Domestic Surveillance Without A Warrant

The New York Times reports that since 2002 the U.S. Government has been spying on the phone conversations and emails of Americans without a court warrant. Internal domestic phone calls are not subject to such monitoring, but calls from the US to other countries and incoming intenational calls are subject to electronic surveillance with a court order.

While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it say the N.S.A. eavesdrops without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time. The list changes as some names are added and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached into the thousands since the program began, several officials said. Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time, according to those officials.

Now you may have thought that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) prevents secret spying on Americans:

One provision says it is a crime for anyone to "intentionally engage in electronic surveillance" except as authorized by law or a court order. However, "the president, through the attorney general, may authorize electronic surveillance … to acquire foreign intelligence information" if officials obtain a warrant from a special court that operates inside the Justice Department.

But no. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says "that the president has the inherent authority, under the Constitution's commander in chief, to engage in this kind of conduct." But this Gonzales says is a "secondary argument" because Congress authorized the President to use "all necessary and appropriate force" in legislation passed after Sept. 11 thereby bypassing provisions in FISA. Moreover, the "new threat" requires a rapid response something that FISA, even with its retroactive provisions, cannot provide. When asked why not fix FISA instead of opting for a "backdoor" approach, Gonzales answered:

This is not a backdoor approach. We believe Congress has authorized this kind of surveillance. We have had discussions with Congress in the past -- certain members of Congress -- as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible.

So, Congress authorized something that they would not have, if they were asked? Wow.

But don't worry! Just have a look at how Mr. Bush answered a question that raised concernes about the unchecked power of the President. Bush's answer is that there are plenty of checks like the fact he's "sworn to uphold the law" and that he's "talking to Congress all the time" so everything is OK. Right?

Borat

Well, I think Dave can see the future. Two weeks after this post discussing the new domain rules in Kazakhstan they were used to strip Borat of his .kz domain:

Isin [Nurlan Isin, President of the Association of Kazakh IT Companies] said the borat.kz Web site had broken new rules on all .kz sites maintaining two computer servers in Kazakhstan and had registered false names for its administrators

Here is the whois information.

Kazakhstan has revoked .kz domains in the past for political reasons.

Thankfully, we can all view Borat's site at borat.tv.

InfoWar

Information Warfare is certainly not a recent phenomenon. InfoWar-Monitor's timeline shows the evolution of the doctrine over time. The use of such tactics as psychological warfare operations , or PSYOPS, in the context of the war in Iraq is also not new. About a year ago the U.S. military used CNN to execute such an operation in the lead up to the assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

Now, new stories are emerging about the fact that U.S. Military's Information Operations Task Force is writing propaganda that is laundered through a defense contractor, Lincoln Group, and placed in Iraqi newspapers. The L.A. Times reported that the U.S. Military is actually paying newspapers to run the stories blurring the lines between a free press and information operations:

The arrangement with Lincoln Group is evidence of how far the Pentagon has moved to blur the traditional boundaries between military public affairs — the dissemination of factual information to the media — and psychological and information operations, which use propaganda and sometimes misleading information to advance the objectives of a military campaign.

The L.A. Times further reveals that:

...as part of a psychological operations campaign that has intensified over the last year, the task force also had purchased an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, and was using them to channel pro-American messages to the Iraqi public. Neither is identified as a military mouthpiece.

The New York Times reports that these practices are even more wide spread extending in several Arab countries as well as Afghanistan. The New York Times reports that The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) does not locally disclose its ivolvemnt with media in Afghanistan:

Similarly, AID does not locally disclose that dozens of Afghanistan radio stations get its support, through grants to a London-based nonprofit group, Internews. (AID discloses its support in public documents in Washington, most of which can be found globally on the Internet.)

USAID explains the that reason for the lack of disclosure is "to maintain the perception (if not the reality) that these radio stations are in fact fully independent."

* The New York Times also reports that there was a plan by the Lincoln Group to create a publication based on The Onion that was rejected :)

Detecting & Evading Filtering

At the Internet & Democracy 2005 conference in London we had a session on "Detecting and Evading Filtering". The goal was to explain some techniques used to better determine filtering and give an overview of the ONI methodology.

In the second half of the presentation we focused on censorship circumvention. I like to talk about circumvention from two perspectives: push & pull. The "push" strategy if from the perspective of content producers and I hoped to use the discussion to start developing a sort of "best practices" document for content producers who expect their content to be blocked.

The final part of the presentation focused on pull strategies, basically proxies/anonymizers etc... -- technology that enables users to select filtered content to view. Most of the strategies from this perspective are detailed in "Choosing Circumvention". We also demo'd psiphon :)

The slides from the presentation are available here:
http://www.nartv.org/ppt/uk-prz.ppt.

Internet Filtering in Morocco

Morocco has now joined the list of countries that filter. RSF reports:

Reporters Without Borders has verified that the arso.org, cahiersdusahara.com, cahiersdusahara.com, wsahara.net and spsrasd.info websites have all been rendered inaccessible in Morocco since 21 November. ... A “connection failure” type of error message is displayed when someone tries to access one of these sites.

I can confirm (via proxy) that http://www.arso.org/ , http://cahiersdusahara.com/ , http://wsahara.net/ and http://www.spsrasd.info/ are blocked. The site http://www.afapredesa.org/ is also blocked. The IP addresses of all these sites are blocked. Blocking by IP address usually causes significant overblocking. In blocking these 5 sites, Morocco is actualy blocking 2287 domains.

SF

Well, SmartFilter has reviewed my blog and decided against re-categorization.

You are receiving this email because Secure Computing Corporation received a URL submission with your email account listed as the interested party.

The results of your submission are as follows:

************************************************************
Final Report for URL Submissions
************************************************************


Date of submission: 12/03/2005
Number of sites Submitted: 1
Number of sites Processed: 1

Not Changed: 1 -- We decided that the current categories do not need to be changed.


Thank you for your submission. If you have continued questions or concerns about any of the attached URLs, we invite you to contact sites@securecomputing.com with your concerns.


Sincerely,
Sites

Hacker

The filtering software SmartFilter, which is used to filter in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Tunisia and until recently in Iran, now classifies http://www.nartv.org/ in its "hacking" category. I consider myself a hacker so at first I was rather pleased. But SmartFilter's category definition -- certainly not the same as mine -- in no way matches the content on this site:

SmartFilter provides this definition for the category:

Hacking (hk)
This category includes URLs that distribute information and hacking tools (root kits, kiddy scripts, etc.) that help individuals gain unauthorized access to computer systems.

Version 3 still categorizes http://www.nartv.org/ as "Gen. News":

General News (nw)
The general news category applies to most online news and mainstream publications, such as business, trade, and medical journals, as well as high school and university newspapers. It also includes headline-news sites, newswire services, and proprietary news services.

While I certainly don't mind being labeled a hacker, I am concerned that people are being blocked when trying to view this site. I have requested SmartFilter change my categorization to General News.

More Filtering in Thailand

Thailand is getting set to filter over 800,000 sites. As I've written before, Thailand says the reason for filtering is to protect youth from "pornographic or violent websites", but then why are they blocking non-violent, non-pornographic websites that detail Government corruption?

