Google, Yahoo! & China

There has been a recent flurry of articles discussing Google's involvement with China, specifically concerning Google's removal of specific sites that are blocked in China from their Chinese News portal (for Internet users located in China). But unlike Yahoo!'s self-censorship of their China portal in official compliance with the "Public Pledge on Self-discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry" Google claims that it "remains the only major search engine that does not censor any web pages". Despite the ommision of blocked sites, Google News is now reportedly blocked in its entirety. These articles bring up broader issues of corporate collusion with China�s filtering and surveillance matrix that is used to implement strict information control policies. In my view, by conforming with China's strict information control policies companies are normalizing a climate of censorship.

Lycos, Spammers & Electronic Civil Disobedience

Lycos has just launched a new screensaver that attempts to disrupt, but not disable, websites used by spammers to sell products. The goal is to slow down access to these sites by implementing a bandwidth attack - a client-side denial of service attack (DoS). Client-side DoS attacks differ from server-side DoS attacks because in order to be successful client-side DoS attacks require the participation of many thousands of individuals whereas server-side attacks usually involve a few individuals who break into computers and use them as zombies in order to conduct DoS attacks. Basically, each user that installs the screensaver receives a list from a central database of spam sites then issues a connection to each of the spam sites. If a large number of users begin making requests to the selected sites, the servers will become overloaded. Lycos argues that since these spam sites have to pay for their bandwidth �more requests means higher bills� for the spammers. Lycos has implemented a �health check� to ensure that no server is completely shutdown.

This is precisely the same technique used in past Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD) campaigns. Though not as slick as the flash GUI that Lycos has the tools used in ECD campaigns ( Disturbance Developer Kit, e-hippie virtual sit-in tools) operate much the same way. Client-side DoS has been criticized by Oxblood Ruffin (of cDc/Hacktivismo) who describes it as "being pecked to death by a duck".

Confronting U.S. censorship ... from Iran

Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Human Rights activist and lawyer, is suing the U.S. Treasury Department because the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) prohibits the publications of books by Iranian authors (unless the work is completed without the involvement of any American citizens). The Dallas Morning News (subscription req'd) is carrying an article by Ebadi where she describes how she cannot publish her memoirs in the U.S.: "it would be illegal for an American literary agent, publisher, editor or translator to help me." Legal documents concerning the case are available here.

FoxNews v. Al Jazeera

Well, Canadians can now enjoy Fox News but not Al Jazeera. Fox News has been approved by the CRTC. However, Al Jazeera was given a conditional approval that carries certain restrictions: distributors must retain an audio-visual recording of each Al Jazeera program for a period of four weeks (8 weeks is a complaint is launched), ensure that no "abusive comment" is broadcast, and alter or delete the service to comply with these restrictions.

The Commission recognizes that this measure is a restriction on the freedom of expression of BDUs [Broadcasting Distribution Undertaking] and, potentially, of viewers of Al Jazeera. However, the right to freedom of expression is not absolute; it is subject to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. -- CRTC

No Canadian distributors carry Al Jazeera.

Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia in 2004

The OpenNet Initiative has just released a new study documenting Internet filtering in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. ONI researchers tested over 60,000 Web addresses during a three-year period and found that the most aggressive censorship focused on pornography (98% of sites tested blocked), drugs (86%), and gambling (93%). The study also explains how filtering occurs: the Saudi system uses a combination of commercial software from the United States (Secure Computing'SmartFilter) and input from expert local staff and Saudi citizens to control the availability of Web sites inside the Kindgom. For the first time, ONI's tests differentiate SmartFilter's blocking from blocking put in place specifically by Saudi Arabia's Internet Services Unit personnel. As the ONI's research reveals, even though the system is relatively transparent and evident to users, errors and over-blocking still occur. Click Here for the full report.

Canadian Copyright & ISP Liability

The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage re-introduced the Interim Report on Copyright Reform suggesting that reform is neccessary for Canada to comply with WIPO. digital-copyright.ca outlines the major proposed changes including the adoption of a "notice and takedown" approach to copyright violations and holding ISP's liable (unless they act as true "intermediaries") for copyrighted material passing through their networks.

The Filtering Matrix: Reality and the Great Firewall of China

In a recent entry, I argued that those interested in issues of Internet censorship, filtering and surveillance should make an increased effort to demystify the technology being used, be more accurate and thorough when investigating these issues, and avoid speculative scenarios. However, we should not underestimate the filtering and surveillance regime in China: Internet Filtering in China is a reality.

Internet filtering in China is best described as a matrix of control in which technological and non-technological measures intersect at different levels of access to enforce strict information control policies. Such a matrix of controls (combining filtering and surveillance technology with fear, intimidation and imprisonment) discourages most people from attempting to access banned information, let alone actively seek out means to circumvent such controls. Exaggerating China�s power of information control may be mistaken, but underestimating it is worse.

