Filtering by South Korean Government of Pro-North Korean Websites

The latest OpenNet Initiative bulletin is out! There has been a lot of criticism of the blocking and South Korea may lift the ban on some sites. It will be interesting to see what effect, if any, the realization that they are blocking many more sites than the 31 they intended will have.

Major internet service providers in South Korea were ordered by the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) to block domestic access to 31 websites considered to be carrying propaganda favoring the North Korean regime. Tests undertaken by the ONI in December 2004 and January 2005 reveal that South Korean blocking extends to far more than the 31 web sites targeted by the orders. An additional 3,167 unrelated domain names hosted on the same servers as the blocked sites are also blocked. South Korea's blocking clearly demonstrates one of the important, unintended consequences of implementing Internet filtering: thousands of websites that were never intended to be blocked, and that are completely unrelated to North Korea, have been filtered.

Blocking by IP address generally leads to the blocking of content that was never intended to be blocked since many thousands of domains can be hosted on a single IP. A good explanation can be found in the Federal District Court's ruling (pages 14 -19) in the Pennsylvania filtering case. A previous ONI bulletin discussed this when filtering was introduced in India. Also, the same problem (or is it a feature?) has been documented in commercial filtering software as well. In the case of national filtering (or filtering at the ISP level), blocking by IP is often the easiest and cheapest mechanism available (see pages 37- 38) in the Pennsylvania ruling). Countries just starting to implement a national filtering strategy will often start with IP-based blocking.

MPAA's Latest

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has new website that "encourages" people to respect copyrights. It lists the user names and IP addresses (usually just the class C) of file sharing & P2P users the MPAA believes are sharing coprighted files under the heading "Is this you? If you think you can get away with illegally trafficking in movies, think again". The site also offers a tool called "Parent File Scan" that users can install to check if they have file sharing programs installed or if their computer contains "potentially infringing" material.

The "Parent File Scan" cannot actually distinguish legitimate movie and music files from "infringing" ones. Its main purpose seems to be a "P2PCleaner" -- locating and encouraging users to uninstall file sharing and P2P applications. Freenet, the popular anti-censorship anonoymous publishing tool is included in the list of P2P software that "Parent File Scan" encourages users to uninstall.

Embargoing free speech

Hossein Derakhshan (aka Hoder) is reporting that a BBC Persian article states that U.S.-based web hosting companies are terminating the accounts of Iranian, the latest being the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) which is used by what Hossein characterizes as "mostly secular, freedom-loving Iranian youth". This is important because a considerable percentage of .ir ccTLDs are hosted in the U.S. (according to my latest project which is still heavily in development 20% of .ir domains are hosted in the U.S., 40% are hosted in Iran).

Filtering by Domestic Blog Providers in China

The latest OpenNet Initiative bulletin focuses on blog filtering by domestic blog providers in China. Three popular domestic blog providers in China were temporarily shutdown in March 2004 but were re-opened later after having filtering technology installed on their services. The ONI tested blogcn.com, blogbus.com and blogdriver.com by creating blog entries that contained keywords from the list found in the QQ instant messenger application. When users post blog entries the filtering mechanism checks to see if the post contains any banned keywords relating to topics such as national minorities' independence movements, the Tiananmen massacre of 1989, Chinese communist leaders, Falun Gong and words referring to uprisings or suppression. If such a keyword is present the filtering mechanism is triggered. Two of the Chinese blog providers we tested prevented the creation of entries that contained these keywords while one censored the entry by replacing the offending words with "*" characters. While relatively coarse, the filtering mechanism demonstrates the multi-level Internet controls in China which extend from regulation of Internet access to limits on what content may be posted on-line.

(Red Herring has picked up the story.)

Carnivore Replaced with Commercial App

EPIC has obtained two documents that the FBI presented to Congress concerning the Carnivore, renamed DCS-1000. The documents state that the FBI did not use Carnivore in 2002 or 2003 and instead used either "commercially available software" or an unspecified "network collection device". EPIC suggests that "the FBI's need for Carnivore-like Internet surveillance tools is decreasing, likely because ISPs are providing Internet traffic information directly to the government". While it is certainly likely that ISP's are directly providing more information through their own interception capabilities � and are likely less encumbered by interception regulations - I think that the real issue here is the public scrutiny of the Carnivore system itself. As the details of the Carnivore system, and its deficiencies, became public its use was dropped in favour of commercially available software and devices that likely have even more capabilities and less restrictions than Carnivore. It's interesting that in the face of public scrutiny the FBI has chosen to use a less accountable, less precise method of electronic surveillance, especially when that scrutiny showed that their more targeted approach was deficient.

Search Engine Filtering

Search engines have always had a relationship with filtering, in effect search engines filter indexed results to match your search queries. Search engines have de-listed specific content in the past. Google removed links to anti-Scientology websites and continues to remove links to unauthorized copies of Kazaa. Both of these were due to DMCA complaints. Search engines in China filter politically sensitive content; the results are excluded from search query results even though the search engine has indexed them. Most search engines have "safe" modes that users can turn on that will attempt to exclude pornographic content, or content the filter thinks is pornographic. And most commercial filtering applications have optional keyword filters that will prevent searches for specific words and phrases. Some are calling for search engines to filter "high risk key words or combinations of words" that could be used to search for child pornography. At least one search engine, Ask Jeeves, has implemented a key word filtering system based upon lists generated by the Internet Watch Foundation, a parnership between the government, police and the internet service provider industry to combat the distribution of child abuse images online.

Fifth HOPE Audio Files Available

The audio files from 2600's Fifth Hope are now available. I spoke on the Cult of the Dead Cow's Hacktivism Panel. The audio file in mp3 format are available:

Part 1: cdc-hacktivism-1.mp3
Part 2: cdc-hacktivism-2.mp3

An earlier blog entry with my ppt slides is available here.