(Thanks for the heads-up, Rob )

.kz domain

I just found this blog post concerning the .kz domain. The Government of Kazakhstan wants to restrict the geographic location of the .kz domain. The new rules would require that two DNS servers servicing the .kz domain as well as the webserver hosting the .kz domain be physically located in Kazakhstan. (An FAQ on nic.kz says one can regsiter a domain and not be located in Kazakhstan, it doesn't mention hosting though.) As the blog entry suggests this could have consequences for sites that the government does not approve of.

Kazakhstan is the only country I've seen that filters (or has filtered) websites with its own ccTLD. (See http://www.blokada.org/en.php and as well as RSF) Starting back in 1999 Kazakh ISP began filtering websites, explaining that the websites were inaccessible for permanent "technical reasons".

KazNIC currently operates the ccTLD and has specific rules and a dispute policy for revoking domains. In one case, KazNIC revoked the domain names of an opposition group after a court ruling. It appears to be a case about copyright infringement. (Interestingly, it seems that the domain was temorarily transfered to a new owner, but the domain is not (at least in WHOIS) back to its original owner. )

Hacking Ghost Stories

There have been a variety of reports lately on "Titan Rain", an apparent cracker attack on US military computers that may have originated in China. The story orginally surfaced in the Washinton Post which reported that "Web sites in China" (1) were being used attack "hundreds of unclassified networks" run by the DoD and the US Government. Complete with the usual whispers and officials refusing to comment the articles notes that China may only be the last traceable hop and that only "low risk" computers were compromised.

TIME Magazine (pdf , local archive) then picks up the story and focuses on Shawn Carpenter, a mid-level analyst at Sandia National Laboratories, who claims to have counter-cracked the attackers and pinpointed their location to three routers in China's Guangdong province. TIME then states the following:

TIME has obtained documents showing that since 2003, the hackers, eager to access American knowhow, have compromised secure networks ranging from the Redstone Arsenal military base to NASA to the World Bank. In one case, the hackers stole flight-planning software from the Army.

It is unclear if "the hackers" are the same alleged Chinese hackers or if this is just a summary of the many attacks on DoD and US Government systems that Lt. Col. Mike VanPutte, vice director of operations of the Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations under the U.S. Strategic Command, attributes to the increased used of downloadable attack tools, which presumably, there are security patches for. In effect, there are increased attacks (i.e. scans or attempts to use known exploits) against Internet-connected, low risk, computers.

This story is eerily familiar.

Moonlight Maze is a continuing story that surfaced in July 1999 about a secret cyber-war aimed at the Pentagon and possibly conducted by the Russians or Chinese. It first appeared in the London Sunday Times in an article by James Adams. The story relied on unnamed sources and claimed that "some of the nation's most sensitive military secrets, including weapons guidance systems and naval intelligence codes" had been stolen. However, a story in Federal Computer Week refuted these claims by citing yet more unnamed DOD and pentagon officials as calling recent media coverage of Moonlight Maze "a combination of outright fabrications, distortions and incorrect quotations," and that military secrets had not been compromised.

The Moonlight Maze story re-surfaced after the Sept 11 attacks. USA Today ran a story about Moonlight Maze but in this version the theft of secret data "may be the work of terrorists" or someone working with terrorists.

Titan Rain and Moonlight Maze are amazingly similar ghost stories. In effect, the same story had been told and re-told, with substituted attackers, since at least 1999. I call FUD.

(1) Websites? Hmm... thats some badass HTML :)

Online Censorship in the Middle East and North Africa

Human Rights Watch has released a report on Internet Censorship in the Middle East. It contains case studies on Egypt, Iran, Syria and Tunisia. The technical testing was conducted by the OpenNet Initiative and the report was written by my friend and colleague Elijah Zarwan at HRW. It was a great pleasure to work with Elijah on this report.

Given recent events in Egypt, where the government has cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood during Parliamentary elections, HRW's case study is extremely relevant. The banned Muslim Brotherhood has captured 76 seats (its candidates run as independents) in Parliament. The New York Times reports that the Muslim Brotherhood is now "the only significant opposition voice in the next Parliament, and the only opposition group likely to qualify to nominate a candidate to run for president in future elections."

However, the website of the Muslim Brotherhood, http://www.ikhwanonline.com/, is blocked by the largest ISP in Egypt. HRW reports that the Muslim Brotherhood has changed their IP several times to avoid the blocking and now operate a mirror site that is not blocked. (The Labor Party’s website http://www.alshaab.com is also blocked.) Despite the blocking, the Internet is still a key tool in organizing.

Banned groups are now using third-party sites they do not officially endorse—public bulletin boards, chat rooms, and so on—to coordinate their activities.

I think that this case shows that the effectiveness of filtering is its use in combination with overlapping mechanisms -- technical, legal and political -- of social control. The technical filtering is a reminder of what content is acceptable -- what the range of debate should be. But the technology loses its effectiveness when the other mechanisms of this control fade.

Vietnam Strikes Back

Vietnam has lashed out at Reporters Without Borders after RSF listed Vietnam as one of the 15 enemies of the Internet. Vietnam blocks access to many web sites and has imprisoned those who use the Internet to speak out against the government. Vietnam's response to charges of silencing online expression includes a listing of the accomplishments of Vietnam in terms of boosting access to the Internet as well as a strange admission that their filtering is actually not that good:

Viet Nam has also failed to introduce effective measures to prevent hostile and reactionary forces and political opportunists at home and abroad from using the Internet and on-line forums to speak ill of achievements gained by the people.

After an admission that Vietnam "puts firewalls on websites that are not suitable to the morals and fine customs of oriental people" they endorse "the establishment of a UN Internet Surveillance Agency". But the conclusion is the most telling:

The RWB's conclusion might lead to readers' understanding that the exercise of freedom of speech in a country means its government must allow the free distribution of terror threats and pornographic information on the Internet to poison the mind of the young generation.

Terrorism is the new porn. Increasingly, countries that filtering will claim "terrorism" as the excuse of the day -- replacing porn as the most common stated reason for Internet filtering. But, regardless of the initial reason for implementing Internet filtering, there is increasing pressure to expand its use once the filtering infrastructure is in place. Governments seem to be unable to resist the temptation to use it as a tool of political censorship.

See, I am wondering what "terror threats and pornographic information" is contained in the Vietnam Human Rights Network which is blocked in Vietnam? What about these sites: http://www.fva.org/ , http://vietforum.org/ , http://www.vpac-usa.org/ or http://www.montagnards.org/? And there are many more.

Today information is not borderless.

WSIS Media Coverage

BBC - Controversy dogs UN net gathering (pdf)

BBC - Tunisia slated over net controls (pdf)

BBC - Hungry for net freedom in Tunisia (pdf)

Reuters - Rights group faults Tunisia on Internet censorship (pdf)

Times Online - Read all about it. But be quick (pdf)

VOA - Information Summit Closes Amid Criticism of Tunisian Censorship (pdf)

Inter Press Service - Activists Give a Crash Course in Overcoming Electronic Hurdles

South China Morning Post - TUNISIA: Study says Tunisia centralises web filtering

Le Monde - Les ONG accusent quinze Etats de censurer la liberté d'expression sur Internet (pdf)


Libération - «Le spectre du filtrage n'a jamais été aussi large» (pdf)



OpenNet Initiative - World Summit Opening in a Closed Society: Tunisia's Approach to Internet Filtering Contradicts the Objectives of an 'Open' Information Society

Expression Under Repression

Thanks to some negotations by HIVOS the "Expression Under Repression" event at WSIS was a success. It was unclear whether the event was to be held at all after the Tunisian authorities threatened to shutdown the session, claiming that the topic had nothing to do with ICT for Development. On the morning of the event a "cancelled" notice appeared on the door of the room where the event was scheduled to take place. And during the first panel there was some coomotion as a Tunisian camera crew and assorted plainclothes agents entered the conference room. I began my presentation as negotiations continued in the hallway outside. While giving an overview of Internet filtering trends worlwide, based on the OpenNet Initiative's ongoing research, I tried to emphasize three key issues: Transparency/Accountability, Unintended Consequences and Mission Creep. Here are the slides from my presentation.

