Open Net Initiative

Toronto Hactivists Benefit From Grant for Internet Censorship Work

There is a news item today in the CBC news about the grant to the OpenNet Initiative from the MacArthur Foundation. The grant is going to our ONI partners, the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society atHarvard Law School to fund the core ONI activities over the next several years. We are all very excited about the opportunity to keep the project up and running and indeed expand it into new territory. Look for new tools, new forms out outreach and advocacy, and new reports uncovering patterns of Internet censorship and surveillance worldwide.

China Google Search Compare

In an effort to tailor its services to the requirements of China’s Internet filtering regime, Google announced last week that it had created a special version of its search engine for the China market, Google.cn.

Our OpenNet Initiative team put together a neat little search comparison tool that you can access here that allows you to enter in search term and keywords and see the variation in results between Google.com and Google.cn side by side.

Universities to Study Net Censorship, Surveillance

Published in The Ottawa Citizen, Tuesday, January 31, 2006

by Andrew Mayeda

A University of Toronto research lab and its partners have landed $3 million U.S. to study Internet censorship and surveillance worldwide. The money will go to the OpenNet Initiative, a joint project among Harvard Law School, Cambridge and Oxford universities, and University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary lab that studies the connection between digital media and civic politics.

Here is the full press release. Many thanks to the support of the MacArthur Foundation for the work of the OpenNet Initiative

Permanent Link.

Media Coverage of Citizen Lab and OpenNet Initiative at WSIS/Tunisia

The OpenNet Initiative’s Tunisia Report generated considerable coverage, a lot of which features The Citizen Lab’s very own Director of Technical Research, Nart Villeneuve. Nart compiled the list below for archival purposes.

BBC – Controversy dogs UN net gathering (pdf)
BBC – Tunisia slated over net controls (pdf)
BBC – Hungry for net freedom in Tunisia (pdf)
Reuters – Rights group faults Tunisia on Internet censorship (pdf)
Times Online – Read all about it. But be quick (pdf)
VOA – Information Summit Closes Amid Criticism of Tunisian Censorship (pdf)
Inter Press Service – Activists Give a Crash Course in Overcoming Electronic Hurdles
South China Morning Post – TUNISIA: Study says Tunisia centralises web filtering
Le Monde – Les ONG accusent quinze Etats de censurer la liberté d’expression sur Internet (pdf)
Libération – «Le spectre du filtrage n’a jamais été aussi large» (pdf)
OpenNet Initiative – World Summit Opening in a Closed Society: Tunisia’s Approach to Internet Filtering Contradicts the Objectives of an ‘Open’ Information Society

News coverage of our Tunisia Report…

Our report on Tunisia’s Internet filtering regime is picking up some news coverage. The Associated Press has a piece in wide circulation, and here is a great BBC story featuring ONI researchers Derek Bambauer and Nart Villeneuve. It appears that the spotlight on Tunisia’s filtering regime is taking center stage at WSIS. Hopefully the debates will result in some significant attention being given to the detrimental consequences of unlawful censorship and surveillance practices.

OpenNet Initiative Report on Internet Filtering in Tunisia

The OpenNet Initiative has released our report on Internet Filtering in Tunisia. The press release can be found here.

Here is the blurb:

Drawing on open sources and a detailed year-long technical investigation, ONI research describes Tunisia’s aggressive targeting and blocking of on-line content, including political opposition Web sites, human rights groups, and sites that provide access to privacy-enhancing technologies. ONI research reveals that Tunisia’s government Internet agency, ATI, uses SmartFilter — filtering software produced by Secure Computing, a US-based company — as the basis of its filtering regime. Since all of Tunisia’s ISPs operate through ATI, the system is difficult to circumvent. Moreover, Tunisia’s public policy on filtering is opaque at best. The state falsifies the information provided to users who try to reach filtered sites; the error page received claims the site is not accessible for technical reasons. In sum, Tunisia’s control over its citizens’ access to Internet content places it at odds with the goals of the World Summit on the Information Society.