Ask most citizens worldwide to identify the most pressing issue facing humanity as a whole and they will likely respond with global warming. However, there is another environmental catastrophe looming: the degradation of the global communications environment. The parallels between the two issues are striking: in both cases an invaluable commons is threatened with collapse unless citizens take urgent action to achieve environmental rescue. The two issues are also intimately connected: solutions to global warming necessitate an unfettered worldwide communications network through which citizens can exchange information and ideas. To protect the planet, we need to protect the Net.

Read the full essay on Publius here:

A professor from Vancouver says what was once an open global space is now being carved up, colonized and militarized

...   more »

Practically every U.S.-owned search engine has caved to the Chinese government's demands that they censor political Web sites in China. But none of them seem to agree on just what sites need censoring. Google, at times, blocks Chinese users' access to the BBC while Yahoo! permits it. Yahoo! sometimes filters out Voice of America--Google doesn't. And Microsoft removes entries from the Chinese version of Wikipedia from its results while every other search engine includes them--even the dominant Chinese search engine Baidu.com.

Confused? So are the search engines themselves, says Nart Villeneuve, a researcher at the University of Toronto's Open Net Initiative. In a study released on Wednesday, he points to the wild variation in search engine censorship in China as a sign that the Chinese government isn't handing companies a uniform list of censored sites but leaving them to guess at which sites are contraband.
------------------------
In a congressional hearing before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Wednesday, ONI director Ron Deibert held up the study as evidence of the complicity of U.S. firms in China's control of the media. Worse, he argued, they seemed to be doing more than China's dictators required to repress information.

"This kind of self-selection raises the prospect of anticipatory over-blocking, in which content not officially blocked by China ends up being filtered because of the eagerness of search engines," Deibert said.

Read the entire article here

Read the my testimony to US Congress here

Read Nart's research paper here

I am testifying to US Congress today, at the US China Economic and Security Review Commission. My testimony covers the research of the OpenNet Initiative on Internet censorship practices in China, the range and effectiveness of circumvention methods, including our own tool -- psiphon, and the role of US and Western corporations in aiding and supporting Internet censorship in China. My full testimony can be downloaded here.

On March 21, 2008, the CBC National ran a feature piece on the research and development activities of the Citizen Lab, including the ONI and psiphon. There are interviews with me, and with Nart Villeneuve. You can watch the piece here. The youtube version is here

Seth Finkelstein has written a thoughtful review of the OpenNet Initiative's new book Access Denied in the Guardian. Seth says " It's a primer in methods and an atlas of studies. The first sections provide an analytical framework. Then prohibitions are examined across dozens of countries. The results show that far from the earlier idea of the internet destroying nations, nations are, arguably, domesticating the internet (or at least trying hard)." He concludes that "Access Denied will certainly become a standard reference. But it's sadly not clear whether it will be more as a foundation for anti-censorship efforts - or as an initial chronicle of how visions of freedom turned into realities of control."

Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering challenges the long-standing assumption that the internet is an unfettered space where citizens from around the world can freely communicate and mobilise. In fact, the book makes it clear that the scope, scale and sophistication of net censorship are growing.

"There's been a conventional wisdom or myth that the internet was immune from state regulation," says Ronald Deibert, one of the book's editors.

"What we're finding is that states that were taking a hands-off approach to the internet for many years are now finding ways to intervene at key internet choke points, and block access to information."

Mr. Deibert heads The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. The Lab, along with Harvard Law School, the University of Cambridge, and Oxford University, has spent the last five years testing internet access in some 40 countries.

The full review is here

There is also a short story about Internet censorship in China, with a mention of psiphon here:
here

There were two radio reports about various aspects of the Citizen Lab's research and development activities yesterday. Clark Boyd did a report about the OpenNet Initiative's new book, Access Denied on BBC's The World Today. I have uploaded a version of that broadcast locally here

Additionally, Eli Glasner did a report on the use of our new psiphon service with respect to ongoing events in Tibet and elsewhere, for CBC's The World at Six. I have uploaded a version of that broadcast locally here as well. Eli's story is notable for, among other things, the participation of our friend and colleague from Privaterra Robert Guerra. And it looks like there is an online print version of the story here

Some recent items on psiphon, the ONI's new volume, Access Denied, and others to report

I did an interview with Jesse Brown of CBC's search engine on psiphon. The full interview, including Mike Hull's psiphon theme song, is available here
(Note: The interview with me starts at 16 minutes, 15 seconds into the podcast).

Bruce Schneier wrote a review of the ONI's new volume Access Denied in the recent issue of Nature. A pdf of the review can be downloaded here.

