Esquire has listed psiphon as one of the best and brightest ideas of 2007, and included it among the “Six Ideas That Will Change the World.” Read about it here. Thanks to Mike, Anton, Eugene, Nart and all the Citizen Labbers who have worked on the psiphon project over the years.
I was a guest on CBC’s The Current on Friday. The show begins with a focus on the Yahoo case involving Wang Xiaoning and Shi Taoi who are currently serving 10 year sentences for subversion based on records Yahoo turned over to Chinese authorities.
You can listen to the interview here
The OpenNet Initiative has compiled a bulletin on the recent demonstrations in Burma and the Burmese government’s shutdown of the Internet there. ONI conducted a technical analysis of the Internet’s uptime, documenting a complete shutdown in Burma, followed by intermittent periods of up-time throughout early October, with an apparent return to full connection on October 13 for one of the two ISPs and on October 16 for the other. This bulletin presents these results and investigates the impact that the use of communication technologies had on shaping these key events.
The report can be downloaded HERE.
I am pleased to announce that we have finished the Citizen Lab’s latest output, Everyone’s Guide to By-Passing Internet Censorship for Citizens Worldwide and also available for download here
This guide, which is intended for the non-technical user, provides tips and strategies on how to by-pass content filters worldwide. It is now in English but we are busy making translations into multiple languages. Stay tuned!
Many thanks to the Citizen Lab’s team that worked on this project, especially Jane Gowan, Nart Villeneuve, Julian Wolfson, Francois Cadieux, Sarah Boland and James Tay.
I am attending the IFEX general meeting in Uruguay, where I gave an opening address on Internet censorship, the work of the OpenNet Initiative and psiphon projects.
It is a very dynamic meeting, with many different rights organizations collaborating and exchanging ideas.
Much of the discussion is focused on events unfolding in Burma. There was an excellent article by Roby Alampey in the Washington Post that makes a strong argument for principles of Internet governance that protect freedom of speech online, with a favorable mention of the work of the ONI. Roby is attending the IFEX meeting here.
And yesterday, an article on Burma in the Christian Science Monitor spotlights the use of commercial filtering technologies and the work of the ONI, with some of my input.
I did a one on one interview with host Steve Paikin of TVO’s the Agenda. The episode page is here, where you can downoad the video and audio podcast of the interview. We cover events in Burma, the OpenNet Initiative and psiphon.
According to Ron Deibert, director at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and an investigator at the OpenNet Initiative. “Now that the government’s crackdown has succeeded, they’re beginning to let information trickle out again,” he says. Deibert speculates that even for a country as repressive as Myanmar, the cost of shutting off all outside connections is too great to sustain for long. “There’s the cost of lost business and the government’s own inability to communicate,” he says. “Myanmar wants to avoid the risk of being seen as a pariah. These are all reasons they need to connect with the outside world.”
Found HERE.
I have done some recent interviews about Burma and the role the Internet is playing in getthing the message out, including attempts by the government to shut it down. Two CBC radio interviews that I did with Eli Glasner, slightly different, can be found here and here. There is also a New York Times report appearing today to which I contributed that can be found here.
I did an interview with Clark Boyd about Burma here
The reclusive military regime in Burma — or Myanmar — can’t stop the news of protests there from spreading around the world. Information technology like the Internet and cell phones are helping Burmese pro-democracy activists get the word out. That wasn’t the case in 1988 – the last time there was a pro-democracy uprising in Burma.
From BBCNews
Al Jazeera International has a great show called Listening Post hosted by Richard Gizbert. I wish we were able to see this show in Canada! Last December 2006, the Listening Post did a feature story on psiphon around the time of its public release. Thanks to the kind folks at the Listening Post we were able to get an archive of the copy of post it to youtube HERE.