February 2002 - Volume 1, Issue 1

No More Borderless: Countries Are Erecting Electronic Fences

Border sentry software are put to block access to certain web sites to check visitors' identification to determine where they are logging in from.

The notion to see the Internet as a great democratizing force has begun to fade as governments and private businesses increasingly try to draw boundaries around what used to be borderless Internet to deal with legal, commercial and terrorist concerns.

The barriers include restricting access to computers and gateways to the Internet and making all communications pass through filters that seek to weed out objectionable contents such as pornography or information that are inimical to national security. The technology that is growing in popularity is the software that attempts to match a computer's unique Internet address with a general geographic location.

The debate is no longer whether these barriers can be created, but who should erect the electronic fences - nation states or Web site operators. The new borders would solve conflicting policies of all independent states on matters such as gambling, commerce, copyright and speech. Civil rights groups warn that freedom of speech will suffer, the technology will make it easier for oppressive governments to stifle non-conformist view points and people's privacy will be eroded, for reasons that some technologies can pinpoint ones location down to the latitude and longitude.

Some countries are debating to enact laws to ban undesirable practices from reaching their citizens on line. Without an international treaty, such enactments have not so far been enforceable on parties outside the borders of a country.

It is feared that the barriers could grow with the development of 'geolocation' technology, which attempts to match a person's location based on a computer's Internet address. The programmes are provided by ICT companies in the US and can identify the computer user's home country and city - if it's a large city - 98 percent and 85 percent of the time respectively. The system is not foolproof; people can easily get past by using special software programmes to hide their identity and gambling sites were the first to use the technology for users from countries where online gambling is illegal.

The difficulty in recognizing nation state borders on the Internet became a big concern during the Sydney 2000 games that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned most Web video of the events. TV stations had paid enormous fees for the rights to broadcast the games, and they were worried that piracy or even legitimate online transmissions might devalue the worth of those contracts. The IOC and many owners of broadcast rights say that the accuracy rate for geolocation technology is still not satisfactory to allow any Web casts for the Salt City games in February.

It is argued that even if geolocation technology worked perfectly, it would not be feasible to implement because it would require Web site operators to know the applicable laws in every country.