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.