The government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) pervasively filters Web sites that contain pornography or relate to alcohol and drug use, gay and lesbian issues, or online dating or gambling. Web-based applications and religious and political sites are also filtered, though less extensively. Additionally, legal controls limit free expression and behavior, restricting political discourse and dissent online.

What was interesting to me about how reasonable the execution of the policy was. Unlike some countries — China for example — that simply block objectionable content, the UAE displays a screen indicating that the URL has been blocked and offers information about its appeals process.

Have things gotten so bad that transparent censorship is something to be praised?

At the end of the day, is being forwarded to a page hosted by the Ministry of Information that much better than being silently redirected to an unoffensive website, a tactic the Chinese have adopted in their recent blocking of BitTorrent websites?

From the perspective of the end user, the information they want to receive is still beyond reach — and who in her right mind is going to risk drawing attention to herself by filing an appeal to request a manual review of the blocking information on the Falun Gong, homosexuality or another banned topic?

Internet censorship should not be praised — and to see Schneier, a top executive at a major International telecommunications company saying anything positive about the subject is alarming.

Schneier might be correct on most things security, but on this issue, he’s frighteningly wrong.

Last year, a troubling new law came into effect which makes it a criminal offense to refuse to hand over one’s encryption key to law  enforcement engaged in a ‘legitimate’ investigation. This was tested out in court a couple weeks ago, and unfortunately, the right to privacy lost. As Ars Technica described:

The Court stated that although there was a right to not self-incriminate, this was not absolute, and that the “public interest” can supersede this right in some circumstances.fd

Just last week, the British government floated a proposal to require that a passport be shown in order to purchase a mobile phone or SIM card. After all, whats the point in spending all that money recording calls and real-time location information if you can’t be sure who is speaking on the other end of the line.

Finally, the latest nail in the privacy coffin has been announced: Starting in 2009, British police will be issued hand-held fingerprint readers, connected to a central server via a wireless/cellular connection. Given the existing (and troubling) powers that police have to arbitrarily stop and question people in the street due to “terrorism” concerns, this’ll allow them to immediately determine someone’s identity on the spot, with or without a national ID card.

Thankfully, it isn’t yet a crime to not have working fingerprints. Thus, it’s quite quite easy to imagine the privacy-aware crowd turning to acid, glue or other techniques to erase the ridges and swirls from their own fingertips.