I would consider myself a fairly imaginative person. Creative, dramatic, a born storyteller.One thing, however, I cannot imagine is my government literally turning off the Internet. THE INTERNET. Just gone. Out. Off—as if there’s a switch on a wall somewhere to be flipped the second someone steps out of line.
“That’s it kids, you’re grounded from the Internet!”
Jaimy and I sat watching a live stream of protests during the enforcement of curfew in Cairo this morning, equal parts stunned and terrified. We are products of journalism schools and we hold a common belief, one that I am convinced all journalism students and professionals the country over know inherently from day one:
The rights that set the stage for all things democrat, the rights that hold our government, our people, responsible and accountable, the rights that allow us to be our own people, are those set forth by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Journalists know the importance of this Amendment first-hand. Not only do their livelihoods depend on it, but the very ethics of the profession hinge on it. We were taught its importance, required to learn the laws that encompass it in our field, shown what journalism looks like without it. Obviously, this isn’t the case for all industries. In fact, I would venture to make the generalization that some people who are further removed from the topic take this Amendment for granted or don’t understand what these rights truly mean. They joke about others whose governments do not offer such privileges.
Which, has been demonstrated by my Twitter stream all morning—jokes about Egypt and their Internet black out…but I’m not laughing. I’m terrified for the people of Egypt, as I’m terrified for all nations who are not allotted this right. Censorship of the media is serious stuff. It reinforces the very reason why some Egyptians are protesting and demonstrating in the first place—political corruption, inequality and oppression.
No Internet in this day and age means limited communication with nongovernmental news sources. It means a clueless outside. That’s no laughing matter, regardless of your opinions on the protests or the U.S.’s diplomatic relationships with Egypt.
As this is all unraveling, another inherent result of my education is also being stirred. That public relations professional whose response to spin is visceral. I am watching closely for Egyptian officials to make statements regarding the actions of the government. How you could even attempt to sugar coat this one is beyond me.
One thing's for sure, though. If this, what Secretary of State Clinton calls the "unprecedented shut down of the Internet," were ever to occur here, I'd be making my way for the border immediately. Because clearly, it'd be a sure sign that the shit's about to hit the fan.
What are your thoughts? What would you do if the U.S. government pulled the plug on the Internet here? Or restricted access to social networks?
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Fortunately for us, our government couldn't completely shut it down. They could just make it hard to access and slow it down and make it a "pirate" network inaccessible to the mainstream.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't all that long ago that broadband Internet connections weren't widespread in the U.S., and it wouldn't take us long at all to get back to dial-up connections to Internet service providers with servers in Canada, or Sweden, or wherever. We could still get at it, but you'd care a lot less about friends' pointless wall posts or the new Glee album on iTunes. the Internet would be much slower, but still alive. Like the bumper sticker, "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will own guns," we would see a situation where the Internet is outlawed, and only the outlaws access the internet.
One of the ironies I see here is that when the United States government first developed ARPANET (which later became what we know as the Internet), it was intentionally designed so that if one point failed, the network would stay up, traveling a different path.