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.