Internet Filtering in Tunisia in 2005

The OpenNet Initiative is proud to announce the release of Internet Filtering in Tunisia in 2005, a country study that documents Tunisia's attempts to control Internet information, including the filtering of political opposition Web sites, human rights groups, and sites that provide access to privacy-enhancing technologies. ONI research reveals that Tunisia’s government Internet agency, ATI, uses SmartFilter -- filtering software produced by Secure Computing, a US-based company -- as the basis of its filtering regime. The state falsifies the information provided to users who try to reach filtered sites; the error page received claims the site is not accessible for technical reasons. Click Here for the full report.

WSIS

The WSIS summit in Tunisia is now well underway and the issue of freedom of expression online is emerging as an important issue. In his opening address, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stated that freedom of expression was a key issue. During the opening ceremony, Kofi Annan was joined by Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, representing the Civil Society delegation, who stated that fundamental respect for freedom of expression is integral to an information society. She called on WSIS to have an official inquiry into Internet filtering.

The fact that WSIS is even in Tunisia has been the subject of much controversy. In the official WSIS space it is considered the UN, and the Internet is not filtered. But across the hall, in the ICT4D area, where countries, NGO, and companies have booths, it is Tunisian space, and the Internet is filtered. A website for the Citizen's Summit, an alternative parallel event, was available two days ago, but it is now blocked.

As shown in the just released ONI report on Filtering in Tunisia the block page appears to be a 404 File not Found error, but it is in fact a 403 Forbidden error generated by SmartFilter.

Filtering in Germany

Schneier's comments on this article are right on.

Fortinet for who?

ONI reports that Burma is now using Fortinet (they were previously using DansGuardian) to censor the Internet. Fortinet claims:

Fortinet employs a two-tier sales model, in which we sell 100 percent of our products to resellers, who then sell to end-users. We do not directly sell, deploy or configure our products for end-users. Additionally, we have no record in our databases of Myanmar Millennium Group being a Fortinet reseller.

But DerekB discovered that Burma actually had a ceremony to commemorate the installation of Fortinet and that Ben Teh, Forntinet Sales Director for South Asia and Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand, had attended the ceremony, given a audio/visual presentation on Fortinet and presented a gift to the Burmese Prime Minister.



When asked by Irrawaddy:

Teh today denied that Fortinet has any involvement in Burma and refused to confirm or deny whether he visited Rangoon last year. "We don’t have any direct resellers and we don’t have any direct partners in Myanmar [Burma]," he said, refusing to comment further.

Here is a picure from Burmese TV of Ben Teh presenting his gift to the Burmese Prime Minister. See, there is a the little problem of the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003 which the New York Times suggests Fortinet may be in violation of. I am not a lawyer, but this Act only seems to affect imports from Burma, not exports. In fact the U.S. Department of Treasury states that exports to Burma are (there are exceptions for financial services and about who you can export to, but not exports themselves) are not prohibited. So unless Fortinet sold their filtering product to a prohibited person -- which appears to be persons who hold senior positions in the State Peace and Development Council or the Union Solidarity Development Association.

It's all somewhat odd. Section three of the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act is titled "BAN AGAINST TRADE THAT SUPPORTS THE MILITARY REGIME OF BURMA" but it does not seem to prevent U.S. companies from selling censorship and surveillance equipment to Burma, it only affects imports.

The ironly of all this is that we are continually seeing U.S.-made filtering products being used by authoritarian regimes to implement Internet censorship worldwide.

Internet Filtering in Burma in 2005

ONI released Internet Filtering in Burma in 2005 today. ONI's legal, technical, and political research finds Burma uses filtering technology to conduct surveillance of communication methods such as e-mail, and to block users from viewing Web sites of political opposition groups, organizations working for democratic change in Burma, and pornographic material. Click here for the full report.

Internet Filtering in Burma/Myanmar

The OpenNet Initiative released Internet Filtering in Burma in 2005:

ONI's legal, technical, and political research finds Burma uses Internet filtering technology to conduct surveillance of communication methods such as e-mail, and to block users from viewing Web sites of political opposition groups, organizations working for democratic change in Burma, and pornographic material.

Although Burma has switched to a commercial filtering product, Fortinet, it is the first country in which ONI has seen an open source software, DansGuardian, deployed as a national filtering mechanism. The websites of human rights groups, newspapers critical of the government and those supporting the Karen people as well as Aung San Suu Kyi are blocked in Burma along with most popular webmail services.

Some media coverage:

- Study Says Software Makers Supply Tools to Censor Web - New York Times
- Burma’s internet censorship worsening: study - Mizzima News
- Internet Censorship in Burma Worsening - Irrawaddy

and

Boing Boing (yay!)

Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents

Reporters Without Borders has released the Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents (local mirror) which includes a chapter by myself on censorship circumvention technology.

In response to state-directed Internet filtering and monitoring regimes many forms of circumvention technologies have emerged in order to allow users to bypass filtering restrictions. In general, circumvention technologies work by routing a user's request from a country that implemented filtering through an intermediary machine that is not blocked by the filtering regime. This computer then retrieves the requested content for the censored user and then transmits the content back to the user.

There are numerous projects to develop technologies that would enable citizens and civil society networks to secure themselves against, or work around, Internet censorship and surveillance. Circumvention technologies are often targeted towards different types of users with varying resources and levels of expertise. This chapter guides users through the process of selecting a circumvention technology that meets the users specific needs.

The chapter "Technical ways to get around censorship" is also available in HTML format: Part 1 & Part 2. It is also available in Chinese, Arabic and Farsi/Persian.

Internet Filtering in Singapore in 2004-2005

ONI has released a study on Internet Filtering in Singapore. The Republic of Singapore is an economic leader in Southeast Asia, with a vibrant information and communications technologies sector; however, the state maintains strong formal and informal controls over the information to which its citizens have access. Singapore's Internet content regulation depends primarily on access controls and legal pressures to prevent people from posting objectionable content rather than technological methods to block it. Compared to other countries that implement mandatory filtering regimes that ONI has studied closely, Singapore's technical filtering system is one of the most limited. Click here for the full report.

NBC Censors Kanye West

NBC deleted Kanye Wests political comments from the West Coast broadcast of its Hurricane Katrina benefit show. NBC says they censored West's comments because they didn't want to "politicize" the event. Here is a video of what he actually said.

The LA Times slammed NBC's censorship stating:

By censoring Grammy-winning rapper Kanye West's remarks critical of President Bush during its West Coast feed of the program Friday night, the network violated the most moving and essential moment in an otherwise sterile, self-serving corporate broadcast...

NBC may have been nervous about West's comments, including the notion that America and its president are unresponsive to the needs of the poor. But you can be sure those remarks would have been cheered more than anything else in the program by the black parents and children still trapped in the New Orleans Convention Center and the Superdome if they had been able to hear them.

