I don't understand why the topic always elicits snarky comments.

"Great firewalls" are necessary as a matter of fact. They have nothing to do with government overreach and curtailment of freedoms. In a liberal, democratic country what is blocked is what has been identified as illegal/criminal enough to warrant it, so why would Joe public want to get technical tools to "ignore all of that" has to raise red flags because that would not be "to protects his rights"...

Crucially, as mentioned, there is also the aspect of national security and protection against cyber attacks.

It's good to have ideals but on those issues we should not be "too simple, sometimes naive" (Jiang Zemin)

Edit: Oh dear, oh dear...

Because Laws have never declared illegal/criminal things that should never have been declared as such? Or just because at the time it is considered Criminal, Noone should have the possibility to protect themselves from the government until (in the hope) that the unjust law gets rectified?

Is the History not enough to convince you that no mater the purpose (nefarious or not) Democratic/Liberal Governments can be wrong as much as Dictatorial ones in enacting laws?

If even access to information is forbidden, how are people supposed to get informed that maybe something is not right with these laws so they try to change them?

Because it’s clear we start from radically different perspectives.

You believe some information must be illegal an politicians must protect us from seeing it.

I believe only actions should be criminalized and that no one should have the right to decide what we, as adults, can see and what not

No they aren't. You posit they are because of alleged threats and I and others suggest that the biggest threat is policies like this and people like you trying to give governments huge censorship abilities to coerce conformity.

Your arguments are basic and the kind that lead us to the Iraq invasion and many other wars that are for profit but, at the time, always sold as a matter of national security or similar and dissent is punished in whichever way possible.

You can make dissent virtually nonexistent online if you censor enough.

> "Great firewalls" are necessary as a matter of fact.

Empirically not true, because most countries don’t have them, and are doing fine.

> They have nothing to do with [...] curtailment of freedoms.

They literally curtail freedom.

Quoting Jiang Zemin on Hong Kong is just perfect here.

What is your definition of freedom? Because if it's having the absolute right to do exactly whatever you want that's not how freedom works in a free society.

I'm obviously provoking with that quote but it is a very good point: The world is not black and white and claiming that it is is extremely naive and simplistic, and I am afraid that what I read here in response to my comment is exactly that.

People arguing for censorship can never show anything that needs to be censored but there are countless examples of things that shouldn't be censored being squashed under policy. There's literally not a single example through history of a truth that had to be squashed for justice and safety. There are no great stories of historical censorship not because they're secret, but because they don't do anything except protect the people in power.

A censorship policy is, by nature, impossible to check. If anything is being censored you have to assume that other things, including proper discussion of the censorship, are being censored. It's not some complex "not black and white" thing where you're partly right, it's a failed idea with absolutely zero support from historical precedent.

You can't censor away bad ideas because we can't even agree on the bad ideas - such as for instance your censorship push. Why shouldn't your push to censor people be censored itself? Why do you assume that your choices for societal control are the correct impulses, which need to be bolstered with thought control, rather than the harmful impulses which will destroy society though totalitarian means?

No, censorship is always wrong because it removes the ability of the people to make decisions on the facts. Any politician who pushes censorship has to be assumed to be trying to undermine democracy because censorship can't do anything other than weaken the electorate.

> The world is not black and white and claiming that it is is extremely naive and simplistic, and I am afraid that what I read here in response to my comment is exactly that.

That's fallacious because it assumes that censorship deserves a better rhetorical chance which it was denied when in fact it's simply a bad idea. If you suggested to punish people for their family's crimes you'd get similar pushback because it's a similarly corrosive policy.

You haven't properly argued for censorship at all, by showing thoughts which need to be censored and why, you've just argued that it's a super important tool without any examples or reasoning.

National borders exist. Why?

The international Internet didn't exist 200 years ago, so there is no precedent on whether it should be permitted to exist.

Unless you are an anarchist, it's not at all clear what the legitimate functions of government are.

National Borders are not there to enforce "thought". They are there to protect Physical Security (and Economic one that can be ported again to the physical Security). Exchange of Information (What Internet is) has always been a borderless thing. To continue your Borders Analogy, Noone will stop you at the border because you have with you a coded paper that the border guards can not decipher, or even worse because in your country (not with your person) you have coded papers that might be used to communicate the same ideas that are "dangerous" to this country. The Role of the Government is to protect society from phenomena that are provenly damaging the society without encroaching on personal rights. It's a balance that needs to favour the personal rights in any occasion because what this government thinks damaging the other one might not, the personal rights are those that are more lasting.