IWR Blog can exclusively reveal that Amnesty International is planning to make the APIs of its Irrepressible.info database available, in order to allow website owners to integrate links to sites that are currently being censored by governments around the world.
Irrepressible.info was launched in May 2006 to mark the 45th anniversary of Amnesty International. It aims to highlight the role of multinational companies that are colluding with governments in restricting people’s right to freedom of expression and information on the net.
It cites Cisco and Sun Microsystems as major examples of IT infrastructure companies who have collaborated with Chinese authorities in building filtering and monitoring facilities. Also in the frame, for complying with demands to censor their services in China, are Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft.
The Irrepressible.info database is highlighted on the homepage, giving details and links to a range of sites that have been banned in various countries, including China, Vietnam, Tunisia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Currently it can be incorporated onto a website via a Javascript link, but a spokesperson said: "the APIs will allow people to use that information in a more dynamic way".
If more people incorporate these links into their sites, he added, "we can help broadcast more widely censored content and make it more difficult for the censors".
In conjunction with The Observer, irrepressible has been collecting online pledges (over 40,000 and rising) which will be presented to a UN meeting on the future of the internet in November this year.
The site is also supported by the Open Net Initiative, which develops projects such as the Internet Filtering Map – an interactive database of global censorship. This map includes details of government censorship in many Western countries, including politically inspired interference in Canada, Australia, France and the US.
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