Category Archives: Censorship

Internet security expert publishes first evidence that Iran uses internet throttling to prevent the spread of information during periods of public unrest

One of the growing concerns for human rights campaigners is the increasing evidence of internet censorship in many repressive regimes around the world. During the Arab spring, for example, Egyptian leaders switched off the internet in an attempt to prevent activists organising protests or communicating with the outside world. The Syrian leadership appears to have done a similar thing on several occasions during the current civil war.

But in Iran, the government is pioneering a more insidious but just as powerful form of censorship. Instead of shutting down internet access, the government appears to be dramatically slowing its performance during periods of unrest. In February 2010, for example, the technology news website, The Next Web, recorded this effect in a story with the headline : The Internet In Iran Is Crawling, Conveniently, Right Before Planned Protests.

So-called internet throttling has numerous advantages over a complete shutdown since it constrains protests while allowing vital communications to continue. It is also difficult to distinguish from ordinary disruptions. The result is that throttling is much less likely to lead to widespread condemnation.

An interesting question is how to detect internet throttling when it occurs. Today, the internet security expert, Collin Anderson, shows how publicly-available data clearly reveals suspicious periods of internet slowing in Iran and how this can be distinguished from ordinary slowing caused by high traffic, equipment failure and so on.

The data that makes this possible comes from the Measurement Lab, a non-partisan organisation that distributes open software for measuring internet performance. M-Lab has developed a widely used network diagnostic tool that measures performance by sending a ten second burst of data as fast as possible through a newly opened connection.

Since 2009, M-Lab has conducted some 200,000 connection tests per day, collecting over 700 Terabytes of data in the process. This is data from all over the world and is publicly available for anybody study.

Andersons analysis focuses on the data gathered from Iran since 2010. He says the results clearly show evidence of internet slowing on several occasions. We find two significant and extended periods of potential throttling within our dataset, occuring November 30 2011- August15 2012 and October 4 - November22 2012, he says. During the first of these periods, download throughput dropped by 77 per cent and in the second it dropped by 69 per cent.

Both of these occasions coincide with periods of unrest in Iran. During the winter of 2011, for example, two former presidential candidates were held under house arrest because of their reformist activities, triggering condemnation within Iran. In October 2012, there were widespread currency protests.

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First Evidence Of Iranian Internet Throttling as a Form of Censorship

VIOLENT FUN - CENSORSHIP
DESDE COMODORO RIVADAVIA,PROVINCIA DE CHUBUT, ARGENTINA,NOS LLEGA ESTE PODEROSO ATAQUE DE THRASH METAL TOCADO A TODA VELOCIDAD!! IDEAL PARA SEGUIDORES DE SLA...

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VIOLENT FUN - CENSORSHIP - Video

A newly released report charges that a Canadian companys technology is playing a central role in facilitating Internet censorship in Pakistan.

According to a report released Thursday by the Citizen Lab, a digital media and human rights research centre at the University of Torontos Munk School of Global Affairs, the Canadian content filtering company Netsweeper is working with Pakistan Telecommunications Company Ltd. (PTCL), the largest telecom firm in the country. PTCL is majority-owned by the government of Pakistan.

Netsweeper technology is being implemented in Pakistan on PTCL for purposes of political and social filtering, including websites of secessionist movements, sensitive religious topics, and independent media, the report said.

The filtering includes blocking sites related to Balochi and Sindhi national self-determination activists, as well as Pashtun secessionism, it added. In addition, the report stated, major websites, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, have also been blocked when such content shows up on the sites.

The report, titled O Pakistan, We Stand On Guard For Thee, was produced in partnership with Bytes For All, a Pakistani human-rights organization.

In many parts of the world, content filtering software is used by Internet service providers to block a variety of websites, whose content can include pornographic, politically sensitive or otherwise controversial content. The Citizen Labs previous research efforts have highlighted several cases in which Western filtering companies have provided technology to regimes with troubling human rights records.

Netsweeper, which is based in Guelph, Ont., did not respond to calls and e-mails for comment.

The list of blocked sites collected by the researchers includes a number of services that allow users to surf the web anonymously. Websites critical of Islam also featured heavily on the list of blocked sites, as did pornographic sites. A U.S. Air Force academy site was also blocked, as was the Wikipedia entry for Gabriel, the angel of the Abrahamic religions.

Ronald Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, said that, in previous years, it was much easier to determine which companies were aiding in censorship efforts around the world. This is in part because the access denied pages that would pop up when a user tried to visit prohibited sites would usually contain the name or logo of the company providing the censorship software. However in recent years, as pressure mounted on such companies to stop working with repressive regimes, many of the same pages now offer no identifying informationabout the companies providing the censorship technology.

