Category Archives: Digital Activism

Robert Guerra is particularly interested in the perspective of end-users. Namely, what technologies do people really use? What challenges do they encounter? What recommendations can we formulate? Robert used Cuba as a case study to address these questions.

For Internet access, one needs to go to government-run or mobile-phone company Internet cafes. These are often closed and include physical surveillance. There is only one Internet cafe where registration is not required but the wait is often up to two hours to get a free machine. Access to the Internet is via dial-up, hence very slow. Key tracing and related spy software are on all Internet cafe machines in Cuba. This makes Torbrowser and Psiphon somewhat useless. USB sticks can be used but not all machines may allow for USB access.  For a blog specfically on the use of USBs in Cuba, please click here. The connection in Cuban universities is particularly slow given the small bandwidth and large number of users. Internet access is available at international hotels but at exhorbitant prices. Not only is there technical surveillance, but also very widespread human surveillance.

Robert’s recommendations include taking a bottom-up approach: consult local users; needs assessment; technical assessment (internet & security issues). Provide skills training and training materials. Monitor and assess sustained use.

The Q & A session included additional recommendations such as the use VPNs and trust building. Some teenagers in Cuba have also set up long distance WIFI to play Internet games but some of these have been shut down and these teenagers are not in the least inclined to blog. Bringing in foreign trainers can put trainees in danger. In my opinion, this is where the field of nonviolent action has alot to offer in terms of providing strategies, lessons learned and best practices on how to manage one’s immediate security environment from a hands-on, operational and tactical perspective. So my recommendation would be for more cross-disciplinary dialogue between activist bloggers, nonviolent movements, technology designers and technology developers.

Patrick Philippe Meier

Chris Walker works with InterNews Europe and the Tactical Technology Collective. He is also leading the project NGO-in-a-box. He is also a fellow alum of The Fletcher School. Chris gave an overview of Torbrowser and Psiphon.

Torbrowser is also available as an add-on to Firefox. One challenge associated with Torbrowser is that it is a large file to download, although you can download the software in parts. Since there is considerable technical and human surveillance in closed regimes, Torbrowser has been made to look like a regular browser such as Internet Explorer.

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 of retrieving and displaying web pages anywhere. One advantage of psiphon is that now software needs to be downloaded. YouTube videos can also be uploaded securely.

Patrick Philippe Meier

Roger Dingledine gave a presentation on Tor, software that lets a user request and view Web pages without revealing the location of your computer to the site. Tor allows packages to be bounced multiple relays so that no one relay knows who is visiting a particular site. The user establishes time-sensitive encryption keys between each relay. There are two pieces to all these “proxying” schemes. A relay component: building circuits, sending traffic over them, getting the encryption right. A discovery component: learning what relays are available.

Attackers can block users from connecting to the Tor network by, for example, blocking all the relay IP addresses in the Tor directory; by filtering based on Tor’s network fingerprint; by preventing users from finding the Tor software. After six years, the Chinese government finally got around to blocking the TorProject.org website two weeks ago.

Attackers seek to restrict the flow of embarassing and opposing information such as rights violations, corruption, opposition movements, etc. Complete blocking is not the goal of attackers, it’s not even necessary. Similarly, there is no need to shut down or block every circumvention tool. They only need to block ones that are popular and effective (the ones that work), and those that are highly visible.

In designing blocking-resistance software, some important design factors need to be kept in mind. There is little reprisal against passive consumers of information. Procducers and distributors of information are in greater danger. Governments have economic, political, social incentives not to block the whole Internet. But they can tolerate some collateral damage.

At the same time, China’s filtering system is practically maxed out. There is not much more content they can parse and filter. In other words, network firewalls has limited CPU capacity. So it’s possible to blend in. In terms of data security, what is often more useful is tactical security measures, rather than strictly technical security issues. In my opinion, this is where the field of nonviolent action has much to contribute.