Geolocation Filtering

The BBC, using data collected by Netcraft, reports that since Monday October 25th 2004, the official website of the Bush-Cheney campaign website (www.georgewbush.com) has been restricted to Internet users located in the United States. The ONI connected to remote computers located in fifty countries* around the world in order to test the accessibilty of www.georgewbush.com. Out of the fifty locations tested, only those in Canada and the United States were able to access www.georgewbush.com. All others were shown an Access Denied page. These results show a map of which countries were able to reach the website.

The full bulletin is available here.

National Intranet: The Inclusion Model

There have been several reports noting that Iran is seeking to implement a National Intranet. Known as Shaare'2 (or Shaareh II) the national Intranet will locally provide various services (web hosting & chat) in order to reduce international bandwidth costs. National Instranets can also be used to cache or mirror external content. Myanmar has had a national Intranet since 2001 tha provides access to sites and publications. When used in conjunction with or as a national Internet filtering strategy this approach can have a serious impact on free access to information.

Political Viruses & Worms

Viruses and Worms that appear to be politically motivated are not new, but Stian recently informed me about (more here) a worm circulating in China that apparently links to or contains references to "A Survey of Chinese Peasants".

A Survey of Chinese Peasants is an expos� on the inequality and injustice forced upon the Chinese peasantry, who number about 900 million. The book describes what the authors term to be a guaiquan, or vicious circle, where unjust taxes and the arbitrariness of authorities, sometimes resulting in extreme violence against the peasants, is the norm.

The worm modifies the hosts file so that some 937 domains point to 222.89.98.219. The server at that IP is no longer accessible.

F.T.A.

Those who serve in the military are restricted in what they can say. They have to follow orders; there is no room for dissent. There is little outlet for free speech for soldiers except for the long standing tradition of bathroom graffiti.

The soldier cannot come and go as he sees fit; there is no such thing as a "two-week notice" in his line of work. Limitations are placed on what he says, and free speech is certainly not free. Incorrect thoughts are to be kept silent, and dire consequences await for those who act on their convictions. Due to the absolute privacy found in bathrooms, what was once suppressed frustrations suddenly become an open forum of ideas and acquisitions. The latrine walls become what The Combine dreads the most, a podium of free speech for soldiers.

This article discusses the "FUCK THE ARMY" (FTA) movement and the political graffiti that finds expression in bathrooms across Iraq.

RCMP Investigation & Surveillance of a Journalist

Maher Arar is a Canadian citizen who was deported from the U.S., while in transit at NYC's JKF airport, to Syria. He was deported based on information passed from the RCMP to U.S. authorities which claimed that Arar had ties with terrorism. The U.S. does not deny this, rather the U.S. simply claims that it did not seek Canada's "approval or consent" before deporting the Canadian citizen to Syria. Arar was deported to Syria where he was interrogated and tortured, in an apparent case of "extraordinary rendition", a system in which suspects are "out sourced" to countries that use torture in an effort to circumvent domestic laws against the use of torture. Canadian officials supplied Arar's torturers with questions and personal information about him used during Arar's interrogation and torture. Moreover, as Arar's wife Monia Mazigh and the public pressed the Canadian government to have Arar released from prison in Syria, documents that contained information extracted from Arar while under torture in Syria were leaked to the public. Arar is now free and living in Canada, a Public Commission has been set-up to investigate the case.

On November 8, 2003, Juliet O'neill wrote an article that appeared in the Ottawa Citizen concerning the case of Maher Arar. Believing that Juliet O'neill's story was based on classified information the RCMP began to investigate the Ottawa Citizen reporter. The following is an account of the investigative techniques used by the RCMP based on an
affidavit used to obtain a search warrant authorizing a raid on O'neill's home.

Reality & The Great Firewall

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Filtering Dissent

A recent article that caught my attention mentioned an instance where vocal protesters were edited out of the official Whitehouse transcript of a Laura Bush speech. The transcript notes "Applause" 39 times, "Laughter" 1 time and the audeince chanting "Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!" 4 times. However, the transcript does not note that some protesters chanted "No more years! No more years!" and Sue Niederer, wearing a "President Bush You Killed My Son" t-shirt demanded to know why her sone had been killed in Iraq. The protestors were quickly arrested. The Whitehouse transcript acts as the "official history" of the event and thus censors dissenting views from the audience while only including positive audieince reactions.

Iranian Bloggers Protest Government Crackdown

Online Journalism Review has an article on Iranian bloggers and Internet filtering in Iran. The article discusses recent arrests of some bloggers and crackdown on reformist newspapers. Among others the article has some quotes from both Hossein and myself. I've archived the article in pdf format here.

