Legal Threats and Takedowns

EFF reports that two blogs that posted information about Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov were shut down after legal threats were sent to their hosting companies.

Lawyers representing Usmanov contacted the blogs' webhost, Fasthosts, and after threats to sue under Britain's expansive libel laws, the blogs were removed. The sites included Tim Ireland's popular "Bloggerheads" site, and site of Craig Murray, the ex-Ambassador for Uzbekistan. Murray's hosting provider even intervened to take down individual entries and alter the text of Murray's blog to avoid further legal action.

Myanmar/Burma

Media coverage of Internet censorship is usually framed through one of two lenses: The "1984" approach overstates censorship capabilities claiming that legions of internet police monitor everything in "real time" and are just one kick away if you make the wrong click. The "technoptimist" approach understates censorship capabilities and claims that circumvention technology is proliferating and the internet is a democracy-battering-ram chipping away at the crumbling walls of oppressive regimes.

Recent coverage of the protests in Myanmar/Burma have generally been falling into the latter camp. Noting that, according to ONI, Myanmar/Burma has one of the most restrictive Internet filtering systems in place this article wonders why information about the protests is getting out. It claims that "the cyber-reality in Myanmar is actually much less restricted than ONI's research indicated" because circumvention technologies are available to citizens.

Filtering technologies seek to keep citizens inside Myanmar/Burma from have access to sites hosted outside -- it does not say much about keeping information from moving in the opposite direction. Why? Because sites are filtered when they are contextually important, become well known, and/or can reach a large audience. For information to flow from a few to these sites if far harder to control than the information from these few sites to the many.

Similarly, while there are censorship circumvention technologies readily available these are used by the few not the many for a variety of reasons including fear of being caught, lack of technical ability, or just now knowing (or caring) about them.

Internet censorship regimes, such as Myanmar/Burma's, are effective not because they can filter out all the content they want but because their filtering systems are backed up by other forms of repression that force users into a condition of self-censorship where they will not seek out banned content (the filter is just a reminder) let alone seek to violate their countries laws and put themselves at risk by using circumvention technologies.

So the reality is actually somewhere in between. While the majority are kept in line by the filtering matrix, there is a still resistance. Determined Internet users can use a variety of methods to bypass censorship while others speak out publicly and risk repression. All of this slowly widens the scope of accepted speech within these confined spaces -- not cataclysmic event.

Cyber-Cafe Monitoring in India

It is being reported that Mumbai police are looking into installing monitoring software -- including a keystroke logger -- to catch terrorists who use the Internet in cyber-cafe's.

The Mumbai police are in dialogue with M/s Micro Technologies for procuring a software called CARMS (Cyber Access Remote Monitoring System), a powerful monitoring tool that seeks to curb cyber crime. CARMS monitors web browsing, file transfers, news, chats, messaging and e-mail, including all encoded attachments..

All cyber cafes in the city will now need a police license to keep their business going. All cafes need to register at the police headquarters and provide details on the number of computers installed, type of computers and technical details like the IP address of each machine.

Judge orders removal of rant on YouTube

Stan Hall was angry at his lawyer and posted a rant about it on YouTube. An Ontario judge has ruled that the video must be removed:

Superior Court Justice William Jenkins reviewed the computer postings.

"I find that it includes unproven allegations that Mr. Ledroit and his law firm are incompetent and dishonest," Jenkins said in his decision.

Jenkins ruled the postings would cause lawyer Paul Ledroit and his law firm "significant and irreparable damage" if left for public viewing.

When accessing two videos that were uploaded under the username "stanhalll" YouTube displays the message "This video has been removed by the user." however, the text description of the messages remains:

It's like David and Gollieth. I will not stop I will not give up as long as I am alive. I lost everyting that meant anyting to me in my life, it is gone, and Paul Ledroit was hired to help us, but all he did was help himself to a huge legal bill

Paul Ledroit is now suing me, Why because he has the man power to do it and becuase he wants to scare me, to intimadate me, He wont scare me nor will he intiminedate me. The truth shall set you free I dont' care how much money he has freedom of speech is what I am after

Avoidable Risk

Not fully understanding or improperly using applications that protect your privacy and allow you to bypass censorship can seriously affect your online security. A researcher recently revealed that he was able to gather sensitive data including the user names and passwords of government email accounts by snooping on the traffic of five Tor exit nodes he controlled. If you are not using end to end encryption the Tor exit node can see your traffic in plain text. as the researcher notes:

ToR isn’t the problem, just use it for what it’s made for.

This reminds me of the "trick" a lot of people use in which they set up an email account but don't actually send email but rather just store email in the drafts folder thinking that this protects them from government surveillance. Unless the full session is encrypted, and many using this technique are using web mail account which only encrypt the login not the rest of the traffic, it can still be snooped even though you are not "sending" the email.

Caught in the throttle

The Ottawa Business Journal is reporting that Canadian ISP's are "throttling" or "traffic shaping" in order to prioritize traffic. The primary target is actually to degrade performance for bittorrent traffic.

In Canada, Rogers and Shaw in Vancouver have responded by reducing the high speed of users downloading and uploading (or seeding) torrents. Rogers admitted to what it called "prioritizing" "real-time use" such as surfing and e-mail transfers ahead of large file transfers in a December 2005 article in the Globe and Mail.

In response users have begun to encrypt their bittorrent traffic so that it is not easily distinguishable from other traffic so Rogers has reportedly begun "to simply degrade all encrypted traffic, legal or not."

Canada imposters crash APEC

An Australian comedy group impersonated the Canadian delegation to APEC and managed to drive their motorcade into a restricted area before they were arrested:

Eleven of the pretend Canadians -- all cast or crew from the satirical Australian television show The Chaser's War on Everything, including one comic in an Osama bin Laden get-up -- were eventually stopped and arrested under special security laws adopted in advance of the week-long Asia-Pacific summit.

Thailand: YouTube Ban Lifted

Thailand has decided to lift the ban on YouTube after Google agreed to "filter" videos that insult the King.

Information and Communications Technology Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom this week instructed the website ban be lifted after YouTube owner Google installed filters to stop Thais from accessing clips insulting the 79-year-old monarch, a ministry official said.

The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) criticized the collaboration between Google and the government to censor YouTube:

"Any such collusion could potentially be open for abuse, and thereby only exacerbate concerns over free speech over the internet," SEAPA said.

"The cooperation between Google/YouTube and the Thai government could conceivably become a template sought by other governments that have had run-ins with sensitive content on the video-sharing site," it said.

Immunity for Telecoms

The Bush Administration is seeking to shield telecom's that participated in its illegal wiretapping scheme from privacy law suits being brought forward against them. However, they do not want to name the dozen or so companies involved. AP reports:

The vaguely worded proposal would shield any person who allegedly provided information, infrastructure or "any other form of assistance" to the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. It covers any classified communications activity intended to protect the country from terrorism.

The article also hints at the scope of the surveillance, not just covering telephone calls but email traffic as well:

Conventional wisdom has long been that the bulk of the surveillance operations — groundbreaking because they lacked judicial oversight — involved primarily telephone calls. However, officials say the Bush administration's program frequently went after e-mail and other Internet traffic, which al-Qaida has embraced as a key means of communication.