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:
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 our new psiphon service with respect to ongoing events in Tibet and elsewhere, for CBC’s The World at Six.
I have uploaded a version of that broadcast locally here as well.
Eli’s story is notable for, among other things, the participation of our friend and colleague from Privaterra Robert Guerra. And it looks like there is an online print version of the story here
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 Schneier wrote a review of the ONI’s new volume Access Denied in the recent issue of Nature. A pdf of the review can be downloaded here.
Lastly, I recently had the pleasure of appearing on The Digital Age with James Goodale. The full interview has been posted on google video here.
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 contourner la censure sur Internet a été choisi parmi 100 initiatives Web et numériques du monde entier.
“Le but de Psiphon est d’honorer la promesse originale d’Internet comme un lieu de libre expression et d’accès universel aux informations,” commenta le Professeur Deibert, “Nous sommes honorés de recevoir une distinction aussi prestigieuse.
La censure du Net est devenu un problème mondial majeur : des dizaines de gouvernements bloquent l’accès aux sites d’information, des droits de l’homme et d’opposition politique, ainsi qu’aux nouvelles médias d’expression comme les blogs et les vidéos en streaming.”
Congratulations to the entire psiphon team!
MIT Technology Review has a good story about psiphon, and in particular the new service we are slowly building up. We have not said much about this service publicly because we are working carefully and quietly to build up its capacity to serve peoples’ needs within censored countries.
The article provides a nice introductory overview, here.
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.
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.
CBC Dispatches invited me back to discuss Internet censorship, the state of blogging in the Middle East, and psiphon. The interview can be found HERE.
Toronto-developed software opens the Net to restricted surfers
By DAVID SILVERBERG
In Saudi Arabia, net users can’t get access to websites of opposition groups. Jordan and Bahrain both briefly banned Google Earth, citing security concerns. The Chinese government doesn’t let netizens get to the BBC site in any language.
So what’s a curious Web surfer to do in these Net-filtering countries?
They should get to know a kind-hearted soul using Psiphon (http://psiphon.civisec.org/), a software tool created by researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. By downloading this piece of software, someone in a free-thinking country like Canada can let a person in a restrictive society gain safe access to a portal to the uncensored Web.
We are proud to announce the Spanish language version of the Psiphon user guide, which can be found HERE. Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, and French versions are forthcoming. (Thanks to Txitua for the translation).