[Egypt-opensource] Security, Filtering and Islam

[Roland.A.Burger - Club of Rome think tank 30 Italy]

Hi,

These are fair concerns, and we have to deal with reality here. Just have a look at the situation in China for instance.
  
But I think we also have to draw a line, between where the responsibility of OLPC ends and where government one's begins.

OLPC primarily deals with the design and shipment of the OLPC and at the moment dedicates most of its resources to the goal of shipping the first units. 

The governments are the clients on behalf of their children.

This is not to say that OLPC should not think about these issues, but I think it is too early to begin worrying about.

On the same lines i see Internet connectivity, especially in rural areas in developing countries (like Egypt or Nigeria).

First we need to worry to get the Internet to those remote areas, at reasonable speeds (and what about broadband, but that is another story).

That is a far greater concern in my view than censorship, initially.

But I really think that most of the people, including governments, underestimate the revolutionary power of the OLPC concept anyway.

That is, the OLPC is a sort of Troian Horse that will bring freedom somehow sooner or later.

Once children grow up with the ability to freely communicate between themselves, they will not be happy with censorship at all once the grow up.

Finally even if governments try to censor the Internet, there are in any case ways to circumwent those kind of filters (aka Peek-a-booty or others) and there always will be.



Roland


  _____  

From: Khaled Hassounah [mailto:khaled at laptop.org]
To: egypt-opensource at laptop.org
Sent: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:52:48 +0200
Subject: Re: [Egypt-opensource] Security, Filtering and Islam

Joel,

This has not come up in discussions with the government as a concern
yet, although I expect it to. The interesting thing, is that filtering
happens closer to the Internet than we would have a say in or ability to
control. So this is not likely to be an issue that will be discussed
with us.

We have no interest in actively censoring the Internet. Existing
experiences (in the state of Maine and the wide use of Internet in the
US generally) has shown this not to be as serious a concern as initially
perceived. I can't think of a 6 year old who would rather spend his/her
time on a porn site than a cartoon or animation site.

Once kids are knowledgeable enough in how to use their computers, no
matter how many barriers you put, if they want to reach something they
will. Censorship is not the solution and could actually act as an
incentive rather than a deterrent.

I would be interested in hearing other opinions of course :)

Khaled

Joel Mitchell wrote:
> I have wondered, as someone living in a primarily Islamic country, if
> there is or will be a significantly greater concern about security and
> filtering of inappropriate content in Egypt.  I have heard that there is
> already some sort of centralized filtering or surveillance of internet
> activity generally in Egypt, but the standards for this might be higher
> for children.  I read a recent article about 8e6
> <http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060705005083&newsLang=en>
> working on some security solutions, but I wondered how far this had
> gotten.  I would love to hear whether this has come up in talks with
> Egypt and the Ministry of Education people there.
> thanks,
>     Joel
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Egypt-opensource mailing list
> Egypt-opensource at laptop.org
> http://mailman.laptop.org/mailman/listinfo/egypt-opensource

-- 
Khaled Hassounah
OLPC - http://laptop.org

_______________________________________________
Egypt-opensource mailing list
Egypt-opensource at laptop.org
http://mailman.laptop.org/mailman/listinfo/egypt-opensource
  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/egypt-opensource/attachments/20060719/516e0fce/attachment.html