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Hacktivists mount counter-offensive to Internet censorship
(Nestor E. Arellano, ITWorld Canada, 08 Jun 2006)
The arms race over Internet censorship is escalating. . . . A new weapon is being developed to help dissidents gain free access to the Web. . . . A team of Toronto-based "hacktivists" – hackers with a commitment to social responsibility – is beta-testing software that can circumvent Internet censorship by repressive governments. . . . Dubbed Psiphon, the software enables a third-party computer to act as a proxy that allows Internet users to access banned content. . . . Psiphon was developed by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's (U of T) Munk Centre for International Studies. Described as a "hothouse that brings together social scientists, filmmakers, computer scientists, activists, and artists," the Citizen Lab explores hypermedia technologies and grassroots social movements, civic activism, and democratic change within an emerging planetary polity. . . . The Citizen Lab is part of a larger coalition that includes Harvard and Cambridge Universities called the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), which investigates global Internet filtering. Each university has a distinct role: Harvard researches the legal aspects of the issue, Cambridge organizes activists in censored locations to conduct research and the Citizen Lab handles technical research and development. . . . The coalition has identified cyber-censorship in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Burma, Tunisia, Yemen, India, and Pakistan – but China tops the list. . . . Psiphon employs a hub-and-spoke scheme to link dissidents to Internet activists outside a censored country's borders. An activist located in an uncensored country such as Canada installs the software on his computer. He then creates a list of trusted Internet users in censored countries, and sends his Internet Protocol (IP) address to the people on the list. These people can then link to his computer and use it to access banned sites. . . . To hide this traffic to banned sites from state surveillance, Psiphon data is encrypted and travels on a network reserved for financial transactions. . . . "The activity is masked. Censors won't see what the person is accessing because as far as they're concerned, the user could be making a Visa purchase," says Hull. . . . As an added safety feature, no software is actually installed on the censored computer. Should a crackdown occur, authorities would not be able find anything on the user's computer.

posted by LoZo 5:11 PM