I think I’ve sussed out why the SE Asians lurk so much but don’t post
recently downloaded a Reporteurs Sans Frontieres paper on the state of press and Internet freedom.
Basically whats happened is other than filtering certain forms of porn and political websites, the “English-speaking” SE Asian nations (MY,SG and to a lesser extent TH,PH,LK,ID) have changed their tactics – they don’t filter as much other stuff as it is resource-intensive, and gives the game away somewhat to Westerners who will then bleat about “freedom” etc…
They sometimes block outgoing traffic but more often it is just monitored..
it is technically fairly trivial (especially when you have an army of well-educated programmers who can be encouraged to put aside ethical considerations by the lure of easy cash) to work out from the URL structure whether someone is posting to a messageboard or just reading it (they all have similar software), and then to monitor the exact content of the post and trace it back to the originating IP.
As this is usually a high-speed broadband connection provided by the former national telephone company the data trail leads straight back to someones house and the local law enforcement agencies can deal with the people posting “subversive material” accordingly by a quick “home visit”.
This creates an effective climate of self-censorship; particularly if people are worried about their families/employers/tutors finding out they are “being investigated for internet terrorism”.
Still at least they can read here..
