We have just released our report on Internet Filtering in Burma. Among the findings is that the software Burma uses to censor the Internet is provided by a US corporation, Fortinet. Our press release can be downloaded here.
Publications
Reporters Without Borders Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents
Reporters Without Borders has just released their very useful Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents.
The Citizen Lab contributed two chapters, one a general guide to the Civiblog, and a second chapter by Director of Technical Research Nart Villeneuve on Technical Ways to Get Around Censorship. Congratulations
Julien Pain and all of the people at RSF for what promises to be a timely and very useful contribution.
Iranian Internet Censorship Report ONI
We at the ONI have just released our report on Internet Filtering in Iran (in PDF format). Although it was known before, our report confirms the use of the US commercial filtering product, Smartfilter. Our report allso reveals patterns of Internet content targeted for filtering, including opposition websites, some lesbian and gay sites, and a lot of blogs, especially those written in the Farsi language. Stay tuned for the fallout….
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.
UAE Internet Filtering Study
Internet Filtering in the United Arab Emirates in 2004-2005: A Country Study
The OpenNet Initiative announces the release of its study documenting Internet filtering in the United Arab Emirates. ONI tested over 8000 Web sites in the past six months, finding that UAE blocks material viewed as culturally
inappropriate or offensive to the state’s perception of Islam. The study notes that UAE relies on American software (SmartFilter) to implement its filtering, and points out that UAE’s system suffers from considerable overblocking that
prevents its citizens from accessing content unrelated to the state’s expressed goals.
The full country study is available here.
…expect more of these country reports soon.
More Kyrgyz Internet Hacking and DDOS attacks
We released two more press releases on the OpenNet Initiative’s ongoing investigations into the Kyrgyz Internet. Hard to disentangle what exactly is going on. Nart has some further information. And we’ll release a full report before the end of March.
Hacking the Kyrgyz Internet during Parliamentary Elections
Our ONI team has just put out this press release on the Kyrgyz parliamentary elections, which we monitored from afar and in the field. Websites belonging to political parties and independent media were subject to unexplained technical failures and deliberate hacking that suggest a deliberate attempt to interfere with the functioning of the Internet during election period. Some good work by Nart and our friends in the field.
South Korean Internet Filtering Runs Amok
Another bulletin from the OpenNet Initiative, this time on South Korean Internet filtering. It appears that the government’s attempt to block its citizens access to North Korean websites also mistakenly blocks some 3000 other sites as well.
Chinese Blogs Filtered
Our OpenNet Initiative project has just released another Bulletin on the filtering of blogs in China. It appears that there is variation among the blog providers, and we point out some ways in which the filtering systems, in their present form, can be easily circumvented.
Interrogating Saudi Arabian Filtering of the Internet
We at the OpenNet Initiative have just released a new report on Internet content filtering in Saudi Arabia. Probably the most interesting result is the identification of commercial filtering software through “fingerprint” errors.