Future Now calls attention to a brief report in the January/February issue of Foreign Policy:

China censors the Internet effectively, and it appears to be exporting that expertise to other dictatorships. Beijing recently sent engineers trained in phone tapping to Zimbabwe. It also arranged to send computer equipment designed for filtering—or spying—on the Internet. In 2004, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s state-owned telecom, TelOne, made Internet service providers sign contracts allowing it to monitor and censor illegal material. The Chinese hardware could make this job much easier.

Future Now observes, “If you’re a dictator or president for life, why choose the completely open, dangerously destabilizing Western version of the Internet, when you could go with an Internet that lets you control the content your citizens see and observe what they do?”

Given current trends, I’m not so sure those of us in what used to be known as “the free world” will continue to enjoy the open and destabilizing version of the Internet either.