In some cases, the ISPs doing the blocking have sought to disguise the practice by redirecting users to pages that appear to show the website is simply unavailable, rather than deliberately blocked. For example, a user might be directed to a 404 error page, indicating the site was not found.

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Canadian technology tied to online censorship in Pakistan

Max Igan - Censorship and Government Criminality - June 14, 2013
Max Igan #39;s website - http://thecrowhouse.com/ Youtube page - http://www.youtube.com/user/thecrowhouse Max Igan Videos playlist - http://www.youtube.com/playl...

By: 1stageofawareness

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Max Igan - Censorship and Government Criminality - June 14, 2013 - Video

Censorship sucks! (My Response to Sk4zzi0us Game Over video)
It is not nice when you have to worry about how what you say might just offend someone. This is a personal video response to Sk4zzi0us who has had to stop po...

By: Dulayne Movaro

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Censorship sucks! (My Response to Sk4zzi0us Game Over video) - Video

Censorship,Creationism,Critical Analysis
Due to some Technical Difficulties this show has been only slightly over a hour, this will most likely not happen again. Thank you for watching.

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Censorship,Creationism,Critical Analysis - Video

George Galloway interviews Ishmael Reed on Huckleberry Finn censorship
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George Galloway interviews Ishmael Reed on Huckleberry Finn censorship - Video

20 June 2013 | The Internet is and has always been a space where participants battle for control. The two core protocols that define the Internet TCP and IP are both designed to allow separate networks to connect to each other easily, so that networks that differ not only in hardware implementation (wired vs. satellite vs. radio networks) but also in their politics of control (consumer vs. research vs. military networks) can interoperate easily. It is a feature of the Internet, not a bug, that China with its extensive, explicit censorship infrastructure can interact with the rest of the Internet.

In the following collection, published as an open access collection here and as well in a special issue of IEEE Internet Computing, we present five peer reviewed papers on the topic of Internet censorship and control. The topics of the papers include a broad look at information controls, censorship of microblogs in China, new modes of online censorship, the balance of power in Internet governance, and control in the certificate authority model. These papers make it clear that there is no global consensus on what mechanisms of control are best suited for managing conflicts on the Internet, just as there is none for other fields of human endeavour. That said, there is optimism that with vigilance and continuing efforts to maintain transparency the Internet can stay as a force for increasing freedom than a tool for more efficient repression.

This collection was edited by Steven J. Murdoch of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and Hal Roberts of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

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Internet censorship and control

Minister Alan Shatter: complaints have led to his novel being reissued

A steamy novel written by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter 24 years ago when he was a backbencher has prompted him to transfer responsibility for censorship out of his department.

A complaint to the Censorship of Publications Board alleging that his novel, Laura: A Story You Will Never Forget, is obscene posed a dilemma for the Minister whose department has ultimate responsibility for the board.

In response he has decided to shift responsibility for censorship out of Justice to the Department of Arts and Heritage.

The Irish Times takes no responsibility for the content or availability of other websites.

A Government spokesman said the Minister had made the decision in case there was any suggestion of a conflict of interest on the part of Mr Shatter.

The spokesman said the Minister had also come to the conclusion that the Department of Arts and Heritage was also more appropriate to have responsibility for censorship.

Obscene Following recent publicity about the Ministers novel and the complaint that it is obscene, the publisher has decided to reissue it.

The novel centres around the troubled private life of a rural TD who is having an affair with his secretary. At one point, the fictional TD attempts to force the woman to have an abortion in order to save his political career.

A complaint about the books sex scenes was lodged with the censorship board over a month ago. Another aspect of the complaint is the allegation the novel advocates the procurement of an abortion or miscarriage, contrary to Irish censorship laws.

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Shatter novel prompts censorship reform

At least one member of the public is understood to have lodged a complaint about Alan Shatter's novel Laura

Responsibility for the Censorship of Publications Board is to be transferred from the Minister for Justice to the Minister for Arts.

The change comes after a member of the public lodged a complaint about a novel by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter.

A Government spokesperson said the move was being made in part because it was more logical to have the Department of Arts in charge, and in part to avoid any perception of a conflict of interest.

The change was suggested by Minister Shatter, whose novel Laura is being republished. At least one member of the public is understood to have lodged a complaint with the board about it.

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Censorship moves to Arts after Shatter complaint