Clampdown on information

The free world relies on the availability and flow of information, and technology makes that instantaneous these days and global. And therefore, powerful. There are two stories out there right now that….while happening in other countries….threaten us all. Americans need to think outside the borders more, and not just the ones in North America.

We should especially take note of what’s happening in Latin America since the weekend crackdown by Hugo Chavez on the popular media in Venezuala. Media can be annoying, irresponsible, politically motivated to some extend, unfair and unbalanced by any particular viewpoint. But they must be free and unfettered, insofar as they are self-regulated. At midnight on Sunday, the most popular television station in Venezuala, RCTV, went to black. Chavez pulled the plug because he claimed it was undermining his dictatorship (which he didn’t call a dictatorship) and he replaced it with a puppet crew.

This has been fascinating to follow, because the backlash from the people was immediate, furious, and bold. And it’s growing, fed largely by the young people who want freedom of information in their country. This resistance movement is still growing. Meanwhile, Chavez has taken aim at another influential news outlet in Venezuala: CNN.

President Hugo Chávez broadened his assault on Venezuela’s independent press last night, accusing CNN and another television channel of trying to unsettle the Government while police dispersed thousands of protesters with blockades, water cannons and tear gas.

On a day of already heightened tension surrounding the closure of Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), Venezuela’s most prominent independent broadcaster, officials turned their sights on Globovisión, a local television network and CNN, the US cable news network, accusing them of plotting against the Government.

Chavez is cranking up the steam on his increasingly radical campaign to control all of Latin America.

The Venezuelan President, presently using emergency powers to usher in the next phase of his socialist revolution, has justified the silencing of RCTV, which had been on the air since 1963, and its replacement with TVes, a new state channel, as a move to hand more broadcasting over to the people.

But he has provoked a vigorous reaction from the rest of the Venezuela’s independent media sector, which fears for its freedom of expression, and from foreign governments and NGOs, which have condemned Mr Chávez for refusing to allow other independent broadcasters to compete for RCTV’s licence.

Robert Menard, the secretary-general of Reporters With Borders, the free press group, has called the closure of RCTV Mr Chávez’s “first serious international political error”, while Germany, the EU president, has declared its concern at the developments. The Organisation of American States (OEA) has given warning that the current climate could lead to more self-censorship and a loss of editorial independence throughout Venezuela.

In another assault on the flow of information, there’s this story on the front page of the Chicago Tribune today that could go largely unnoticed by a sizeable part of the world, because it’s about Estonia. But it’s significant for everyone, because it’s about the threat of cyberattacks. 

After Estonia relocated a Soviet war memorial out of downtown Tallinn last month, furious Russians rioted in the Estonian capital, tried to attack Estonia’s ambassador in Moscow, and hastily engineered de facto economic sanctions against the tiny Baltic nation.

But the salvo from the Russian side that has most worried Estonians is a carefully crafted three-week cyber attack on Estonian government, bank and media Web sites that has wreaked havoc in a country heavily dependent on the Internet for everything from banking and voting to paying taxes.

The onslaught of “denial-of-service” attacks, many of which have originated from Russian computers, has raised questions about whether such attacks will become a tactic in future political conflicts.

Because Estonia is a NATO country, experts from the Western military alliance have been dispatched to Tallinn to help track down the source of the attacks. But NATO defense ministers have also put cyber-security on their agendas when they meet in Brussels next month.

Good thing. When information is controlled anywhere – especially by governments - it threatens people everywhere.