a show on that. I agree in full, Yeah, that neutrality.
But the point was was that if you throttle speeds,
those things that load more slowly than others are going
to in effect be censored, because I mean, how long
do you sit around for a website to load before
(30:19):
you just close the tab and move on six or
eight minutes? What? Okay, I met six or eight nano
second and you got me. Um. So that in and
of itself, as a form of censorship that was avoided
by the SEC. Adopting this common carrier approach to the
I S P S well, would just create monopolies. People
would be squeezed out, Smaller companies would never have a chance,
(30:40):
true to you know. Yeah, well, I guess we should
talk about some of the opponents of internet censorship. UM.
The A c l U is a big one obviously. UM.
They have taken they pretty much squashed the Children's Online
Protection Act and its tracks. This was introduced, it was
actually passed the eight but it was never implemented because
(31:02):
it just was pounded on year after year basically, UM,
and as unconstitutional. And that was a law that made
it illegal to present materials that, um, we're deemed harmful
to minors, even if it was valid for adults. Right,
And they basically time and time again it was taken
to court and they said, no, you can't do that,
(31:23):
No you can't. And another one that they tried was
called SOPA to Stop Online Piracy Act, remember that, and
it basically said that if you even link to uh,
somebody that provides pirated material, your entire website can be
taken down, if you even link to that that site. Um,
(31:43):
and that came very close and you think, well, I mean,
what's wrong with with protecting copyrighted material? Seawan Austin's in
favor of it, you know, Yeah, he was like the
face of that campaign for a while. Um a Gooney
right or Rudy yeah? Or he was Um was he Froda? No,
(32:04):
he was Sam Wise Gamgees. I think, yeah, so, um,
you had the SOPA, you had COPA, you had SIPPA,
you had all these things that we're protecting the children
or protecting intellectual copyrights. But a lot of people kind
of saw through these as smoke screens and said, ultimately,
what you're doing is creating a law that gives blanket
(32:28):
right to governments, to the US government, to police what
we do on the internet. You're you can you're dressing
it up to protect intellectual property rights or to protect children,
but ultimately what you're doing is setting in motion government
censorship of the Internet. And it got stopped. But it's
a from what I understand, it's a there's no resting
(32:50):
on your laurels kind of stuff going on, Like you're
that this fight is not going away anytime soon. Yeah,
I mean that's that's how it always works, is that
will sell it to you as some thing that you
need and I think you should have, but what it
really is is something else. So chuck um. There's this
you win report recently, a special report that basically said
(33:13):
internet kill switches are a violation of human rights. Yeah
that was two days ago or yesterday. Hot breaking news,
breaking news, hot breaking news, fresh from the oven. So
an internet kill switch is kind of a misnomer because
it's not like there's a buttoner switch that any country
or government could just turn off the Internet. What you
(33:35):
can do is, especially say like with um cell phone providers,
it's usually self cell phone and internet access that's falling
under this. And in the United States, there is something
called Standard Operating Procedure three oh three s o P.
Three oh three. You might not have heard of it
because boy, it didn't have much banfare around it and
(33:56):
quietly passed. The Department of Homeland Security is UH fighting
tooth and nail to keep them the details of it
under wraps. Yeah, completely. But basically what happened is in
two thousand six, the Bush administration, and it was later
supported by the Obama administration, said the the federal government
(34:17):
needs to have the ability to turn off the Internet
in some way, shape or form whenever it deems an emergency. Yeah,
And the whole thing was borne out of these um
London bombings, London underground bombings. Yeah, in two thousand five,
when the subway attacks happened, we actually did this. We
threw the kill switch on in the Holland Tunnel and
(34:38):
the Lincoln Tunnel in New York on cell phones, cell
phone because these bombers used their cell phones to trigger
the bomb. That's right. So the problem was but that
it didn't work. No, it did, Like even the Department
of Homelands, I mean it worked. They cut him out
but the DHS even said there was disorder for both
governmental and private sectors at the time when the use
(34:58):
of communication infrastruct sure was most needed. Right. So, so
that is one very big argument against the an internet
or cellular kill switch. More chaos it does, and like
you really need to be able to get in touch
with friends, family, coordinate, absolutely to a safe place, what
have you. So to just cut out that kind of
that level of communication, that's one argument against it. Another
(35:21):
one is that it can be very easily used by
a government to quell um popular unrest to protest, which
happened as well in San Francisco. Yeah, with the h
at the the subway, the bart shooting of Oscar Grant
at fruit Bale station. Um, they learned in August two
thousand eleven that was going to be demonstrations going on,
(35:43):
so they shut off cell phone service at the subway
station so people couldn't organize. And that was, you know,
supposedly just going to be a peaceful protest, right, So
that was n dude, we're talking about that same exact
play was used by hose Ni Mubark during the popular
uprisings in Egypt. I mean, like the same exact thing.
(36:06):
So the upshot of this is that DHS is protecting
the secrets of s o P. Three oh three, but
it very much does exist, and the government does have
the power and the capability to turn off the Internet
in entire cities, uh, if it deems it necessary. Yeah.
