Censorship, Privacy and Internet

Online Censorship

Online censorship is a way to control what can be viewed or published on the internet. Online censorship can vary on a country to country basis.People often look at the internet as free and public space but the vast majority of online space is privately owned. We need to be aware that censorship is not just something that happens in authoritarian regimes but actually occurs all over the world.

In the cases of online censorship, North Korea ranks among the top in the world. Full use of the global internet is not available in the country. only a small number of people can use them. Even then they are severely restricted. Many popular sites such as Facebook, Youtube & Twitter are all blocked. The foreigners are able to access the internet through a 3g network. But all the normal citizens can access online through Kwang Myong, a free public intranet with a limited number of sites & services. Kwang Myong is the main apparatus of the online censorship of North Korea. Kwangmyong is curated by the Korea Computer Center,The government controls all online media. Any news in the country released by the Korean central news agency. Even cell phone use in North Korea is also controlled by the government.phones are only used for domestic calls. They can't access the Internet or make overseas calls.

I think North Korea's way of restricting & censoring their citizens is more like a cult that forcefully brainwashed people around the country’s Supreme Leader. What do you think about it?

Online privacy

Privacy is the barrier that protects you from people doing things to you. It helps you maintain control of your personal information & online privacy is a level of privacy protection a person has online. In this digital age, privacy became harder to achieve.

One of the cases of online privacy, this case is about Uber Technologies. In August 2018 the FTC announced an expanded settlement for alleged failure to reasonably secure sensitive data in the cloud with Uber Technologies. Uber Technologies announced that hackers have stolen the personal information of about 57 million customers and drivers. In the press release, Uber Technology said that the stolen info included names and driver’s license numbers of around 600,000 drivers in the United States & other personal information of all 57 million Uber riders and drivers around the world including their names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers. To their defense, the company said two people who didn’t work for the company accessed the data on a third-party cloud-based service that Uber uses & that outside forensics experts have not seen evidence that the hackers accessed other types of information. Uber's failure to disclose a significant data breach that occurred in 2016.FTC investigated & settled provisions requiring Uber to disclose any future consumer data breaches & submit all reports forthird-party audits of Uber's privacy policy and retain reports on unauthorized access to consumer data.

Even though online privacy is our right in this ever-expanding digital age protecting them presents new challenges. Most importantly most of us actually don’t care enough about our online privacy but we should know that privacy is about the power we have the more power we have over our lives.  In this era of mass surveillance, this system is bound to be abused. We can stop all this from happening.