So True.

Most articles on Internet censorship in China contain factual errors. I have mostly focused on the technical side of things. I agree with Kaiser who states:

In recent years, Western reporting on Beijing’s efforts to restrict Internet content has created the impression of draconian control: legions of Party stalwarts, filtering for sensitive keywords and all too ready to muzzle offenders.

And Rebecca too:

Western reporters can get away with this kind of sloppy reporting because there is so much real censorship happening every day in China. So reports of censorship are always believable - to foreigners as well as to many Chinese.

However, I don't believe the answer to be so simple. Are there that many gullible/incompetent journalists out there? What about their editors? The media corporations they work for? The question still remains: why? I'd speculate but... maybe... another time.

Internet Filtering in Singapore

The OpenNet Initiative has released a report on Internet filtering in Singapore:

The Republic of Singapore is an economic leader in Southeast Asia, with a vibrant information and communications technologies sector; however, the state maintains strong formal and informal controls over the information to which its citizens have access. Singapore’s official position is that the state filters Internet content to promote social values and maintain national unity, with the goal of denying access to objectionable material, especially pornography and content encouraging ethnic or religious strife. The Media Development Authority (MDA) claims to block only a symbolic list of 100 Web sites (primarily pornography) as a symbol of the state’s disapproval of this content. In addition, the MDA encourages, and each of Singapore’s three primary Internet Service Providers offers, optional, filtered Internet access services that block additional sites for a minimal monthly fee.

In our testing, the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) found extremely minimal filtering of Internet content in Singapore, as only eight sites of 1,632 tested (.49%) were blocked: www.cannabis.com, www.chick.com, www.formatureaudiencesonly.com, www.penthouse.com, www.persiankitty.com, www.playboy.com, www.playgirl.com, and www.sex.com. The limited blocking that our testing revealed focuses on a few pornographic URLs and one site each in the categories of illegal drugs and fanatical religion. Similar content is readily available at other sites on the Internet that are not blocked in Singapore. Thus, Singapore’s Internet content regulation depends primarily on access controls (such as requiring political sites to register for a license) and legal pressures (such as defamation lawsuits and the threat of imprisonment) to prevent people from posting objectionable content rather than technological methods to block it. Compared to other countries that implement mandatory filtering regimes that ONI has studied closely, Singapore’s technical filtering system is one of the most limited.

Internet Surveillance & Arrest in Iraq

I just read Khalid Jarrar's post about his arrest in Iraq. Not only is it a sobering reminder of the reality of the situation in Iraq it also illustrates the surveillance the population is under and the disdain for freedoms of all sorts by the authorities there. Khalid was arrested for reading the comments section of his brother's blog:

Then finally I understood why I was there, after few hours. Security guards at the university had printed out all the websites I was reading while I was online there. They were accusing me of “reading terrorism sites” and “having communications with foreign terrorists”.
“Do you know what these pages are?”
I looked at them and figured out they were the comment section of Raed in the Middle!!
I opened the comments section while browsing in the university, read some comments, and didn’t even post anything. But these people don’t seem to know what the internet is, and they don’t speak English, so I was a major suspect of being an assistant of al Zarqawi maybe! Or that I have a terrorist group of my own, with foreign connections!

Khalid goes on to describe his experience and those with whom he was imprisoned.He also described how at the time of his release he was made to sign a document stating he would nto discuss his experiences.

On Thursday, the judge decided that I was innocent. He figured out that the papers were from a public forum, and he didn’t find any comments posted by me.
I wasn’t released till Saturday morning, after I was forced to sign a paper committing that I wouldn’t tell the families of the arrested people that they are arrested, and that I wouldn’t tell anyone about anything that happened while I was arrested or tell them what I saw inside the jail, and that I would report any case of breaking the law that I know about to the authorities (at this point I laughed and asked: even if someone drove his car through a red traffic light?), and that I wouldn’t visit terrorism websites.

I, of course, told all the families I could that their sons are arrested in the seventh floor of the ministry of interior in the hands of the Mukhabarat, and here I am telling you everything that happened with me, and I am planning to visit all kind of websites as much as I like as long as I want.

Telus Filtering... Badly

While blocking access to one Union site (during an escalating labour dispute) Telus actually blocked access to 766 other domains hosted on the same IP address. Blocking by IP address is often the first choice for ISP's new to blocking and it has serious unintended consequences. Here is the lastest ONI bulletin:

On July 25, 2005, Canadian Internet Service Provider (ISP) Telus blocked subscribers' access to a Web site set up by an employee labor union intended to publicize the union's views about its dispute with Telus. In addition, the OpenNet Initiative's (ONI) research shows that Telus's decision to block traffic to the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the site caused collateral filtering of at least 766 additional, unrelated Web sites. Telus restored access to the IP address hosting the sites on July 28, 2005, while appearing to maintain an option to block any sites it chooses.

The full bulletin is available here (pdf).

China & Cisco

Wired reports the latest on the Cisco-China-gate and mention ONI:

A report from the OpenNet Initiative watchdog group last April singled out Cisco for allegedly enabling the Chinese government's notorious "Great Firewall," a filtering system that prevents Chinese netizens from visiting websites that criticize the government.

Cisco's routers, the report noted, form the backbone of China's internet access, and include the power to identify and filter packets based on keyword matches -- a tool typically used for fighting viruses and denial-of-service attacks that also makes internet censorship easier for repressive governments.

Rebecca has also been covering this story and has a detailed account of her conversation with a Cisco Rep generating, as noted, a lot of debate and criticism.

I think that there are two issues here, related for sure, but likely somewhat seperate: filtering and monitoring. We know that filtering is occuring on multiple levels and monitoring would follow that same pattern. Like filtering, the location at which the monitoring is taking place affects the usabilty of the data collected. It also affects the processing and response capability.

Kyrgyzstan

This article discusses the internet in the former Soviet Union with specific reference to Kyrgyzstan. It also discusses some of the ONI's work on election mointoring and event-based filtering & Denial of Service attacks in the Kygyz Republic during the recent elections and subsequent ousting of Akayev.

There was greater scope for investigation of these attacks, for instance by the Open Net Initiative (ONI), an Internet monitoring effort run by several Western universities, which issued reports on the attacks and their causes. These reports cited the role of a group known as "Shadow Team," which claimed to be behind the denial of service attacks and demanded that certain websites be removed if the attacks were to be halted. Under pressure to keep web traffic flowing, Elcat complied with this demand in cooperation with the owners of the targeted sites, which included those of the independent newspapers ResPublica and MSN, resulting, as ONI noted in their interim report, in de facto censorship.

Why Exaggerate?

China is engaging in plenty of Internet censorship, so why exaggerate? To me, it appears that there are two angles to most articles about Internet censorship in China one that underestimates China's information control capabilties and one that exaggerates them. Inspired by Ben Walker's five misconceptions here is my (incomplete) list of "Internet censorship in China myths" that are continuing to appear in the media.

Internet filtering in Japan?

Some bloggers have highlighted Japan's intention to implement Internet filtering. However, it appears that this effort is targetted towards urging "schools and public offices" to install filtering software, not nationwide filtering.

The government said officials will step up monitoring of suspicious sites, urge schools and public offices to install Internet filtering software and set criteria for service providers to disclose information they find on planned suicides.

