CYBERWAR -- Iranians and Others Outwit Net Censors

[steven johnson]

More than 20 countries now use sophisticated blocking and filtering systems for Internet content. Now an alliance of activists, civil libertarians, Internet entrepreneurs, diplomats and even military officers and intelligence agents are now challenging growing Internet censorship.

Last July, on popular sites that offer free downloads of various software, an escape hatch appeared. The computer program allowed Iranian Internet users to evade government censorship.


The software was created not by Iranians, but by Chinese computer experts volunteering for the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has beem suppressed by the Chinese government since 1999. They maintain a series of computers in data centers around the world to route Web users' requests around censors' firewalls.

Political scientists at the University of Toronto have built yet another system, called Psiphon, that allows anyone to evade national Internet firewalls using only a Web browser. Sensing a business opportunity, they have created a company to profit by making it possible for media companies to deliver digital content to Web users behind national firewalls.
The danger in this quiet electronic war is driven home by a stark warning on the group's Web site: "Bypassing censorship may violate law. Serious thought should be given to the risks involved and potential consequences."


The technique works like a basketball bank shot - with the remote computer as the backboard and the desired Web site as the basket. But government systems hunt for and then shut off such alternative routes using a variety of increasingly sophisticated techniques. So the software keeps changing the Internet address of the remote computer - more than once a second. By the time the censors identify an address, the system has already changed it.
China acknowledges that it monitors content on the Internet, but claims to have an agenda much like that of any other country: policing for harmful material, pornography, treasonous propaganda, criminal activity, fraud. The government says Falun Gong is a dangerous cult that has ruined the lives of thousands of people.
Hoping to step up its circumvention efforts, the Falun Gong last year organized extensive lobbying in Congress, which approved $15 million for circumvention services.
But the money was awarded not to the Falun Gong consortium but to Internews, an international organization that supports local media groups.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=359764&single=1&f=25

[annabanana]

1. Helping captive populations break out of informational prisons

is good work. It should be 100% supported. Look what open access to information has changed right here at home.

If it weren't for the internet, and access to it, we would still be blocked into that "permanent Republican majority" that Rove was so damn sure of...