Thomas A Edison Career and Technical Eduacation High School

Web Development

Digital Dilemma Policy - Internet Censorship

11/15/2022
Done By: Jaunel Deans

Core Question:When and how should the government be allowed to censor or block internet traffic, if at all?

Impacted Groups

Impacted Group and Description Interests, Benefits, and Harms
Group 1: Everyday users are the people who use the internet on a daily basis to complete work, check emails or/and for leisure.
    Interests: Want to get information and browse the internet easily.
    Benefits:
      -Minimizes Risk of Identity Theft -Reduce their access to harmful activities. -Limits Child Pornography and Other Harmful Information

    Harm:
      -Could limit freedom of speech -Restricts too much information
Group 2: Intelligence Agencies are a government department charged with obtaining intelligence, or information, especially for use by the armed forces. Examples are the CIA, FBI etc.
    Interests: Secure that country and identify threats to the nation.
    Benefits:
      - Reduce Cyberattacks - Monitor information output

    Harm
      - Unconstitutional -Cost is too high to maintain -Minimizes Entrepreneurial Efforts -Limit amount of information given from the citizens
Group 3: Political activists are people who work to bring about politics and want to spread political information about their party.
    Interests: To get information across to votes and followers.
    Benefits:
      - The party in power will have control over the dissemination of information to the public

    Harm:
      -People will not be privy to neutral and objective information. -Lack of Freedom of Speech
Group 4: Celebrities are well known people that have a favorable/notorious public image.
    Interests: Get famous and get support by fans.
    Benefits:
      - They get privacy that promotes security. - There will be a decrease in threats, stalking and cyber bullying

    Harm:
      - Restrict their publicly which could result in a decrease of their fame.

Technical Background

When you log onto the internet at your home, office, school, library or internet café, you are connecting through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), such as Comcast or AT&T. The ISP then assigns your individual computer an IP Address, which is similar to a postal address in that it is used to identify you and transport information. Web sites have IP addresses as well. When you browse to a certain web page on your computer, you are actually requesting information from a particular IP address. These IP addresses are difficult to remember, so the Domain Name System (DNS) allows IP addresses to be associated with human-readable “domain names” such as example.com. Originally, this system was created in order to translate between human-readable domain names and IP addresses but now it is used to censor certain websites by blacklisting them. Censorship can thus occur at different points in the Internet system, from whole networks, certain ports, individual domains or even specific keywords identified by filtering software. The government implemented the HTTPS protocol to establish a secure connection with the servers. HTTP is a protocol for computers to request and share the pages that make up the World Wide Web on the Internet. The goal is to make it safe and secure to transmit sensitive information including personal data, payment or login information. People argue that censorship is violating their freedom of speech while others are saying that a lack of censorship is resulting in them not feeling safe. This is the dilemma of Internet censorship.


Recomended Policy

I recommend that we have Partial Censorship. The government should continue to blacklist certain words and implement the HTTPS protocol. The personal information of everyone should be protected. In addition there should be a removal of fake news, racism, anti-semetic and heavily biased comments that could start a riot or cult. People should be held liable for the information they share, how it is shared and the effect it has on others.


Pros / Who Benefits Cons / Who is Harmed
  • It protects the personal information of the celebrities, everyday users and political activists.
  • The monitoring of certain sites will benefit everyday users because they are safely surfing the web without worry of threats on inappropriate sites.
  • Monitoring the internet could allow intelligences agencies to prevent terrorist and cyberattacks.
  • Political activists can compete fairly in political races due to the lack of fake news.
  • Any racist, homophobic and/or threating comments that anyone says will result in being blacklisted and other disciplinary actions.
  • If someone says any words that are blacklisted then says will result in being blacklisted and other disciplinary actions. This harms everyone because they might not have meant to type those words.
  • Some views of the political activist can result be classified as fake news and their word might not be spread.
  • There might be a lack of information about everyday users.
  • The intelligence agencies are called unconstitutional because they are believed to be violating the Freedom of Speech.