Although I may come off as a bit pessimistic, the point I am trying to make is that technical solutions alone will not solve the problem of Internet censorship. If a determined State allocates a considerable amount of resources -- human and technical -- towards Internet censorship along with a repressive legal framework no technical solution alone will solve the problem. But we can analyze the specific filtering and monitoring situations that people face and work together on the development of solutions that meet the end-user's specific needs.

Google News Filtering

Bill Xia has released a report indicating that Google News (China) returns different results for users within China than it does for users outside of China. More specifically, Google News (China) does not return results for particular news sites (epochtimes.com.au & chinesenewsnet.com) that are blocked in China. I have confirmed this behaviour by testing from computers located in China. However, it is unclear exactly how this filtering is being implemented. Google does have technology in place to, for example, redirect users to localized Google search engines. It is probable that similar techniques are used to establish the geographic location of users by their IP address and, if the user is in China, output the modified results accordingly. However, this indicates that Google is aware of particular news sites that are filtered in China.

New National Filtering

Two countries formerly thought not to have national filtering systems in place may indeed be moving in that direction. Reports from Al Ahram and the gateway2russia.com indicate that both Egypt and Russia have begun to filter Internet access at the national level. Egypt has blocked the website of the Muslim Brotherhood (www.ikhwanonline.com). Russia has blocked the website of of the Chechen website, Kavkaz-Tsentr (www.kavkaz.org.uk & www.kavkazcenter.com). Although my initial tests confirm the blocking of www.ikhwanonline.com in Egypt, I have been unable to confirm that www.kavkaz.org.uk & www.kavkazcenter.com have indeed been blocked in Russia. Reports indicate that Russia is seeking to have the Lithuanian government shut the website down.

Cyberterrorism re-surfacing?

Back in 2002, I wrote that the discourse surrounding �cyberterrorism is dominated by sensationalist and alarmist analysis based on selective interpretation of partial facts and speculation by unnamed officials and experts. Demonstrating a stunning lack of vision, the alarmist conclusions drawn by such study are buoyed by fantastic, ill-conceived scenarios that defy the circumstances and bounds of reality.� Despite some studies to the contrary, it appears that little has changed.

Filtering, free speech and combatting child abuse images

A Pennsylvania state law that required ISP to block access (from Pennsylvania) to web sites suspected of hosting child pornography violates the First Amendment according to the Federal District Court in Philadelphia. The ruling details the process, both legal and technical, that lead to the blocking of 1.5 million legitimate websites while trying to block access to approximately 400 websites suspected of containing child abuse images. ISP's used IP filtering and/or DNS spoofing to block access to domain names and IP addresses. URL filtering, which would avoid much of the overblocking, was deemed to be too expensive and difficult for ISP to implement on a large scale. Due to procedural design each ISP was not required to block access to all 400 suspect sites, rather only reported sites accessed through the specific ISP. There was a lack of continuing review of the blocked content to see if the offending material had been removed. The blocking also affected Internet users outside of Pennsylvania and, in some cases, the USA. The ruling also indicates that the measures used to block access can be circumvented.

Link to this site?

The Athens 2004 website carries a lengthy statement on their "Hyperlink Policy". The Policy states that for "your protection and ours" one must send a "request letter" containing a brief description of your website, the reason for linking and the period of time you intend to link for. After (e)mailing the request (and agreeing to several other conditions) one may link to their site. However, if your hyperlink is not approved you will recieve notice that your link request has not been accepted. I have sent a request, we'll see if I'm denied permission.

China: Filtered Keywords

Chinese hackers have found that a DLL (COMToolKit.dll) in a popular Chinese Instant messaging program (QQ) contains a list of keywords in both Chinese and English that are filtered by the software. The list was posted on a BBS and there is additional information available at China Digital News. A breakdown and translation of the keyword list is available here. It seems that many of these works are also filtered when located in HTTP GET requests. More soon...

ONI in WSJ

ONI bulletins 005 & 006 were picked up by the Wall Street Journal.

China Finds New Ways to Restrict Access to the Internet
Charles Hutzler. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Sep 1, 2004. pg. B.1

China's Internet police are using a filtering technology to, in effect, disable a popular feature of the search engine Google, according to a team of researchers at Cambridge, Harvard and Toronto universities. The feature taps into snapshots of Web pages stored on Google's servers -- which are based outside China -- and was once a common way for Chinese to view sites that were otherwise blocked... (Wall Street Journal)

Google Search & Cache Filtering Behind China's Great Firewall

The subject of Google cache filtering by China is not really new, but I had never seen explicit details posted about it. So here is the latest OpenNet Initiative bulletin that details what we've found. In short, China uses its keyword filtering technology to filter any HTTP GET requests that have the string 'search?q=cache' in them. This blocks the Google cache regardless of what IP address (and I found 37 such IP's) is used to access the cache. The IP addresses themselves are not filtered, in fact, requests to any server for 'search?q=cache' will be disrupted. However, this can easily be circumvented.

