The change will be implemented starting Aug. 22
Users will have to choose one of four filters. One is called the family filter and another is for children. The domestic filter blocks all foreign sites. And the standard package will be the default. Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor at Bilgi University, worries that Turkish authorities will use these filters to step up control of the Internet.
“They are not telling us whether there will be monitoring of everyone’s habits and usage, since everyone will have a user name and password under this system,” said Azdeniz.
The head of the telecommunications regulatory agency, Tayfun Acarer appeared on television and denied that any filters would be mandatory. He said that the measures are meant only to enforce Turkish law.
“Turkey is more transparent than many other countries regarding this issue,” Acarer said. “I want to emphasize this. When you go to a banned site in a European country, you see only a flag or a stop sign. But if a web site is blocked in Turkey, it is always clearly stated when, why and by which institution the page was banned.
As the board’s decision does not have a legal basis, its limitations and authorities are not clear either, according to Kerem Altınparmak, an expert in human rights law who spoke Tuesday in an interview on NTVMSNBC. “According to what extent [and what measures] will such a decision be applied? There is no [provision] on this [on the decision].
“If we assume that a family consists of five members, of ages between 8 and 60 and it has only one computer: which package shall it choose?” Altınparmak said, adding that adults risked to be treated like children regarding access to various Internet websites.
I like to remind you that thousands of people in more than 30 cities around Turkey took to the streets on May to protest the new system of filtering the Internet that opponents consider censorship.
sources:
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.theworld.org
No comments:
Post a Comment