And there's very important ruly coming down here in the
(36:26):
next couple of weeks because in two thousand to the
Electronic Privacy Information Center follow the suit in federal court
seeking disclosure about the basic guidelines and policies of this
s o P. Three oh three, and they're gonna be
ruling on it soon. And they're not saying open the
books on everything because we want to compromise our safety.
They're saying, like what what what triggers this decision? As
(36:48):
one big question? Yeah, and who is who is doing this?
They're not, you know, basically right now it says that
there is um It can come from a state Homeland
Security advisor, their designies, or representatives of the d h
US Homeland Security Operations Center, nothing president or anything like that. Yeah.
And then there's a sub agency called the National Coordinating
Center for Communications and they are the ones that says
(37:11):
that are tasked with a series of questions to determine
if a shutdown is necessary, and like youre are these
people and what are the questions? And what are the questions?
And again they're not saying this um while some people
are saying this should never happen in any circumstances, including
the U. But um and in the United States, it's
a prior restraint on free speech. It's as simple as that.
(37:32):
So it's automatically unconstitutional to do this. But the fight
right now at least is for more transparency and an
understanding of the policy at least, so we'll see where
that goes. But man, that is scary. Yeah, it is
San Francisco shutting down. I mean it sounds like China
or Egypt. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And no one knows about
this stuff much because I don't know people are on Facebook, k.
(37:58):
Yeah they might be where you learn about something like that.
In fairness, but plus, I would say the national media
is at its lowest point as far as being a
public service in its history in the United States. It's
just shameful where the popular media is. They're just laptogs
and stenographers. Is disgusting. Yeah, it's pretty pretty bad. Scene
(38:20):
these days. Really, it's Chuck. I'm waiting for the pendulum
to swing in the other way towards responsibility, and yeah,
that's happening soon. Detected sarcastic. You never know, man, Sometimes
things go bad in one direction and people wake up
and go back to Uh, it's like a farm to
table now. You know, people like trash for so long
(38:41):
and now it's like the complete opposite. People really care
about the food they eat and where it comes from.
Oh that's true. Do you got anything else? Internet censorship
is just like the farm to table movement. That's the takeaway.
Just make that connection, and you're John Hawkinberry. If you
want to know more about that censorship, you should type
(39:02):
those words into the search part house to works dot com.
You should just type those words into some search engine
somewhere and learn more about it. Absolutely, you can visit
Stuff you Should Know dot com and the podcast page
for this episode, and it's got tons of links to
good stuff about this. Um And I said, search bart
in there somewhere. So it's time for listener mail. I'm
gonna call this you saved the beginning of my honeymoon.
(39:24):
Um Gods, we're from Seattle and We just got married
a week ago. This is a man and a woman,
he said. We left right away after the wedding for
a honeymoon. Flew to Maui on a six hour flight. Boy,
that's not bad at Seattle. Huh no, that's nice. Like,
what do you gotta fly that's like ten hours twelve
and you gotta stop in California probably. I think there's
direct flights from Atlanta this to say that along flight. Yeah,
(39:47):
it's about like twelve hour flight. One of the many
benefits of living in Seattle. My dad um So, we
flew to Maui and during the flight out to set
it in front of us was a Russian family with
three one year old triplets. I don't know why it matters.
They were Russian. They were crying in Russian, I guess,
and he said they were very disturbing. Uh. One would
(40:07):
set the other one off, and it led to the
mom rocking the kids, and then the kids would start crying,
and kids didn't like being rocked, and he ended up
kicking me in the head. He said, did I get mad? No, guys,
because I was listening to you the entire flight. On
the return flight, a woman in the row in front
of us, proceeded to get more and more drunk throughout
(40:27):
the entire flight, and ended up drunkenly shouting and other
passengers talking politics and religion, pushing other people's seats, and
staggering to the bathroom every couple of minutes. What is
wrong with people? Wow, you're on a plane. You're not
in your home. Put your shoes on. Don't get drunk. Hey, Hey,
there's nothing wrong with taking your shoes off on a plane. Yes,
(40:47):
there is. You're not in your living room. There's nothing
wrong with as long as your feet stay in your
little section while your feet are you should never take
your shoes off in public. All right, that's fine, she's
a rout right now. I'm disgusted. Um again, my stress
levels at zero because I was still learning about snakes
and water slides and clowns. Other than saving my sanity,
(41:10):
I wanna. I think you saved several lives. Without your
common voices, I would have undoubtedly thrown the woman from
the plane halfway over the Pacific Ocean. It would have
been like the good Shepherd. What's that that Matt Damon
movie about the beginning of the CIA? Or he throws
his sons. Oh yeah, seem to be wife out of
the plane. Yeah, and that was disturbing. What's wrong on
(41:31):
that day? And that was disturbing. I hope you guys
realized the public service that you do. Thanks Jesse and wife.
That clown episode was one of our better ones. If
you ask me, I have it all agreed. Chills, thrills, clowns.
H uh. If you want to get in touch with
us like Jesse and uh his wife, he didn't mention
(41:51):
her because Jesse is selfish. Well, congrats to you guys.
Yes regardless. Um. You can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, especially if you're
not a troll. You can send us an email to
Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has
always joined us at home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
(42:18):
of other topics, is it how Stuff Works dot com
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