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Ron Deibert’s blog.

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    Citizen spy fights to uphold our rights

    Vancouver Sun Saturday, June 28, 2008 by Daphne Bramham A professor from Vancouver says what was once an open global space is now being carved up, colonized and militarized. From TheVancouverSun In many countries, Ron Deibert would be considered a traitor or a terrorist. Under some circumstances, he might even be considered one in Canada.…

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    China’s Overeager American Censors

    Published on Forbes.com June 20, 2008 Practically every U.S.-owned search engine has caved to the Chinese government’s demands that they censor political Web sites in China. But none of them seem to agree on just what sites need censoring. Google, at times, blocks Chinese users’ access to the BBC while Yahoo! permits it. Yahoo! sometimes…

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    Testimony to US Congress

    I am testifying to US Congress today, at the US China Economic and Security Review Commission. My testimony covers the research of the OpenNet Initiative on Internet censorship practices in China, the range and effectiveness of circumvention methods, including our own tool — psiphon, and the role of US and Western corporations in aiding and…

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    CBC National report on the Citizen Lab

    On March 21, 2008, the CBC National ran a feature piece on the research and development activities of the Citizen Lab, including the ONI and psiphon. There are interviews with me, and with Nart Villeneuve. You can watch the piece here. The youtube version is here And here:

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    Access Denied Review

    Published in the Guardian Seth Finkelstein has written a thoughtful review of the OpenNet Initiative’s new book Access Denied in the Guardian. Seth says ” It’s a primer in methods and an atlas of studies. The first sections provide an analytical framework. Then prohibitions are examined across dozens of countries. The results show that far…

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    Review of Access Denied + BBC on psiphon

    Reviewed in BBC.co.uk Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering challenges the long-standing assumption that the internet is an unfettered space where citizens from around the world can freely communicate and mobilise. In fact, the book makes it clear that the scope, scale and sophistication of net censorship are growing. “There’s been…

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    BBC The World Today and CBC The World at Six

    There were two radio reports about various aspects of the Citizen Lab’s research and development activities yesterday. Clark Boyd did a report about the OpenNet Initiative’s new book, Access Denied on BBC’s The World Today. I have uploaded a version of that broadcast locally here Additionally, Eli Glasner did a report on the use of…

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    CBC Search Engine, Nature, and Digital Nation

    Some recent items on psiphon, the ONI’s new volume, Access Denied, and others to report: I did an interview with Jesse Brown of CBC’s search engine on psiphon. The full interview, including Mike Hull’s psiphon theme song, is available here (Note: The interview with me starts at 16 minutes, 15 seconds into the podcast). Bruce…

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    Netxplorateur Award for Psiphon at French Senate

    Yesterday we at the psiphon project were delighted to be given the Grand Prix at the Netxplorateur Forum in the Senate of France. From their website: La Commission du Forum Netxplorateur a décerné son Grand Prix 2008 au professeur Ron Deibert, directeur du Citizen Lab à l’université de Toronto, pour Psiphon. Ce logiciel visant à…

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    Access Denied review: IEEE Spectrum

    “In the dot-com heyday of the ’90s and early 2000s…there was a myth that the Internet can’t be controlled,” says Ronald Deibert, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. “There was some mysterious, magical property associated with it that will route around censorship.” The most exhaustive study yet of Internet censorship—Access Denied: The…

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