In a recent post in Voces Cubana by Miguel Iturría Savón reflects on why he’s been finding it impossible to access any of the blogs in the Cuban Voices project from computers on the island with full connection the internet. He finds himself talking to a girl, Yudeisi who tells him

about a girl who couldn’t use internet chat with her boyfriend in Spain. The boyfriend, an ‘expert’ in computing had bought her a computer manufactured in China from a shop in Paseo y Malecón. There are rumours that the Asian computers sold in Cuba are pre-loaded with the filter software ‘Green Dam Youth Escort’.

Green Dam Youth Escort is a piece of content control software, i.e. web-filtering software that is:

designed and optimized for controlling what content is permitted to a reader, especially when it is used to restrict material delivered over the Web. Content-control software determines what content will be available (Wikipedia contributors, “Content-control software,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Content-control_software&oldid=372853735 (accessed July 15, 2010).

If computers bought by the Cuban government and used throughout the island have mandated software installed by the state, in this case by proxy through Chinese partners … there really is no hiding place. What you do is what is seen. And certainly there’s no way to ensure that what you write is what is read – at least as long as the state controls how it’s read. Tough times continue.