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Ron Deibert’s blog.

CNN, China Internet Filtering, Tunisia, and the ONI

CNN has a news item that is making the rounds about China’s new policy of shutting down unregistered websites and blogs. The story mentions our ONI report on China’s filtering of the Internet. Nart’s blog has an extended analysis of the issue that includes some speculation on the so called “night crawler” that China is reportedly using to track unregistered websites and blogs that should be read as well.
I have also just stumbled across a news item on Tunisia that mentions the ONI’s research on this country and has a lengthy interview with Nart.

Washington Post story on our ONI Report

A solid story by Jonathan Krim of the Washington Post on our China Internet Filtering Study, which will be posted here tomorrow AM.

Web Censors In China Find Success

Falun Gong, Dalai Lama Among Blocked Topics

By Jonathan Krim

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page A20

The Chinese government is succeeding in broadly censoring what its citizens can read on the Internet, surprising many experts and denting U.S. government hopes that online access would be a quick catalyst for democratic political reform.

Internet users in the world’s most populous country are routinely blocked from sites featuring information on subjects such as Taiwanese independence, the Falun Gong movement, the Dalai Lama and the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989, according to a study to be released today by a consortium of researchers from Harvard University, the University of Toronto and Cambridge University in England.

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FOXNews and our Chinese Internet Censorship Report

FOXNews has an item about China’s regulatory and technical means employed to censor the Internet and stifle democratic dissent. Our soon to be released (as in tomorrow in Washington DC) ONI report on China’s Internet Filtering regime gets a brief mention.
Look for the report to be posted here tomorrow.

ONI to Present China Report before US Congressional Committee

We will be releasing our upcoming report on China’s Internet censorship regime before a US Congressional Committee this coming Thursday. Here is the media advisory. Our own Nart Villeneuve will be presenting along with our Harvard colleagues John Palfrey and Derek Bambauer. Does anyone know if it is televised or streamed online?

Bahrain Internet Censorship Report Released

The OpenNet Initiative’s testing of more than 6,000 sites in Bahrain revealed only eight sites blocked. Three were pornographic; the others covered political and religious topics. In each case, sites with similar content remained accessible, and altering the requested URL slightly made several filtered sites available. Bahrain’s legal system includes extensive potential controls of media, telecommunications, and the Internet, and its technical infrastructure has a single primary Internet Service Provider (ISP) and state-mandated Internet exchange point (IXP); this makes filtering relatively easy to implement.
Our testing suggests that Bahrain’s filtering efforts have eased recently, but the recent arrests of the editors of a Web site, and the blocking of the site, indicate that Bahrain continues to combine technical and legal controls for on-line content. (Full Report – HTML)

Foreign Policy Article on Saudi Black Market

I honestly can’t remember giving this interview, but I must have because there’s a quotation that sounds like something I’d say in this short Foreign Policy article on a black market for net access in Saudi Arabia. Two notes of clarification: I’m not the Exec Director of the OpenNet Initiative. There isn’t one. I’m one of the principal investigators, but it’s really a team effort. And the black market is actually referenced by us in a footnote to another report.

Contrabandwidth

BY KATE PALMER | MARCH 1, 2005

People can get almost anything on the black market — drugs, passports, even human organs. Now add Web sites to the list. Inside many authoritarian regimes that closely monitor and censor the Internet, access to blocked Web sites has become a black market commodity like any other. Typically, the process is simple: Savvy black marketers in cybercafes, universities, private homes, and elsewhere exploit technological loopholes to circumvent government filters and charge fees for access. According to the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) (www.opennetinitiative.net), a research organization devoted to tracking blocked Web sites, black market access to filtered pages in Saudi Arabia runs anywhere from $26 to $67 per Web site.

Such tactics are becoming increasingly common. Shahin Amard, who runs a Web site (www.derafsh-kaviyani.com, blocked in Iran for its unsanctioned religious content) from an undisclosed location, says that people constantly “e-mail from inside Iran and ask for direction, help, and advice” in gaining access to the Web. But, he says, “the majority of people … give up when they don’t get through, or they get scared and don’t try anymore.”

Sometimes, it is the authoritarians that profit from the illegal trade. In Cuba, where Fidel Castro presides over one of the world’s most technologically repressive regimes, the Communist government limits Internet access both by making the Web prohibitively expensive and by blocking unsuitable material (roughly defined as any site that doesn’t promote Cuban tourism). Only a small minority of state officials are allowed limited Internet access. Yet computers are widely accessible. And, according to Philip Peters, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, many state officials sell passwords and account information on the black market for monthly fees of about $20 to $30. Buyers, Peters says, use the Net access to visit free online e-mail services to connect with friends and family in other countries or to read foreign news sources.

So, will buying access to blocked Web sites remain a part of the black market bazaar? As long as governments try to restrict what sites their citizens can visit, the answer is probably yes. But ONI Executive Director Ronald Deibert warns that government censorship “is spreading worldwide, and…the countries that are doing it are getting better at it.” Which means the price is going up.