Turkey wants to monitor and censor Internet use

From Hurriyet Daily News:

A draft bill will permit authorities to limit access to the Internet and monitor all actions by individuals online and keep such records for two years, daily Hürriyet has reported.

Three articles about Internet usage were concealed within a longer draft bill on the Family and Social Policy Ministry’s organizational structure and responsibilities, Yalçın Doğan, a columnist from daily Hürriyet, revealed yesterday.

The draft law will permit officials to limit keywords more easily, meaning access to videos on video-sharing websites such as YouTube that include keywords deemed problematic by Turkish authorities will be blocked.

All individuals’ Internet records, including details about what sites they have visited, which words they have searched for on the web and what activity they have engaged in on social networking websites, will be kept for one or two years, according to the draft law.

Web providers will also be forced to become members of a new Internet union to be formed under the control of government, Doğan wrote.

The draft bill is designed to “protect the family, children and youth from items on the Internet that encourage drug addiction, sexual abuse and suicide,” according to daily Hürriyet.

And the records of what people do in the Internet are no doubt also meant to protect the family - the family of thugs that is running Turkey.

I received 252 visits from Turkey over the last month, which is not a significant percentage of my readers but which places it at #29 out of 174 countries that visited EoZ.  Hope none of my Turkish readers get in trouble.

In other Turkey news, the government is also acting to place the judiciary under its control.