Probing Chinese search engine filtering

ONI conducted a research probe into the practice of search engine filtering in China, with a focus on Baidu.com and Yisou.com, two popular Chinese search engines. Our probe concludes that the Yisou and Baidu search engines are indeed actively filtering keyword search requests and that searches for certain keywords are sometimes obstructed by China's gateway filtering. The full bulleting is available here.

The part I find the most interesting is the use of the TCP reset functionality in conjuction with keyword filtering. When making an HTTP request with a banned keyword in the GET an RST packet is sent and a ZeroWindow size is advertized. Another request transmission cannot be made until the host advertises a non-zero window size. In effect, you cannot connect to the same host from the same IP address for a period of time.

Playboy, Google China & the Berkman Center

Despite the slip-up Google is moving ahead with its IPO. It was belived that Google may have violated securities rules by doing a Playboy interview. There is supposed to be a "quiet period" to avoid stock-hyping. Either way, Google has added the Playboy interview to its prospectus. In the interview, one of the Google founders, Sergey Brin, talks about how China blocked Google and mentions our OpenNet Initiative partners at the Berkman Center.

Concerning China's blocking of Google, Brin says that he did not negotiate with the Chinese government to have Google unblocked, but that "popular demand" prompted the government to unblock Google. As others have observed, this contrasts with a statement made by Google at that time.

Olympic filtering

As reported by Wired, the websites of NBC and the BBC are restricting access to video of the Olympic Games, making them accessible to users in their respective countries. It is not difficult to restrict access by geographical region. In addition to commercial services such as GeoByte’s IP Locator it is relatively simple of lookup the visitors IP address in ARIN/RIPE/APNIC/LACNIC and find the country to which the particular IP address has been allocated. However, it is possible to fool such geo-locators by using proxy servers located in other countries. But NBC requires credit card information in addition to a country check and the BBC restricts access on their media server which uses the RTSP protocol that most common proxies cannot handle. It appears that the Olympic filtering is rather successful.

Big Brother: CL in Die Zeit

The German newspaper Die Zeit has published an article containing a profile on the Citizen Lab. If you speak German, read it here, or continue reading for a translated excerpt.

Iran: Verification of Reported Banned Websites

As part of its ongoing research into Internet censorship and surveillance worldwide, including in Iran, the ONI connected to remote computers in Iran and tested the RSF list and the blacklist obtained by stop.censoring.us. We found that Iran is indeed engaged in extensive Internet content filtering beyond just pornography, including many political, religious, social, and blogging websites. However, we cautiion that the case presented here provides an instructive lesson concerning the type of limited conclusions that can and should be drawn about both the extent and character of Internet censorship in any country.

The full bulletin is available here.

Old Style Censorship

Like many of us wrapped up in the Internet, I tend to focus on Internet censorship and often don't pay enough attention to old style censorship. These two recent stories caught my attention:

Iraq: Government shuts down Al-Jazeera offices in Baghdad

Kuwait: Government bans Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11"

Although the Internet has brought with it the great promise of of freedom of information (and those who seek to filter and censor that access) the number of those who have access to the Internet is still relatively small and bounded by many forms of class and priviledge. It's the traditional media that still matters the most to most people. And there are those who seek to control and filter it , just like the Internet.

Civisphere Weblog Community

The latest Citizen Lab project that Graeme is working on is coming together really nicely. Check out the Civiblog Project:

The Civisphere Weblog Community, otherwise known as Civiblog, provides a forum for Canadians working within global civil society to share their experiences, resources and keep connected with family and friends. Here you will find dozens of daily updated diaries of Canadians working for human rights, development, and humanitarian organizations from all corners of the globe.

The Civiblog project is adminstered by the Citizen Lab, at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto. The Civiblog was made possible by a generous donation from Tucows Inc. of their Blogware software.

Sex & Religion

Two recent reports highlight China's interest in blocking access to both sex and religious web sites. The Straits Times reports that China has "adopted a catch-all definition for pornography" but only has a block list of "500 sites", which seems rather low. In my informal testing, standard porn sites (e.g. playboy) as well as a sampling of transvestite porn sites were accessible from computers located in China.

Forum 18 conducted tests from within China of several hundred religious sites" during "a two-month period" (May-July 2004) and "looked at access in a variety of locations in China". (The Zittrain/Edelman study looked at 1,763 sites categorized by Yahoo! as "Religion and Spirituality".) The study found that many sites were inaccessible in China, but these same sites were available in Europe and North America. The report does not detail the methodology used in the testing and does not reveal the complete testing results but does provide a good concurring overview of the filtering of religious sites in China.