Tor gives three anonymity properties:

1. A local network attacker can’t learn, or influence, your destination.
2. No single router can link you to your destination.
3. The destination, or somebody watching it, can’t learn your location.

Tor is highly sustainable, with thousands of volunteers and a completely open source philosophy. The software has an established user base of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Ordinary citizens, activists, corporations, law enforcement, etc, all use Tor. This diversity of users means that Tor is virtually guaranteed to survive. Anonymity is useful for censorship-resistance as well. Roger likened the race against government surveillance as an arms race, an analogy I’ve also used in my dissertation research.

Patrick Philippe Meier

The leading expert on Internet filtering, Nart Villeneuve, gave the second presentation. He provided an overview on strategies to deal with filtering.

• Distinguish between errors and actual censorship;
• https is encrypted, not subject to key word filtering;
• Test root domain name before testing entire path;
• Some websites can be blocked because they include an image or other file from a blocked website;
• in addition to checking website, check IP address; websites often have multiple IP addresses, not all IP addresses may be blocked; sub-domain names can also have different IP addresses;
• Some blocked websites are not blocked when you remove the www prefix;
• For DNS tampering, you can use a remote DNS server such as opendns.com;
• If an IP address is blocked, which is easily done, checking for this can be done using http://tracetp.sourceforge.net;
• If filtering proxies is taking place, compare http headers, sometimes you get a 200, 403 and 302. Filtering software often have unique identifying headers;
• Looking at source code of the page can give you information on the category that a particular website has been blocked under. several reverse IP tools can also be used;

Patrick Philippe Meier

The who’s who of online political activism is here today to compare notes on their efforts to create more transparent and accountable governments across the world. Not surprisingly, the average age in the room must be late 20’s to early 30’s. A small number of prominent bloggers missing from today’s gathering weren’t able to travel to Budapest because of visa problems and/or security issues. Rob Farris, Director of Research at the Berkman Center, began the conversation by discussing the future of Internet and filtering and the role for activists in documenting filtering. The presentation is based on the new study, Access Denied: The Rise of Global Internet Filtering.

The following methods (amongst others) are used to restrict speech on the net:

• Intellectual property law;
• Licensing and id requirements;
• Arrest and intimidation;
• Filtering, monitoring and surveillance;
• Hacking;
• Cost, however is the biggest problem.

Somewhat surprisingly, Israel, Japan, France and Australia are four countries that are increasingly engaged in Internet censorship.

• In China, self-censorship (censorship 2.0) is becoming more problematic than filtering.
• In Belarus, a new law on media and extremism is presenting more barriers for free speech on the net. In Japan, mobile phone censorship is on the rise.
• In Thailand, as in many countries with closed regimes, it is actually illegal according to their constitutions to censor the web, so they are breaking their own laws.
• In the US, it is no longer possible to decide on censorship on a case by case basis. There is no due process since scale is a problem. It is virtually almost impossible to solve, especially with social media.
• In Saudi Arabia, the Internet was introduced only after the regime had censorship tools in place.
• In Turkey, YouTube is blocked since they do not have the technology to block individual clips.

One general finding is that countries that engage in one kind of filtering are increasingly engaged in other forms of filtering. One ongoing question is whether non-democratic regimes engage in regional cooperation, collusion in filtering. A challenge that continues is how we convince policy makers not to censor the web, especially since the response will be, “What about child pornography? Violence? Hate speech?” One strategy might be to go after child pornographers in a different way. Perhaps automated filtering using transparent methods might be best. Is this a battle that political activists want to fight?

YouTube now has a system to geo-locate and block clips. Is this what we want? YouTube negotiating with Thailand directly? In China, as in other countries, national alternatives to YouTube are appearing, which the state has direct control over. Is this a trend that will continue? A Balkanization of social media blocking? Rob closed his presentation by introducing Herdict, a tool (coming soon) to track filtering around the world. Ethan Zuckerman added that he hopes one of the outcomes of today’s conversation will be a strong alliance among bloggers to render more transparent government censorship of the net.

Patrick Philippe Meier