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.