Internet Censorship in Iran

The article I read for this week discussed the recent election-related Iranian crack-down on Internet sites that are used by protesters to question the recent Iranian election results and to communicate with other protesters. Iran has also blocked access to countless sites, including networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.

Nonetheless, there is a growing community of Internet users inside Iran and in other countries who are devising ways to get around the government's censorship and to let the world know what is actually happening in Iran. Many users are using Internet proxies, which are "Web servers set up in other countries that allow Iranians to hide their computer's Internet Protocol address from censors within the country." Other users are logging onto to their Internet accounts through Tor, "a free Web page designed to allow users to surf the Web and communicate with each other anonymously." While some protesters in Iran are still able to get around the government censorship, many have seen their online access restricted or shut down, and there has been a decline in information leaving Iran through the Internet. That said, protesters are still fighting to be heard, and they are trying to stay one step ahead of their government so they can relay important information to the world and practice their right to be heard.

I thought this article was so interesting! The whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking of Little Brother. The groups of protesters trying to evade the government censors and fight back through tech-savvy means reminds me so much of Marcus and his story. It is a bit like seeing the novel play out in real life. It worries me, though, that protesters who are caught may face the same horrible consequences some of those people faced in the book. They really are fighting for their freedoms.

Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/18/iran.dodging.crackdown/index.html

Censorship Software on New PCs in China

This article discusses China's newest attempt to censor the Internet. They are now requiring that a filtering software called Green Dam be installed on any new PC sold in the country starting July 1 (schools also had to install the software). Supposedly, the software is designed to filter pornographic sites and allows the government to update the software with a list of banned websites. Many worry that the government will use the software to block any sites they deem unfit, to monitor Internet use, and to collect personal information. The general manager of the company that designed the software says censorship worries are not needed and that parents can simply turn off the software. Many are skeptical.

PC makers that are affected by this (Dell, Lenovo, and HP) are not commenting, but are said to be unhappy about aiding censorship and the lack of warning, time, and consultation they received from the Chinese government. Early reports by users who have installed the software have said it made their computers slow, still allowed pornography to come through, and made browsing the Internet more difficult.

This seems to me to be a not-so-subtle way to make computer makers part of a broad Internet censorship attempt in China. I truly don't think the government will use it to simply filter pornographic sites but will instead use it to censor a host of sites. It is frustrating to read things like this, but it is important to be globally aware. I don't know what the answer is in China... I almost hope there is a movement like in Little Brother where people are not yielding to these crazy rulers.

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/world/asia/09china.html

Uncovering Censorship in Our Own Backyard: Herdict

This article is about a new website called Herdict, which was produced by The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. The website was launched in March of 2009, and its goal is to provide real-time information of subtle Internet censorship and filtering by governments and commercial firms. It is reliant on "crowd-sourcing," which means Internet users to report sites that are blocked or running slow. Heredict then plots this information using a map, thereby showing online censorship in real-time.

The website's creator, Jonathan Zittrain, believes Herdict can show subtle censorship occuring in the West. It is not only government censorship, but commercial, as well, that Herdict can spot. Zittrain points out that Internet service providers and websites make decisions about what appears on the Internet and what does not, with and without public knowledge. Many worry this type of monitoring could lead to abuse, and they hope Herdict can help.

Herdict may also be able to pinpoint when service providers are violating "Net neutrality" by restricting or slowing down access to sites the providers are not doing business with. Herdict can also show cases of service providers using geolocational filtering, which means they block content relevant to a specific government or country, for whatever reason. It is hoped that Herdict will allow people to see how subtle Internet censorship may be happening right now.

I think this a great, creative idea! To be able to track this sort of thing in real-time is amazing. And it allows researchers to go back over the data and look into instances to see if there may be a tie to censorship or something else. The article points out that it is not always censorship that Herdict detects. In once instance, a website was down for maintenance, but the site had been on a list of censored sites, and the user information allowed people to investigate it to determine if it was censorship. Censorship can be subtle, and hopefully this type of thing will open peoples' eyes to it.

Article:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/197907