Sony has begun shipping personal computers equipped with the Chinese-government mandated filtering software days before the July 1 deadline.
http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=13100C1G2AUA

The software, called Green Dam, is apparently designed to filter out adult content to protect the innocent minds of children in China. The linked article discusses vulnerabilities, but I’m not concerned about that. I’m concerned about how far they will go with this censorship technology and who in the world will adopt it in order to control free speech.

Given the recent Iranian protests and how Twitter.com played a significant role in getting the news out to the world, I am beginning to wonder how soon we will see intelligent censorship technology that filters inbound and outbound communications. The Internet has made free speech a global phenomenon, but it doesn’t look like that will last very long.

Completely contrary to this foreseeable global trend towards censorship, there are recent reports that President Obama is exploring far stricter privacy laws that make it easier for people to remain anonymous on the Internet. Americans prefer privacy and anonymity. The issue is not that we will have privacy, the issue is that there are software tools being developed to enforce this privacy and my concerns are about what that software is and what it will evolve into down the line. Are we looking at the birth of an information filtration technology that will evolve into a censorship or even an eavesdropping technology? Will the irony of all this be that we design an infrastructure to protect our privacy but do it in a way that empowers the violation of that privacy? Let’s hope not. But let’s keep an eye out.

The governments of the world are all meddling with information security and privacy and it just feels like dangerous territory to me. I welcome your comments.

UPDATE: THE WORLD IS PROTESTING THE CENSORSHIP SOFTWARE

Global business groups have made an unusual direct appeal to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to scrap an order for PC makers to supply controversial Internet filtering software, citing security and privacy concerns.

Just days before the deadline to comply with China’s order, the letter from 22 chambers of commerce and trade groups representing the world’s major technology suppliers adds to pressure on Beijing to halt the plan following an official protest by Washington.

– Personally I think China will ignore these requests. We will see …