Choosing Circumvention

In response to state-directed Internet filtering and blocking regimes many forms of circumvention technologies have emerged in order to allow users to bypass filtering restrictions. These technologies are often targeted towards different types of users with varying resources and levels of expertise. What may work well in one scenario may not be the optimal option in another. When selecting a circumvention technology it is important for the potential circumvention provider and user to ask the following questions:

• What is the number of expected users and the available bandwidth? (for the circumvention provider and the user)
• Where is the primary point of Internet access for the expected user(s) and what will they be using it for?
• What is the level of technical expertise? (for the circumvention provider and the user)
• What is the availability of trusted out-of-country contacts for the end user?
• What is the level of expected penalty if the user is caught using circumvention technology?
• Does the end-user properly understand the potential security risks of using the specific circumvention technology?

The Hacker Grow-Op

Wired covered the Hacktivism panel at 2600's HOPE in New York City and spoke with Oxblood Ruffin of the cDc as well as Prof. Ron Deibert from the Citizen Lab. Apart from reaffirming that "Hacktivism isn't found in the graffiti on defaced Web pages, in e-mail viruses bearing political screeds or in smug take-downs of government or organizational networks" but is " the development and use of technology to foster human rights and the open exchange of information" the artcile talks about some of the work we do at the Citizen Lab. which Deibert described as a "hacker grow-op." Deibert explained:

The combination of hacking in the traditional sense of the term -- not accepting technologies at face value, opening them up, understanding how they work beneath the surface, and exploring the limits and constraints they impose on human communications -- and social and political activism is a potent combination and precisely the recipe I advocate to students and use to guide my own research activities

Hacktivism and How It Got Here
Wired - July 14, 2004

Hacktivism @ HOPE

I was invited to represent the Citizen Lab at HOPE in New York City by the CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc). HOPE is a convention hosted by 2600. The cDc organized a panel on hacktivism that included Sharon Hom from HRIC, Jagdish Parikh from HRW and Eric Grimm from the law firm CyberBrief. The panel was hosted by Oxblood Ruffin and Count Zero from the cDc.

Sharon spoke powerfully about the Internet and human rights abuses in China and was follwoed by Eric who spoke about the HESSLA (local mirror) license he helped Hacktivismo create and how he worked with the United States Department of Commerce to get the distribution of 6/4 approved. Jagdish spoke about Internet censorship and repression going on worldwide. I spoke about the Citizen Lab as a hacktivist lab and outlined some of the projects that we are working on. My presentation can be downloaded here (ppt, pdf).

No Royalties for SOCAN; File Sharing Legal

The Supreme court of Canada rejected the claim of the The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada that Canadian Internet Providers should pay royalties because some of their customers download copyrighted works (SOCAN v CAIP). This follows another loss in which the Canadian Music industry tried to get the names of persons they alleged shared copyrighted mp3 files (CRIA v ISPs). In both cases the issues of "communication" and "authorization" along with balancing the rights of users and copyright holders were under discussion. The SOCAN v CAIP decision was clear: ISP's are not liable for the file sharing activities of their users. However, there were some major screw-ups by the CRIA which lead to some interesting conclusions in the CRIA v ISPs case.

Advertisers & Spyware

Ben Edelman has just released a report detailing the companies that use When-U to deliver advertisements to users including some mainstream companies such as J.P. Morgan Chase and Verizon. The reports also investigates how spyware is being used to deliver ads when users visit competitors web sites.

COPA and Filtering

The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) received a blow from the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that it is likely that COPA is unconstitutional. COPA is a law that purports to protect minors from viewing sexually explicit materials on the Internet by requiring those who post sexually explicit content for "commercial purposes" to restrict access to the content by requiring a credit card or some technological measure so that minors cannot gain access. Failure to do so could result in a $50,000 fine and six months in prison.

The Court decision argues that "blocking and filtering software is a less restrictive alternative" and that COPA can be circumvented by minors that have access to credit cards and that COPA does not apply to foreign pornographic content. Therefore even if COPA were to take effect U.S.-based porn outfits could just move their operations overseas. It also concludes that COPA would only apply to Web content, therefore filtering technology, which can block email, chat, and other forms of Internet communication is more effective. Finally, it suggests that filtering technology is less restrictive because it can "impose selective restrictions on speech at the receiving end, not universal restrictions at the source" and its use can be encouraged "by giving strong incentives to schools and libraries". But is the use of filtering technologies a good substitute for bad legislation?

Filtering reports

Recently two report have been published looking at state-directed Internet filtering and surveillance. The first is entitled " The Internet In the Arab World: A New Space of Repression?" by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information. The second report is "Internet Under Surveillance 2004: Obstacles to the free flow of information online" by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Both the OpenNet Initiative and the Citizen Lab are mentioned in the RSF report.

Google and China

Google has reportedly invested $10 million in Chinese search engine Baidu. It appears that Google is trying stake out some territory in China in order to compete with Yahoo!, a company that already has a presence there through the 3721 search engine. In fact some are describing the move as a clash between the Google/Baidu and Yahoo!/3721 camps.

