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'Informaticos'
in Cuba route around tyranny via Web
By Garrett Glass. Special to The Tallahassee
Democrat. Posted on Wed, Nov. 26, 2003.
http://www.tallahassee.com/
In Cuba, the Internet has become the latest
battleground in that country's quiet struggle
for freedom. With World Wide Web access
restricted to only a few government-controlled
web sites, increasing numbers of Cubans
are hacking through President Fidel Castro's
censorship.
While many in the Western world use the
Internet for trivial reasons - such as chat
rooms and file sharing - in Cuba, it has
become a powerful weapon of liberation from
government control.
The Internet offers ordinary Cubans a way
to escape the clutches of a totalitarian
society that regulates all flow of information.
They can access unfiltered news from the
outside world, and communicate with friends
and family that have escaped to other countries.
In Cuba, these Web-surfing freedom fighters
are called "informaticos." Having
seen how Glasnost (openness) hastened the
collapse of Soviet communism, Castro knows
that these informaticos pose a threat to
his regime.
Clearly, Cubans who are plugged into the
outside world will be much harder to control,
more likely to flee and certainly less susceptible
to communist propaganda.
The government controls all four of Cuba's
Internet Service Providers (ISP). These
ISPs block any sites that are viewed as
remotely anti-Castro, anti-communist or
pro-democracy. In fact, anything considered
even possibly subversive is banned. Moreover,
legal access is only available through a
registered account with Cuba's National
Center for Automated Data Exchange, so the
government can keep tabs on everyone.
For the most part, just academics and government
workers can legally access Web sites - but
only ones that promote Cuban tourism and
communism. They can read propaganda about
how wonderful life is in Cuba and how happy
the Cuban people are. But they can't read
about the 50 "political dissidents"
and 26 journalists who are currently in
prison simply for having opinions.
The government spies on its own citizens
to make sure they're not accessing the Web
without authorization. Every community has
minders that are paid by the government
for snooping and reporting on their neighbors.
And people who are caught accessing the
Web illegally face fines and imprisonment.
Basic Internet service costs $260 a month
in Cuba. That's prohibitive, considering
the average Cuban makes the equivalent of
about $192 per month. In other words, Castro
has fixed it so that it's impossible for
the average Cuban to afford legal access
to the Internet.
But despite these many obstacles, the informaticos
are finding a way to access the Internet
and circumvent Castro's censorship.
Relying on the same ingenuity they use
to keep 1960s-era cars running without spare
parts, most informaticos acquire used laptops
from friends in foreign countries and modify
the hardware and software to get around
government snooping and censorship.
Informaticos access and trade banned Web
sites as text attachments, and even trade
on the black market for Internet passwords.
They have developed their own code for words
that raise red flags with government censors.
By suppressing the Internet, Castro hopes
to control his people. But with digital
freedom a dial tone away, real freedom may
follow.
Garrett Glass is executive director
of the Digital Freedom Network, a non-profit
human-rights organization based in Newark,
N.J. Contact him at g.glass@dfn.org
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