The focus of the efforts appears to be enhancing Japan's internet surveillance capabilties while the filtering effort appears to be targetting text messaging. Still, as has been pointed out, efforts that move closer to creating the neccessary procedures for filtering and surveillance (gov't interfacing with ISPs) often occur in a non-transparent manner which raises serious concern about just how far information control policies will go. As we saw with Thailand, filtering that starts out targetting certain content is often and easily extended to targetting political content as well. However, it is unclear to me of how seriously Japan will take efforts to implement a centralized, nation-wide filtering system.

Censoring Zahra Kazemi

Zahra Kazemi was an Iranian-Canadian who was killed by while being interrogated by Iranian security agents. Kazemi was taking pictures of a student protest outside of a prison when she was arrested. Censorship, including Internet filtering, is occurring in Iran, but it is here in Canada where efforts are also being taken to censor Kazemi's work. Naomi Klein writes:

Close to two years later, there are new attempts to cover Kazemi’s lens, to prevent her photographs from reaching public eyes – only now the censorship is happening inside her adopted country of Canada. Last week Montreal’s Cote St. Luc Library removed five of Kazemi’s photographs from display after Jewish patrons complained of alleged “pro-Palestinian bias”; they left up the rest of the exhibition, which had already been displayed in Paris. Kazemi’s son, Stephan Hachemi, called the removal of the Palestinian photographs “a violation of my mother’s spirit” and rightly demanded that the library show the entire exhibit or nothing at all. So the library took down the entire show.

There are those trying to have the exhibit restored:

A Jewish group [Canada Jewish Alliance Against the Occupation] in Montreal is accusing city authorities of censorship over its decision to remove a library exhibit of the work of murdered photojournalist Zahra Kazemi.

www.zahrakazemi.com seems to be down. Anyone have a mirror of the five censored photos?

Internet Filtering in Nepal

Reports suggest that the websites www.insn.org and www.samudaya.org are being filtered in Nepal. Recall that Nepal actually severed its connection to the Internet itself after the royal coup.

Target Skype?

VOIP technology has been targetted for blocking in the past, mostly for economic reasons. Countries, such as Costa Rica are considering placing controls on VOIP. Generally, this is done by blocking the ports associated with the service. But now websites that provide software used to make phone calls over the Internet are being targetted for filtering. There have been reports about the filtering of Skype in China and confirmation of blocking in UAE and Oman. When asked about the filtering Omantel stated:

“We use a third-party company to filter out offensive sites, such as those containing pornography,” the source explained. “However sometimes the company’s database does block some sites that it shouldn’t. Skype.com is one example. We have ordered the company to open this site back up, and it should be live again anytime now.”

What's interesting about this is that both UAE and Omantel use Smartfilter. However, Smartfilter categorizes www.skype.com as "Web Phone", a category that Omantel would have had to specifically activate. Omantel's explanation seems a bit suspect to me.

Internet Filtering in Iran in 2004-2005

Iran's Internet filtering system is one of the worlds most substantial censorship regimes. Drawing from technical interrogation, extensive legal and political analysis, and interviews with Iranians, ONI’s analysis finds that Iran’s Internet filtering system is one of the world’s most substantial censorship regimes. Iran has adopted this extensive filtering regime at a time of extraordinary growth in Internet usage among its citizens, as well as a tremendous increase in the number of its citizens who write online in Farsi. ONI’s research shows that Iran is among several countries in the Middle East that focuses its censorship efforts on expression through local language, like Farsi. Iran is also one of a growing number of countries, particularly in the Middle East region, that rely upon commercial software developed by for-profit United States companies to carry out its filtering regime. Click Here for the full report.

Internet Filtering in Thailand

Recent reports have indicated that Thailand is now blocking the websites Thai-insider.com and FM9225.com. ISP's in Thailand have been filtering for some time, Jeffrey Race wrote about it back in 2004. The government ordered ISP's to begin blocking a list compiled and hosted by the Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT). The target of the filtering was pornography, specifically local pornography but would also target subjects such as "Royal Family, sites that are a threat to security, violent online games, and illegal web sites such as those for online gambling." There was debate about what exactly to censor and the process appeared to be fairly transparent. But back in May 2004 I wrote:

Despite this open and transparent process at least one unofficial block has been identified. The promise of transparency does not necessarily mean accountability. In this case the web site in question highlights a corruption scandal. Once a national filtering system is in place it governments may be tempted to use it as a tool of political censorship.

It appears that the Government of Thailand is extending its filtering system to blocking for overtly political reasons. Once the system is in place....

MSN & China

CBC's The Hour interviewed Ron Deibert and myself concerning MSN's filtering of keywords on their Chinese version of MSN spaces. You can watch the show here. There has been a lot of coverage of this issue, see Rebecca's post here (it has screen shots), Mark Glaser's article here and, thanks to Bennett Haselton, a way to get around the filtering here.

Malaysia: Filtering on the Horizon?

Malaysia has approved recomendations to restrict access to pornography. In addition, schools and libraries are now required to install filtering software. Other measures to be introduced are getting ISP's to provide optional filtering services, a complaint centre where Internet users can report obscene content and awareness campaigns against pornography. But some are questioning the move, suggesting that the implementation of a filtering infrastructure for pornography can be easily configured to block political content.

In addition to the overblocking associated with filtering software Malaysia could easily add additional sites to the block lists for political reasons once the filtering infrastructure is in place. Malaysia has a record of harrassing online publications for political reasons.

Internet Filtering in Iran

The OpenNet Initiative's report on filtering in Iran has been released:

Iran's Internet filtering system is one of the worlds most substantial censorship regimes. Iran focuses its efforts on expression through local language, like Farsi, and relies on commercial software developed by for-profit companies in the United States to carry out its filtering regime.

Some news outlets have pickedup the story.

Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005

China operates the most extensive, technologically sophisticated, and broad-reaching system of Internet filtering in the world. The OpenNet Initiative tested China's Internet filtering of web content, blog postings, and e-mail correspondences. Our testing found efforts to prevent access to a wide range of sensitive materials, from pornography to religious material to political dissent. Unlike the filtering systems in many other countries, China’s filtering regime appears to be carried out at various control points and also to be changing over time. China’s intricate technical filtering regime is buttressed by an equally complex series of laws and regulations that control the access to and publication of material online. However, ONI found that most major American media sites, such as CNN, MSNBC, and ABC, are generally available in China (though the BBC remains blocked). Moreover, most sites we tested in our global list’s human rights and anonymizer categories are accessible as well. Click Here for the full report.

Friendly Dictators

The Washington Post reports on the shameful response to the massacre in Uzbekistan:

Defense officials from Russia and the United States last week helped block a new demand for an international probe into the Uzbekistan government's shooting of hundreds of protesters last month, according to U.S. and diplomatic officials.

Uzbekistan is one of the worst violators of freedom of speech and extensively censors the Internet. It's not China though, so few seem to care. I know, I know, I'm being cynical.

Website Registration

China's website registration has been getting a lot of press lately, but one of China's neighbours, Kyrgyzstan, is also considering something similar:

Adahan Madumarov, vice-premier declared about the necessity to register internet-sites as electronic mass media.
”Whether we want or not, but virtual mass media today became the source of alternative information, which seriously influence on mass opinion and therefore we can’t ignore their activity,” noted Adahanov.
The Kyrgyzstan’s publicity ambiguously reacted for this idea. The opponents think this idea is the encroachment on Internet essence. According to their opinion even after the overthrows of an authoritative mode Internet remained as the only source of information, above the censorship, administrative and criminal prosecution by authorities.
“Besides there are still serious problems with realization of position on status of on-line periodicals as electronic mass media. The main problem is in impossibility of spreading the jurisdiction of local legislation relating to web-sites, located on the servers of other states,” think the opponents.