Recalling that Google itself was temporarily blocked in China the move seems surprising. But some are suggesting that the move allows Google to become acquainted with China’s self-censorship policies. Google apparently worked with Chinese officials to have Google unblocked but little is known about why Google was blocked and how it came to be unblocked. If Google is intending to move into the Chinese market, what will Google's stance be on self-censorship and Internet filtering?

Transparency/accountability and Internet filtering

The fact that the Internet in China is subject to significant filtering is old news, but now users's themselves can help out. The new website Illegal and Inappropriate Information Report Center, is run by Internet Society of China (ISC), the same people who brought you the Public Pledge of Self-Regulation and Professional Ethics for China Internet Industry ( signed by Yahoo!) If you want to have a website blocked just fill out a form, but make sure that the site falls into one of the categories such as "Attack party and government", "Publicizes the cults" (e.g. Falun Gong), "Violates the common courtesy", or "Other illegal and not good information". (* The wording is odd because it was translated with Babelfish.) This raises serious questions concerning the transparency and accountability of Internet filtering.

Combatting child porn or just another censorware outfit?

The Guardian reports that British Telecom, "Britain's largest high-speed internet provider" will begin censoring web sites to combat child pornography. The project is known as Cleanfeed and the article states that "who attempt to access illegal sites will receive an error message as if the page was unavailable." The article implies that that list of illegal sites was compiled by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) but all of this remains unclear to me. While IWF does monitor sites that host child abuse images and report them to police it does not appear to be involved in the production of URL black lists, public lists anyway.

[NOTE: I have since been informed that this Cleanfeed is NOT the same Cleanfeed as mentioned in the article. So take the following merely as my thoughts on the Cleanfeed service and has been slightly edited as a result :]

Cleanfeed, however, is a "pre-filtered broadband Internet" service that maintains a database of more that 6 million (6280873 total domains to date) categorized domain names that are further classified as "banned" or "allowed". The following is a quick, and less than thorough, assessment of Cleanfeed using its own site testing tool. In short, Cleanfeed only seems to categorize domain names, not full URL's and is plagued with all sorts of (mis) classification issues.

6/4 & Censorware

Today, June 4 2004, is the 15 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the world is remembering. The authorities are trying to snuff out any protest and maintaining a strict censorship policy, including Internet censorship. The cyberpolice keep a close watch over the Internet and restrict access to many web sites. In the past, researchers have attempted to document censored content and various methods of Internet filtering in China. But one aspect of Internet filtering that has not been fully explored is censorware products targeted at the client/small network level and implemented in schools, libraries, and web cafe's.

Air Traffic Control and Cyberterrorism

On June 3 2004 the air traffic control system in the UK shut down for one hour (7am -8am) causing flights to be delayed, cancelled and grounded. The Flight Data Processing System was being tested (testing on a live, critical infrastructure system?) in preparation for an upgrade when errors were detected. It was decided that a reboot (always the best option?) was the appropriate solution. Service was eventually restored. A similar incident recently occurred in Texas, USA.

These events will no doubt make their way into "security" literature with the addition of "what if" scenarios in which the disruption was cause by hackers or cyberterrorists rather than the unappealing reality of bugs, glitches and upgrades.

Iraq, Memory Holes, SmartFilter and a whole lot more

The Memory Hole blog reports that it is blocked on U.S. military computers. An email from a user stationed in Iraq to the Memory Hole shows that this block page information is shown to the user when they try to access the site:

Access Denied (content_filter_denied)
Your request was denied because of its content categorization: "Extreme;Politics/Religion"
For assistance, contact your network support team.

The categorization indicates that it is probably blocked as a result of the sites categorization as "Extreme" by a commercial filtering application rather than a specific blockage by the U.S. military. But you never know. A quick google search reveals...

Filtering in India

After reading a report about new filtering in India and varied compliance among ISP's (India delegates filtering responsibilty to the ISP and send them notices about which web sites to block). Previously India ordered a particular Yahoo! Group (kynhun) to be blocked which resulted in many ISPs blocking the entire groups.yahoo.com domain. As part of my work with ONI, checked the web site in question (an inflammatory anti-Islamic website, hinduunity.org). The website was in fact blocked, even by SIFY, an ISP named in the article that had expressed concerns over the authority under which the blocking order was delivered. In addition, at least 2 other websites were also blocked because they share the same IP address as hinduunity.org, a practice that Ben has written about in the past. Finally, one of the websites blocked due to IP sharing, kahane.org, is on the US Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. A strange coincidence. You can read the entire ONI bulletin here.

Open Source Censorship?

