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.