Now that the "opposition" has taken power, it seems that they also are targetting some of the same newspapers targetted during Akayev's presidency. With presidential elections on the horizon, Kyrgyzstan is a place to watch.

Blogging, Self-Censorship & China

Imagethief has a great post entitled "Sanitized For My Protection: Imagethief's Self-Censorship Policy Explained". Imagethief explains the "pragmatic reasons" for self-censorship in China from a peronsal perspective, but I think the reasoning likely holds true across the spectrum of bloggers. Most people do not blog anonymously. There is reason for a little paranoia -- there are internet police in China, though the number remains in question -- and its possible that one's boss or someone from work could stumble across one's blog aswell. And in China there's the added risk of having one blog blocked. Imagetheif writes:

I don't spend much time on arch-taboo subjects. I don't generally talk about Tiananmen Square in the 1989 context both because that is a lightning-rod issue and because there are people much better able to comment on it than I am. I don't talk about certain quasi-religious movements that China has banned (and, as you can see, I have not even mentioned them by name). Sometimes I wish I could, but that seems like a fast road to exile behind the Great Firewall.

China's technical Internet filtering capacity is accompanied by non-technical means of information control including laws and regulations, industry self-discipline, mandatory registrations as well as imprisonment. Together, these technical and non-technical measures create an information control policy that fosters a climate of self-censorship. Its effectiveness is not rooted in technology, rather, it is rooted in social self-control. This is a key point in any discussion of Internet censorship in China.

This directly relates to something I've stated before and will state again: Those interested in issues of Internet censorship 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 that overestimate what countries like China can do to control information.

Here's why: the exaggeration of China's Internet censorship feeds into rumors which reinforce the climate of self-censorship.

Tunisia: Internet Filtering

An article on Tunisia features the work of the ONI and has some quotes from myself. Some highlights:

• The institution that governs the internet in Tunisia [Tunisian Internet Agency] controls the international gateway and it is near here that the filtering occurs. We believe this because different ISPs in the country have exhibited similar behaviour and there is a consistency in the filtering, which suggests that website blocking is specific, is systematic and is centrally controlled.


• The Internet blocking in Tunisia appears to be performed by the software application SmartFilter, which is an application developed and marketed by a US company, Secure Computing.


• What we have noticed in Tunisia is that an internet error page appears on the screen but the technical configuration shows that it is a blocking page. The user will believe it is a genuine internet error when in fact the website has been blocked, therefore, it is a form of deception.

Night Crawler

China has reportedly developed a system called "night crawler" that can "locate and block" websites located in China (by IP address range) that have not registered with the Ministry of Information Industry (MII). It is difficult to hypothesize from news reports about China's actual technical capabilties. I've written about the exaggerations regarding China's Internet filtering (and also about those that underestimate it) in the past and will likely do so again as such misperceptions continue to unfortunetly be reported as fact. Anyway, here's my speculation about the "night crawler".

Censorship Is In the Router

A recent article in Spectrum discusses Internet filtering in China and has some nice quotes from the OpenNet Initiative's Derek Bambauer. The article is quite good, although the bit about China "using proxy servers to inspect URLs themselves for words that indicate banned topics" is not accurate in my opinion. I really like Seth's quote:

"There's a famous saying, 'The Internet considers censorship to be damage, and routes around it.' I say, what if censorship is in the router?" -- Seth Finkelstein

This is a great quote. And I agree completely. In China, the censorship IS in the router. Nearly all modern routers come with the ability to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs). These are commonly used to combat Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, slow the spread of worms/viruses, to block phishing sites, and to block the addresses of known spammers. In addition to blocking IP addresses, routers can be configured to block specific strings in HTTP GET requests. For example, Cisco 12000 series routers, which have been sold to China in 1998 & 2004), have this capability. From my experience, this is precisely how China is implementing keyword filtering.

Google Accelerator

It's been suggested that Google's new Accelerator can be used to defeat Internet censorship. Although it may be partially effective in doing so, it certainly does not do so anonymously or securely. For example, using the Google Accelerator from within China it can be partially sucessful -- some blocked content is accessible, some is not. As Fons Tuinstra reports access to some sites can be intermittent -- at first Google News was inaccessible, later it was accessible. Not all requests for content are directed through the Google Accelerator. Some requests are made directly to the server being requested. In the case of accessible a blocked site (news.google.com) from China, if the first request was a direct request it would be blocked as usual, however, the seoncd was likely to the Google Accelerator's cache. In the case of ages with many images, some connections may run through the Accelerator others may be direct connections, so the success for circumvention purposes will vary.

However, even when the connection is made through Google's Accelerator, the originating IP is passed along to the host.

REMOTE_ADDR: 72.14.194.31
HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR: 128.100.171.24

Google's Accelerator does not provide anonymity and can be sucessful in circumventing censorship if the requested content is already cached by the Accelerator. Since al the traffic is is plain text it can be intercepted by any upstream intermediary (government, ISP, etc..) and any blocking done by keyword will also still be functional.

Anonymity & Blogging

Anonymity and blogging is a hot topic. In addition to a panel at BlogNashville a variety of guides have recently come out. The EFF has published a guide on "How to Blog Safely". It is a general discussion of blogging and anonymity. Another guide by Ethan Zuckerman, " A technical guide to anonymous blogging", focuses on the pragmatic side of blogging anonymously.

The one thing, which I noted in the comments is that people who want to be anonymous should not rely on the use of open public proxies. Although the use of such a proxy can sheild your IP address from the host you're connecting to it may send through identifying headers and all the traffic between you and the proxy is generally in plain text and easily intercepted by anyone (ISP, government, workplace) sniffing traffic upstream. For anonymous communications, try TOR, now sponsored by the EFF.

However, I don't want my comments to be interpreted as falling into the "no matter what you do you can be tracked down" category. Rebecca MacKinnon's account of the Anoniblog meeting indicates that this point was brought up a number of people. While not disputing the theoretical possiblity of such an omnipotent adversary I think the key is pointing out what technologies work well in specific situation and fully informing users of potential weaknesses. Rather that trumpet a defeatist approach, we should note that people are risking imprisonment and other nasty consequences for publishing information online. They are taking these risks without technologies or non-technical practices that help sheild them from such consequences. There are technologies that work well to provide security and anonymity and given the specifics of the end-user's situation -- technical capabilties and legal/consequencial environment of the country of residence -- such technoogies can provide a layer of protection that such users do not currently enjoy.

Publication Bans

A comment on Bitch. Ph.D.'s blog tackles the issue of "publications bans" in Canada. Recently a publication ban was ordered by Justice Gomery on specific testimony related to the "sponsorship scandal". A U.S. blog published the information despite the publication ban. The ban was partially lifted, but Gomery has now extended the publication ban.

That night I watched CTV news (I watch The National too) and was surprised that they clearly identified the blog that broke the publication ban. A quick Google search turned up the results. The blog was actually inaccessible that night, but the Google cache was accessible.

