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UN
Censors Internet In Its NY Headquarters, Blocking Media
Critique and Non-Google Video Sites
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at
the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
April 10 -- The UN's
computer system censors a number of websites, among them the Chinese
anti-cnn.com
site devoted to searching for what it calls media bias. Also censored
is the
site dailymotion.com, which after LiveLeaks.com took it down was a
remaining
site hosting the controversial film "Fitna," which the UN's Ban
Ki-moon denounced. In each case, attempts from inside the UN, by staff
or in the
library, to read either site results in a
message from the "ICT Security
Unit" that "you have been redirected to this page because the site
you are attempting to access is blocked according to the policy as
detailed in
ST/SGB/2004/15."
This
Secretary-General's
Bulletin allows staff "limited personal use of ICT
resources" unless these involve "pornography or engaging in gambling"
or would "compromise the interests or the reputation of the
Organization."
But
whether or not the UN Organization agrees with the media critique
offered, for
example, by anti-cnn.com, it is neither pornography or gambling, and
keeping up
with critiques of mainstream media could hardly "compromise the
interests
or the reputation of the Organization."
The
same is true of the video site DailyMotion.com, and it is worth noting
that the
UN does not block or censor another video site, YouTube.com. The latter, of course, is owned by the UN's
partner Google, which itself assists with Internet
censorship in China.
Mr. Ban, UNDP's Dervis, Google at left
and Cisco, anti-cnn.com not shown (censored at UN)
[Full disclosure:
Inner City Press was
temporarily
excluded by Google News earlier this year, which was linked to UN system and affiliates' complaint(s). At
the time, the UN sputtered that it does not engage in censorship. But
why then
are non-pornographic political analysis web sites blocked inside the
UN's own
headquarters?]
With
the UN censoring the Internet inside its own headquarters in New York,
its commitment
to freedom of the press, particularly of online media, remains suspect.
Watch
this space.
* * *
These reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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Other,
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in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
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2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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