Ethiopia criminalises VOIP use

The Ethiopian government has criminalised the use of Skype and other VOIP services like Google Talk, Tech Crunch reports.

Using VOIP services is now punishable by up to 15 years in prison. This law actually passed last month, but mostly went unnoticed outside of the country. Ethiopian authorities argue that they imposed these bans because of “national security concerns” and to protect the state's telecommunications monopoly. The country only has one ISP, the state-owned Ethio Telecom, and has been filtering its citizens' Internet access for quite some time now to suppress opposition blogs and other news outlets.

As for Skype and other VOIP services, the new law does not just criminalise their usage, but the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology now has “the power to supervise and issue licences to all privately owned companies that import equipment used for the communication of information”.

It's worth noting that the new law also prohibits “audio and video data traffic via social media”. It's not clear how exactly the government plans to enforce this restriction, but a potential 15-year prison term will likely keep most people from using Skype in Ethiopia anytime soon.

Making an Internet phone call through different software is punishable by three to eight years - automatically criminalising Skype and other similar voice services, Ethiopian Media Forum notes.

The government, in the law's introductory annex, defends such legislation as a timely and appropriate response to the ever-increasing security threats globally and in Ethiopia.

OgadenToday.com writes that the OpenNet Initiative, which tracks Internet filtering and surveillance, says in a report on Ethiopia that the country already blocks all blogs hosted at blogspot.com and at nazret.com, a site that aggregates Ethiopian news and has space for blogs and forums.

The new legislation is no doubt also motivated by the events of the Arab Spring that saw mass protests organised via social media. With many bloggers critical of Ethiopia's current government, censorship by the state looks likely to increase.