[Reader-list] Internet Censorship

[Amitabh Kumar]

Internet Increasingly Censored
The first comprehensive global survey of Internet filtering shows that
online repression is on the rise worldwide.
By Clark Boyd


A report released today by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) concludes that
the scale, the scope, and the sophistication of state-based Internet
filtering have all increased dramatically in recent years. The survey
highlights the tools and techniques used by countries to keep their
citizens from viewing certain kinds of online material.

ONI is a collaboration among four leading universities: Cambridge,
Oxford, Harvard, and Toronto. The group's testing was carried out
during 2006 and early 2007. ONI used a combination of tools that can
remotely test filtering conditions within given countries. The group
also relied heavily on local researchers who evaluated Internet
conditions from inside certain countries. Some countries, such as Cuba
and North Korea, were deemed too dangerous for either remote or
in-country testing. But of the 41 different countries tested by ONI,
25 were found to block or filter online content.

"Over the course of five years, we've gone from just a few places
doing state-based technical filtering, like China, Iran, and Saudi
Arabia, to more than two dozen," says John Palfrey, executive director
of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.
"As Internet censorship and surveillance grow, there's reason to worry
about the implications of these trends for human rights, political
activism, and economic development around the world."

But it's not just the sheer number of countries doing content
filtering that has grown; it's also the breadth and depth of material
being blocked.

The report discusses three primary rationales that nations have for
blocking Internet content. The first is political, which leads to, for
example, the blocking of opposition-group websites. The second
rationale is social: some countries block pornography and sites
dealing with gambling or sexuality issues. The third rationale is
national security, which can lead some nations to block online
material produced by, for example, extremist groups.

According to the report, China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia remain the top
blockers. Each nation filters not just pornography, but also a wide
range of political, human-rights, religious, and cultural sites deemed
subversive by those countries' governments.

Other countries are more selective in what they let citizens see or
not see. Syria and Tunisia, for example, filter a great deal of
political content, while Burma and Pakistan target websites that
pertain to national-security issues.

One interesting case is that of heavily wired South Korea, where ONI
found Internet filtering limited to one topic: North Korea. "The South
Koreans block several North Korean websites," says Nart Villeneuve,
director of technical research at the Citizen Lab at the University of
Toronto. "They even tamper with the system so that when you try to
access one of those North Korean sites, the URL resolves to a South
Korean police page telling you, 'What you're trying to access is
illegal, and we know your IP [Internet protocol] address.'" (An IP
address could be used to locate the computer where the search is
conducted, with the ultimate goal of identifying the individual
involved.)

South Korea's approach also speaks to the growing sophistication of
the filtering employed by countries. Gone are the days when filtering
one blog or one website necessarily meant shutting down, say, all of
Blogspot, or an entire domain.

"In the early days, countries used relatively crude blocking
mechanisms at the national backbone level, or imposed restrictions
upon ISPs that were applied in uneven ways," says Ronald Deibert,
director of the Citizen Lab. "Now we see first and foremost that many
countries are using commercial filtering technologies, most of which
are made by U.S. companies. That's providing them with a finer-grain
level of service."

Many countries are also getting better at homegrown filtering,
according to the report. Five years ago, most countries would only
block English-language material deemed offensive. But as more content
has been created in local languages, the report concludes, repressive
regimes have had to tweak their filtering technology to keep up.

Deibert also notes that ONI found evidence that filtering has moved
beyond websites and into applications. Some nations now block access
to programs such as Google Maps and the voice-over-Internet
application Skype. Thailand recently blocked access to the
video-upload site YouTube.

But most pernicious, Deibert says, is something he calls "event-based"
filtering, of which Belarus provides an interesting example. Before
the elections in March of 2006, Deibert notes, Belarus wasn't blocking
Internet content by technical means. Instead, the country's strict
laws regarding online content kept many Belarusians critical of the
government in check.

Then, at the time of key moments in the election, ONI realized that
opposition websites were suddenly inaccessible inside the country.
This led Deibert to believe that for just this brief period of time,
laws designed to promote self-censorship weren't enough. The
government had indeed started blocking content.

"This is a harbinger of what's to come worldwide," Deibert says.
"You'll have filtering just during critical times, such as elections.
Countries realize they risk becoming pariahs, and so they'll find more
surreptitious ways of filtering."

Cambodia recently took this kind of censorship beyond the confines of
the computer, when it ordered that cell-phone text-messaging services
be cut off during elections. ONI is already thinking of ways to
incorporate this kind of filtering into future studies.

"We're going to have to keep an eye not just on the network, but on
the endpoint," says Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet
governance and regulation at Oxford University, "because the device
you use and how it works, whether it's a computer or, say, a
Blackberry, will have a huge impact on what you can do or not do on
the Net, and how easily you can be monitored."