A NewsForge article on the ONI raises the issue of open source censorship, something that we have discussed in the past. Internet filtering technologies are plagued by two inherent flaws under-blocking (content that should be blocked is accessible) and over-blocking (content that should not be blocked is inaccessible); this has been pointed out time and time and time again. Most filtering systems use a block list method where administrators configure the filtering software to block categories of pre-selected URLs. In the case of proprietary filtering technologies these block lists are kept secret. Efforts to legally obtain the contents of these secret lists have failed because the lists are the intellectual property of the censorware vendors. When using proprietary filtering technology neither users nor administrators know exactly what is and is not blocked. Furthermore, countries/administrators may be blamed when URLs are unintentionally blocked because they have been mis-classified by the censorware vendor. But unlike proprietary filtering technology, open source filtering software (DansGuardian, SquidGuard) can be configured to use open block lists. These open block lists can be scrutinized and users and administrators are thus fully informed as to what exactly is being blocked. When applied at the national level, this means that censorship can be implemented in an open and transparent manner by using open source censorware. But is this good enough?

Mis-Takes?

Well, after the Brits have been exposed for plagiarism, the Bush Administration admits to being wrong about mobile biological weapons factories in Iraq, wrong about Saddam Hussien's links to Al Qaeda and proven wrong about African uranium and aluminum tubes and after the fraudster/crook turned scapegoat Chalabi has fallen from grace the New York Times has admitted that they were wrong concerning WMD's in Iraq:

... we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

A sample of the coverage in question is available here. In related news, the "War on Terror" received a sound blasting from Amnesty International which stated that "Governments are losing their moral compass, sacrificing the global values of human rights in a blind pursuit of security" and that "global security agenda promoted by the US Administration is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle". Canada also received a deserved blasting for police brutality, the detaining of individuals for more than 2 years on the basis of a "security certificate", and Canada's role in the deportation of Maher Arar to Syria where he was tortured.

Terrorism, the Law and Research

This story caught my attention. During the trial of a Saudi computer science student at the University of Idaho a "terrorism expert" testified that the defendant had published material that helped "to recruit and encourage financial support for terrorists." What caught my attention was that under cross-examination the terrorism expert admitted that "he published some of the same information on his own website without being prosecuted" but that his motivation for publishing the same material was "solely for the purposes of academic research into militant Islamic groups." Aside from the fact that the end user, in this case the potential "recruit", cares about accessing the information and not what the publishers motivations are, this raises issues about potential legal threats arising from sensitive research.

Vietnam Crackdown

I've looked at filtering in Vietnam some time ago, but given recent government order to crackdown on "bad and poisonous information" on the Internet I have been taking a closer look and I spoke with BBC/NPR about it today. (Ben Edelman is also interviewed in the report, listen to the report in MP3 format here.)I have not noticed any significant changes in filtering in Vietnam since I did some research on Vietnam's filtering of the IFEX website. IFEX and VNN are blocked from most, but not all, remote computers used for testing in Vietnam (Tests were conducted using remote computers with connection on Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications (VNPT) -- users on other networks may have different levels of filtering). This indiactes that the filtering is not centralized and is being implemented at various levels of access using varying methods. In addition, the behaviour when accessing blocked content varies from a blockpage to basic authentication (with a unique ID number):

HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Your Information (ID41322)"
Connection: Close

From my limited tests, blocking seems to generally focus on Vietnam-specific content and dissident groups. However, news websites such as BBC Vietnamese and VOA News Vietnamese are accessible.

e-everything

Now I've put an "e" in front of ithings before, but never 3 in one sentence. While I agree with the sentiment, this quote is outta hand.

Moreover, they allow undemocratic regimes to evolve into e-dictatorships dedicated to e-censorship and e-repression.

Spam tracking

Some recent spam statistics prompted a couple of interesting articles about spam that both sourced a study by commtouch.com which reports that 71% of the URLs in spam messages have their web sites hosted in China. (Additional statistics from brightmail.com analyze the total number and the content of spam.) However, less emphasis was placed on another statistic: 60.5% of spam originates in the USA. An article on internetnews.com prominently reported this statistic whereas a businessweek.com article, under the headline “A New Chinese Specialty: Spam” did not report this fact but rather casually stated that the actual spammers are “probably American or European”. This provides a nice intro to a project that has been incubating for the last two weeks and is still under development: Spice: The Spam Tracker.

The Current

The Current, a CBC Radio show, aired a segment on the OpenNet Intiative and the Citizen Lab today. Ron Deibert, Rafal Rohozinski and I were all interviewed. It was a somewhat wild ride of disparate tales including apparent milions of dollars of funding from George Soros (we are funded by OSI but not with millions), Rafal's sobering screwdriver story, my apparent breaking into foreign computer networks the moldy sandwich in the Lab's fridge and a soup con of porno. But interspersed in all of it was a good sense of the work the ONI/CL does with Internet censorship/filtering and why I call my self a hacker in the original sense of the word (and no I don't mean "someone who makes furniture with an axe"). Listen to the rather lengthy show here.