Human rights in the Blogosphere

Amnesty gets in the blog game:

The new media landscape is evolving at unprecedented speed and one of its most powerful weapons yet is the mighty blog. It is arguably the year of the Blogosphere, a phenomenon that has profound implications for press freedom and human rights.

But, is blogging "Electronic civil disobedience"? In some cases, I don't see why not.

Go get your Civiblog!

Military Censors... Badly

It seems that the Pentagon's procedure of censorsing documents is not working out too well. A recent report concerning the killing of Italian Agent Nicola Calipari and the wounding of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena has just been released. Calipari was escorting Sgrena to the airport after securing her release in Iraq, Sgrena had been held hostage in Iraq for more than one month. (BBC background info) . Many pages of the military's inventigation had been censored, however, if you download the pdf and simply copy 'n paste the censored sections you can read the full contents of the report. BBC reports that a Greek student first discovered this and informed Italian newspapers which have now published the report in full. You can download the censored and uncensored version of the report here.

In addition to names, places and military tactics the censored portions concern some of the specific details of how the road block was set-up, the communications set-up and the report's reccommendations. One extremely odd censored section is the folowing footnote on page 29:

2 (S//NF) 2 VOIP is a technology that allows telephone calls to be made using a broadband internet connection instead of a regular (analog) phone line.

But, I think it was to obscure the fact that the US military uses VOIP to communicate, not to prevent us from knowning that the US military knows what VOIP is. The Italian report is due shortly.

Questions & Answers

CTV's "Ask Us", (video clip here) tries to answer a question from a viewer regarding copyright in Canada:

"When I was going to university a professor of mine said it's legal to download music in Canada because the music industry is already compensated for their loss through taxes on blank CD's and cassettes. Is this true?"

Downloading "music" is legal! The question is, I assume, about downloading copyrighted music (which should also be distinguished from "uploading"). Quoting the Copyright Board of Canada, CTV says that downloading music from the Internet is in fact legal for personal use and the copy must be made to a tape or CD. As Russell McOrmond accurately points out, downloading is legal but uploading is not, despite the fact that the CRIA lost their most recent case against "uploaders". The CRIA lost because they presented a lousy case.

So why does CTV then highlight that the CRIA says it is illegal? Is it legal or illegal, just answer the question.

China Internet Filtering Report on ABC

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Asia Pacific program interviews Ron Deibert about the OpenNet Initiative's China Internet filtering report. You can listen to the interview here and read the transcript here.

The Theory of Everything

Ben Walker features myself and the OpenNet Initiative on his radio show "The Theory of Everything". The show covers Internet filtering in China and our recent work monitoring the lection in Kyrgyzstan. You can download the mp3 here.

Internet & Democracy

My recent trip to Washington D.C. to appear before the U.S. - China Economic and Security Review Commission has me thinking a lot about the Internet, censorship and democracy. This is an old but still interesting discussion. Some believe that there is basically a direct corelation between the Internet and democratization. Others suggest that the Internet can actually strengthen authoritarian regimes. But beneath the surface of the rhetoric we can and do see spaces of public debate expanding and the boundaries of information control challenged. Unfortunetly, these developments are often overlooked when they do not conform with preconcieved notions of what democracy is.

Filtering in Libraries

The ACLU has released a report on Internet Censorship in State’s Public Libraries. The study focuses on libraries in Rhode Island, which like libraries across the U.S., installed filtering software to comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). Rather than individually purchase and maintain filtering software, the libraries receive filterng services as part of the Cooperating Libraries Automated Network (CLAN). CLAN uses Websense to implement filtering and, by default, filters the categories "sex," "adult content," and "nudity." However, individual libraries can add additional categories; some have added the "Gambling", "Games", "Illegal" and "Chat" categories as well. The ACLU concludes that even the minimum default level of filtering "exceeds what federal law requires".

What I found particulary interesting was not the technical aspects of filtering -- the over blocking and underblocking that is inherent in filtering technology -- but the social aspect of the implementation of filtering. More specifically, the social controls used to deny people their constitutional rights to request that content blocked beyond the scope of the law be made accessible. In short, the chilling effects.

A recent visit to the Providence Library by the author of this report raised concerns in this regard. There, a librarian responded to a deactivation request ­ for a blocked Google search on nudism ­ with questions about subject matter, judgmental comments, and ultimately a refusal to disable the filter for viewing of what she wrongly characterized as "pornography."

One of the key points the ACLU makes is that "the U.S. Supreme Court declared use of blocking software to be constitutional, but only on the condition that it be deactivated for any lawful adult user who asks." Despite the law, the social enforcement of overblocking creates a situation in which people will not ask for blocking to be removed and if they do, the request can still be refused.

Civiblog

The Citizen Lab's Civiblog project is rolling along. We now have a new site design and a lot more bloggers.

• Civiblog is completely free - no hosting costs or licensing fees.
  
• Civiblog is targeted - designed by and for civil society workers.
  
• Civiblog is community-driven - news from around the world, written by you.
  

If you want a blog, sign up!

Internet Filtering in China Press Coverage

Press coverage of the ONI's study on Internet Filtering in China:
- China Soups Up Internet Censoring Filters - AP - IHT - Wired - The Guardian
- Snuffing out Net's benefit to democracy - Dallas Morning News (archived pdf)
- Study Finds Pervasive Chinese Internet Controls - Reuters - MSNBC
- China Censorship on Red Alert - Techtree
- Web Censors In China Find Success - Washington Post

Internet Filtering in China

ONI releases a study on Internet Filering in China:

The OpenNet Initiative tested China's Internet filtering of web content, blog postings, and e-mail correspondences. Our testing found efforts to prevent access to a wide range of sensitive materials, from pornography to religious material to political dissent. Unlike the filtering systems in many other countries, China’s filtering regime appears to be carried out at various control points and also to be changing over time. China operates the most extensive, technologically sophisticated, and broad-reaching system of Internet filtering in the world. China’s intricate technical filtering regime is buttressed by an equally complex series of laws and regulations that control the access to and publication of material online. However, ONI found that most major American media sites, such as CNN, MSNBC, and ABC, are generally available in China (though the BBC remains blocked). Moreover, most sites we tested in our global list’s human rights and anonymizer categories are accessible as well. (Full Report - PDF)

ONI Presents China Country Study to U.S. - China Economic and Security Review Commission

See ya in Washington. (I wonder if this will be on C-Span?)

On April 14, 2005 the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) will release its long-awaited report, “Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005,” at the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s public hearing on China’s State Control Mechanisms and Methods. “Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005” documents the degree to which the Chinese government controls and manipulates the information environment in which its citizens live, including websites, blogs, email, and online discussion forums. To find out more about the event and the report, please read the ONI Media Advisory.

VOTE: Freedom of Expression blog awards

Internet Censorship Explorer (ICE) has been nominatedin the Freedom of Expression blog awards in the International category. So go Vote!

Home Filtering

A new survey study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports:

More than half of American families with teenagers use filters to limit access to potentially harmful online content – a 65% increase from the number of those who used filters in 2000.

The study also reports that 81% of parents and 79% of online teens agree that "teens aren’t careful enough when giving out information about themselves online". Of course, the use of filtering software does nothing to address this.

The report also notes:

It should be noted that other researchers have effectiveness of filters. Some investigators have out objectionable material ­ they "under-block" filters "over-block" content and prohibit internet contain objectionable content. They prevent teens raised important questions about the found that filters do not always screen content. Others have found that some users from accessing sites that do not from viewing innocuous things.

