West tightens Internet censorship
In an age in which large-scale protests can be organised overnight via social media, or infrastructure networks can be shut down by hackers, Western countries are tightening Internet censorship and implementing tougher cybermonitoring policies.
While governments tend to play the national security card to defend plans for wider state access to email and digital communications, analysts and Internet users are concerned that unwatched cybermonitoring might tip the delicate balance between online security and state surveillance.
The United States Congress has recently revived a stalled cybersecurity bill that would allow information sharing between the private sector and the federal government to share threats and develop best practices and fixes.
The bill triggered a wave of protest from people who said it may harm the privacy of Internet users and still leave the country vulnerable to attacks, but the bill received support from US President Barack Obama, who urged congress to pass the Cybersecurity Act of 2012.
Although no one has managed to seriously damage or disrupt the critical infrastructure networks in the US, Obama said foreign governments, criminal syndicates and lone individuals are probing the country's financial, energy and public safety systems every day.
The US topped a list released by Twitter that detailed data and takedown requests from governments to the social media giant.
The "transparency report" showed the US made 679 requests relating to 948 users or accounts in the first half of 2012. Twitter had met 75 per cent of the country's requests.
The micro-blogging site said all countries made fewer than 12 requests for user information in the first half of 2012, except Japan and the US.
The US also topped a similar transparency report from search engine Google, with 6,321 requests to remove content in the second half of 2011. The company granted the US 93 per cent of their requests.
In Australia, the Labour government has been pushing for unprecedented powers to intercept all Internet communications.
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West tightens Internet censorship