Spyware/Google/Copyright

Spyware make WhenU has been caught using search engine cloaking in order to redirect users to content that is favorable to WhenU. Ben Edelman found that WhenU redirected users to copies of copyrighted articles if the HTTP referer was from Google. This also caused sites critical of WhenU to be pushed down in Google's ranking. Ben's disclosure led both Google and Yahoo to remove WhenU from their search results.

Where credit is and is not due

Where credit is due:
In light of the "IBB Anonymizer" report, Seth Finkelstein has pointed out that Bennett Haselton had previously discovered that Anonymizer blocks by keyword and that some domains are whitelisted. I was not aware of Bennett's discovery when I was conducting the research and I have added a note at the bottom of the report acknowledging Bennett's discoveries.

Where credit is not due:
When things need to be "sexed-up" some (often reporters) will sometimes state that certain websites are blocked in certain countries without actually checking if that information is correct. In this article it is suggested that news.bbc.com is blocked in Iran when no such domain exists and in this article its suggested that "BBC News, MIT and Amnesty International" are blocked in China and Iran.

Happy World Press Freedom Day

On request from International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) I tested to see if there site www.ifex.org was blocked. I tested from mutliple remote computers in 78 different countries and found that the site was filtered in Vietnam. The IFEX release states:

The organization recently asked the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a joint project of the Universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Harvard, to test if any countries were blocking the IFEX site. The ONI ran four rounds of testing on 18 servers in Vietnam and found it impossible to log on to the IFEX site. The servers were all run by Vietnam's main Internet service provider, Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications (VNPT).

ONI Advisory 001

Well, after a lot of hard work my research on International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB)/Anonymizer's circumvention tool has been released. It contains porn filters that block by keyword -- such as ASS. So domains that have ASS in them, such as usembassy.state.gov, are blocked even though they are not pronographic. Besides poorly designed porn filters, the IBB/Anonymizer works in plain text. Therefore the content of a user's sesion can easily be sniffed. The story has been picked up by CNET/News.com and New Scientist.

Reverse Filtering

In course of Internet filtering research – enumerating what is blocked where, using what technology and why – it is necessary to account for all lot of ambiguous data and the level of complexity involved in making authoritative determinations of filtering technology, levels and content. One such item to take into account is reverse filtering. Reverse filtering occurs when it’s the requested web server that blocks itself from processing requests for specific countries as opposed to what is generally presumes – that countries or institutions block access to a particular website via filtering technology, firewall or some such network device configured to block access to the requested web site. When reverse filtering occurs it be just assumed that the requested content is blocked by the country/technology being enumerated when in fact the web site is deny itself to users from particular countries.

Blockpage Gallery

The Blockpage Gallery is a collection of screen shots from a wide variety of countries, ISP's, commercial and open source filtering applications. The screenshots have been collected during various explorations of Internet filtering worldwide.

The Google Bomb Wars

Google bombing is nothing new. Its been used for a variety of humorous searches such as "weapons of mass destruction" and "french military victories". However, after an anti-semitic web site www.jewwatch.com obtained the number one ranking for the Google search jew some e-activists decided to create a Joogle bomb to combat this placement and succeeded in getting wikipedia’s entry for jew into the top spot. Google has released this statement on the matter. In addition there have been efforts to shut down the site, see removejewwatch.com for details. Seth Finkelstein has noticed that jewwatch.com is not listed in the German and French localized Google, due to Google’s filtering of search results in those countries.

Media Reflections

The flurry of recent press surrounding the Citizen Lab and the OpenNet Initiative has given me an opportunity to reflect on Internet filtering/censorship research, circumvention technology and the politics free speech on the Internet. The discourse surrounding freedom of speech carries far more political connotations than glossy media reports reveal. The discourse characterizes Internet filtering as a dichotomy: that free speech is something "we" have and "they" do not. Such a characterization creates a perception that Internet censorship research is embedded in a right-wing or neo-liberal worldview oscillating on a political continuum between a paternalistic view of global human rights and an anti-communist, islamophobic ideological position. However, beneath the surface layer a thorough analysis reveals greater levels of complexity.

In the media

The media can be your best friend and/or your worst enemy. They can make you famous or infamous. They can misquote you, misrepresent you, infuriate you as well as promote you, get recognition for your projects and help you get your message out to the public. What follows is a somewhat narcissistic collection of media related to various projects I've been involved with.

Burn-in-ating

Well, the burn-in-ating has begun. The Internet Censorship Explorer (ICE) is my new blog where you'll find bleeding edge Internet filtering and censorship research related to my work with the Citizen Lab and the OpenNet Initiative. ICE will also contain news and my views on hacktivism as well as circumvention technology -- including proof of concept code and any other snippets of raw data that don't really have a place anywhere else. To be clear, this blog represents my personal views and does not neccessarily reflect the views of the Citizen Lab or the OpenNet Initiative.