Filtering

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1 December 2006, psiphon was released by The Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto during the Protect the Net - Toronto. This event featured presentations on Internet censorship, surveillance and infowar, as well as the worldwide public release of the psiphon censorship circumvention software. psiphon is a censorship circumvention solution that allows users to access blocked sites in countries where the Internet is censored, by turning a regular home computer into a personal, encrypted server capable of retrieving and displaying web pages anywhere.

13 October 2006, President signs H.R. 4954: Security and Accountability For Every Port Act ("SAFE Port Act"), which SAFE Port Act incorporated Title VIII--Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. Title VIII added in conference committee. Earlier, the House passed the SAFE Port Act: ayes-421, nays-2 and not voting-9 and the Senate passed the SAFE Port Act: ayes-98, nays-0 and not voting-2. Title VIII requires Internet Service Providers to employ Internet censorship of foreign gambling sites using wide-spread filtering technologies and deputizes banks to block in real time EFT (electronic funds transfers) of monies destined for foreign gambling sites.

27 June 2006, five major online companies announced joint initiative with National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to launch an aggressive new campaign against child exploitation on the Internet.

All effective state censorship of the Internet relies on content filtering technologies. Since most corporations, government agencies, institutions already use net filters to shield their constituencies from harmful (generally, distracting) activities, state censors most often employ off-the-shelf commercial filters. These commercial filtering servers can be located at net entry points or, in more connected societies, connected to DNS servers or to ISP servers.

Filters use IP or URL list-blocking or keyword matching to dynamically block sites containing offensive content.

With the passage of H.R. 4954, the U.S. joins with such other stalwart states as Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam in mandating Internet censorship (filtering technologies).

H.R. 4954 deputizes ISPs to engage in "the removal of, or disabling of access to, an online site violating section 5363, or a hypertext link to an online site violating such section." We believe that the Attorney General will be responsible for creating the target list of URLs that will be blocked.

"Once a national filtering system is in place, governments may be tempted to use it as a tool of political censorship or as a technological 'quick fix' to problems that stem from larger social and political issues." Nart Villeneuve, in firstmonday.org

We ponder: after blocking the 5,000-10,000 Internet gambling sites, perhaps we should turn the U.S.'s filtering technologies onto child pornography, pornography, terrorism, sites from the above listed countries, extreme political viewpoints, overt discrimination, insensitivity, abusive language, social networking sites, untaxed web-merchants, anyone that mildly disagrees with the government.

State-mandated Internet filtering systems can be defeated. "In general, circumvention technologies work by routing a user's request from a country that implemented filtering through an intermediary machine that is not blocked by the filtering regime. The computer then retrieves the requested content for the censored user and transmits the content back to the user." Nart Villeneuve in Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents, see link to right.

The general methods of circumvention technologies include: web-based circumventors, proxy servers, tunneling and anonymous communications systems.

See our article in All In Magazine's website, "The Ban on Internet Poker"

psiphon is part of the CiviSec Project run by the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto.

psiphon is a censorship circumvention solution that allows users to access blocked sites in countries where the Internet is censored. psiphon turns a regular home computer into a personal, encrypted server capable if retrieving and displaying web pages censored by the home country.

Reporters Sans Frontiers is an international organization which monitors press freedom in more than 150 countries. To circumvent censorship, it publishes articles that have been banned in the country of origin and provides a forum for journalists who have been "silenced" by authorities. The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents, among other items, provides technical ways to get around censorship.