Fighting Internet censorship worldwide

Free speech is a misnomer in many countries, and in many of those places Internet censorship is on the rise. By last count, said Professor Ron Deibert, director of U of T’s Citizen Lab, 26 countries worldwide engaged in Internet censorship, blocking sites created by political opponents, human rights groups and international news. China, Iran, Syria, Uzbekistan and Burma are among the countries practising the most pervasive forms of Internet censorship. Citizens found accessing banned sites can be subject to fines, imprisonment and even death.

 

It’s an alarming trend, but Deibert is developing software to subvert these oppressive laws. One tool he helped create is psiphon, an Internet censorship evading software application. People with friends and family in censored countries download the application onto their home computers and forward the unique connection to those living in the restricted areas, allowing them to surf sites over an encrypted channel. The system is virtually undetectable by authorities.

More than 130,00 unique copies of psiphon have been downloaded. To keep users safe, the program keeps no record of their location.

A political scientist by training, Deibert counts Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis as his inspirations. In 2001 a grant from the Ford Foundation presented a new opportunity for Deibert who “felt I had to get my hands dirty.” He began to explore the areas of the Internet, global security and human rights. Today at Citizen Lab, Deibert is surrounded by like-minded programmers, social scientists, artists and activists all committed to keeping the Internet free.

It’s not only countries with oppressive regimes that are blocking their citizenry’s access to the web.

“Internet censorship is growing in all nations,” said Deibert. “Even in developed countries, governments are turning to filtering content to solve social and political problems.”

While the psiphon software is free and open source, Deibert and the developers at Citizen Lab recently launched a start-up company, Psiphon Inc., in conjunction with U of T to assist organizations that face challenges communicating across an increasingly fragmented Internet. The 2008 Olympics in Beijing offers Psiphon Inc. a unique opportunity.

“There will be thousands of journalists in a country with the most pervasive form of censorship,” said Deibert. The company is working with a number of major media outlets to provide reliable access to the web. Revenues from the company will feed back into the research and development activities of the Citizen Lab.

What’s now keeping Deibert awake at night is an aggressive form of Internet censorship called “information warfare.” Rather than blocking sites through filtering, some countries employ extreme measures such as taking down websites, disabling text messaging service or even shutting the entire Internet, as the Burmese military government did in September 2007 after a violent crackdown on protesters.

“Cyberspace has become a new arena for geopolitical contestation with states and non-state actors battling over the global communications environment. Our role is to bring to light the often hidden practices that are taking place, whether filtering, surveillance or information war. The Internet is the world’s communication medium and we are working hard to keep it open and accessible to citizens worldwide.”

 

~ Link ~