Academic Freedom

Academic freedom is something generally taken for granted, as is Freedom of Speech. Two recent events have caught my attention. The first in China concerning Professor Jiao Guobiao:

China's most prestigious university has dismissed a journalism professor who last year boldly called for the abolition of the Communist Party's powerful media censorship arm.

The BBC reports:

Publishing houses have already been banned from printing his books, and he was included in a blacklist of intellectuals forbidden from appearing in the media.

The second in the USA concerns Joseph Massad, a Professor at Columbia, who was recently cleared of Anti-Semitism charges by a commitee, that was formed after a campaign against him for teaching a course that provided a "critical historical overview of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict".

The commitee did find that:

...the involvement of outside organizations in the surveillance of professors teaching the Middle East increased. The watch-list of professors published online from late 2002 by a group called Campus Watch which invited students to send in reports on their instructors, led to the named professors receiving hate mail.

Internet Filtering in Bahrain

The OpenNet Initiative’s testing of more than 6,000 sites in Bahrain revealed only eight sites blocked. Three were pornographic; the others covered political and religious topics. In each case, sites with similar content remained accessible, and altering the requested URL slightly made several filtered sites available. Bahrain's legal system includes extensive potential controls of media, telecommunications, and the Internet, and its technical infrastructure has a single primary Internet Service Provider (ISP) and state-mandated Internet exchange point (IXP); this makes filtering relatively easy to implement. Our testing suggests that Bahrain’s filtering efforts have eased recently, but the recent arrests of the editors of a Web site, and the blocking of the site, indicate that Bahrain continues to combine technical and legal controls for on-line content. (Full Report - HTML) (PDF version)

What was interesting about working on Bahrain was that this country is often lumped in with China and Saudi Arabia when citing examples of Internet censorship along when in fact the amount of filtering in Bahrain is comparatively minuscule. Granted, they do have the infrastructure in place to increase the level of filtering at any time, but have chosen not to do so. In fact, they have even unblocked formerly blocked sites such as Voice of Bahrain (www.vob.org).

Internet Filtering in Bahrain in 2004-2005

The OpenNet Initiative’s testing of more than 6,000 sites in Bahrain revealed only eight sites blocked. Three were pornographic; the others covered political and religious topics. In each case, sites with similar content remained accessible, and altering the requested URL slightly made several filtered sites available. Bahrain's legal system includes extensive potential controls of media, telecommunications, and the Internet, and its technical infrastructure has a single primary Internet Service Provider (ISP) and state-mandated Internet exchange point (IXP); this makes filtering relatively easy to implement. Our testing suggests that Bahrain’s filtering efforts have eased recently, but the recent arrests of the editors of a Web site, and the blocking of the site, indicate that Bahrain continues to combine technical and legal controls for on-line content. Click Here for the full report.

Free speech or Hate speech

On Feb. 14 2005 CP reported that "six sites that fomented hatred against Jews or advocated terrorism or suicide-bombing have been pulled by the host in Kelowna, B.C." Rabbi Abraham Cooper, of the Simon Weisenthal Centre, was surprised to find such sites hosted in Canada because Canadian ISP's have done "the best job in the last six or seven years of self-policing". The Criminal Code of Canada contains sections pertaining to hate propaganda as does the Canada Human Rights Act. The press release issued by the Toronto-based Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center lists the six sites that were removed. Three of the six sites were back online the next day after switching hosting providers. Five of the six are now online, all hosted in the U.S.A.

One of the removed sites, www.al-thabaat.com, contains a flag that carries the inscription "There is no other God but Allah". There is no hateful text or text advocating suicide bombings. The issue, as noted in the press release, is that this flag appears to be the same flag as used by Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a group that is not on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations or Canada's version of the list.* Does this flag meet the requirements of hate speech under Canadian law?

Questioning Bloggers

It seems that the authorities haven't figured out what blogs are...

The blogger then spent the next three hours answering questions about blogs and how their contents can be controlled. He said he was also asked about his motivations for maintaining his site when he appeared to derive no income from it.

No, I'm not talking about this...

Jeremy Wright said he was halted at Toronto Pearson International Airport before dawn Wednesday and then searched, questioned for three hours and prevented from taking his flight.

In a telephone interview, Wright recounted his experience: "The guy kept saying, 'What do you do for a living?' I said I'm a blog consultant. He said, 'What's blogging?' But he didn't have any context for what a Web site was. His response was, 'You can't make a living from blogging. Stop lying and tell me why you're really here.' "

The first incident happened in Malaysia. Police officers and government officials questioned blogger Mack Zulkifli about blogging. Other bloggers were also question regarding the content of their posts. The second incident happened when Jeremy Wright tried to go from Canada to the US and was stripped searched, questioned and denied entry because the customs agent didn't understand what blogging was all about.

The similarity between the two is rather eerie and it does show a general lack of understanding of blogging by those in authority no matter the country. For more on the oppression of bloggers worldwide, check out committeetoprotectbloggers.blogspot.com

Kyrgyz Errata

A BoingBoing post echo's a woefully inaccurate post by Hans Henrik on the situation in Kyrgyzstan which cites some of the work I was involved with on the OpenNet Initiative project while in Kyrgyzstan during the recent election which is available here here and here. The websites in question www.gazeta.kg, www.kyrgyz.us, www.ar-namys.org were all hosted on Everyones Internet, Inc. in Houston Texas are were reportedly defaced on several occasions and were subjected to Denial of Service attacks, as were several other opposition newspapers hosted on other servers. Other sites affcted by DoS attack include www.respublica.kg, gazeta.respublica.kg and www.msn.kg which I have mirrored at respublica.citizenlab.org, gazeta.citizenlab.org and msn.citizenlab.org.

However, it is not accurate to say that the government hijacked these sites. The government may be suspected in the involvement in these attacks (which appear to be DoS for hire) but it is not true that www.gazeta.kg was hijacked by the government. Moreover, Internews is not a government controlled newspaper. Internews trains journalists and promotes independent media. They are active in Kyrgyzstan and maintain the site www.internews.kg -- it is not a "government controlled news agency", its funding comes from a variety of sources including OSI and USAID. And as far as bloggers go, check out kg.civiblog.org.

In other developments, the President has fled and the opposition have named a new leader.

Germany: Voluntary Filtering

Its been on the horizon for a while. Heise reports:

In Berlin today the search engine providers Google, Lycos Europe, MSN Deutschland, AOL Deutschland, Yahoo, T-Online and t-info announced the creation of a self-regulatory organization under the umbrella of the "Voluntary Self-Control for Multimedia Service Providers" (FSM).

Urs Gasser points out that among some of the interesting details "search engines are not allowed to make public which sites are filtered. " Initially, the search engines intend to filter out URLs on a list created by the Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (BPJM). However, the BPJM states that, in the case of Internet sites being added to their "index" or "list of youth-endangering media", they do inform the author/distributor who then has the option to "remove the incriminating content and request a second examination".

As these initiatives move to becoming completely self-regulatory I wonder if there will be avenues for continuing review. There is a complaints procedure but this appears to apply only to complaints regarding illegal content, basically a mechanism to increase blocking. There does not appear to be a process whereby the URLs (and most likely, phrases) which are blocked are periodically assessed, its almost as if over-blocking isn't even on the radar.