Lastly, I recently had the pleasure of appearing on The Digital Age with James Goodale. The full interview has been posted on google video here.

Yesterday we at the psiphon project were delighted to be given the Grand Prix at the Netxplorateur Forum in the Senate of France.

From their website:

La Commission du Forum Netxplorateur a décerné son Grand Prix 2008 au professeur Ron Deibert, directeur du Citizen Lab à l’université de Toronto, pour Psiphon. Ce logiciel visant à contourner la censure sur Internet a été choisi parmi 100 initiatives Web et numériques du monde entier.


"Le but de Psiphon est d'honorer la promesse originale d'Internet comme un lieu de libre expression et d'accès universel aux informations," commenta le Professeur Deibert, "Nous sommes honorés de recevoir une distinction aussi prestigieuse. La censure du Net est devenu un problème mondial majeur : des dizaines de gouvernements bloquent l'accès aux sites d'information, des droits de l'homme et d'opposition politique, ainsi qu'aux nouvelles médias d'expression comme les blogs et les vidéos en streaming."

Congratulations to the entire psiphon team!

“In the dot-com heyday of the ’90s and early 2000s…there was a myth that the Internet can’t be controlled,” says Ronald Deibert, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. “There was some mysterious, magical property associated with it that will route around censorship.” The most exhaustive study yet of Internet censorship—Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, published this month by the MIT Press—pretty much disproves that notion. From IEEESpectrum

MIT Technology Review has a good story about psiphon, and in particular the new service we are slowly building up. We have not said much about this service publicly because we are working carefully and quietly to build up its capacity to serve peoples' needs within censored countries. The article provides a nice introductory overview, here.

Esquire Magazine has listed psiphon as one of the best and brightest ideas of 2007, and included it among the "Six Ideas That Will Change the World." Read about it here. Thanks to Mike, Anton, Eugene, Nart and all the Citizen Labbers who have worked on the psiphon project over the years.

I was a guest on CBC's The Current on Friday. The show begins with a focus on the Yahoo case involving Wang Xiaoning and Shi Taoi who are currently serving 10 year sentences for subversion based on records Yahoo turned over to Chinese authorities.

You can listen to the interview HERE

The OpenNet Initiative has compiled a bulletin on the recent demonstrations in Burma and the Burmese government's shutdown of the Internet there. ONI conducted a technical analysis of the Internet's uptime, documenting a complete shutdown in Burma, followed by intermittent periods of up-time throughout early October, with an apparent return to full connection on October 13 for one of the two ISPs and on October 16 for the other. This bulletin presents these results and investigates the impact that the use of communication technologies had on shaping these key events.

The report can be downloaded HERE.

I am pleased to announce that we have finished the Citizen Lab's latest output, Everyone's Guide to By-Passing Internet Censorship for Citizens Worldwide and also available for download here


This guide, which is intended for the non-technical user, provides tips and strategies on how to by-pass content filters worldwide. It is now in English but we are busy making translations into multiple languages. Stay tuned!

Many thanks to the Citizen Lab's team that worked on this project, especially Jane Gowan, Nart Villeneuve, Julian Wolfson, Francois Cadieux, Sarah Boland and James Tay.

I am attending the IFEX general meeting in Uruguay, where I gave an opening address on Internet censorship, the work of the OpenNet Initiative and psiphon projects.

It is a very dynamic meeting, with many different rights organizations collaborating and exchanging ideas.

Much of the discussion is focused on events unfolding in Burma. There was an excellent article by Roby Alampey in the Washington Post that makes a strong argument for principles of Internet governance that protect freedom of speech online, with a favorable mention of the work of the ONI. Roby is attending the IFEX meeting here.

And yesterday, an article on Burma in the Christian Science Monitor spotlights the use of commercial filtering technologies and the work of the ONI, with some of my input.

I did a one on one interview with host Steve Paikin of TVO's the Agenda. The episode page is here, where you can downoad the video and audio podcast of the interview. We cover events in Burma, the OpenNet Initiative and psiphon psiphon.

From Forbes.com

According to Ron Deibert, director at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab and an investigator at the OpenNet Initiative. "Now that the government's crackdown has succeeded, they're beginning to let information trickle out again," he says. Deibert speculates that even for a country as repressive as Myanmar, the cost of shutting off all outside connections is too great to sustain for long. "There's the cost of lost business and the government's own inability to communicate," he says. "Myanmar wants to avoid the risk of being seen as a pariah. These are all reasons they need to connect with the outside world."

Found HERE.

I have done some recent interviews about Burma and the role the Internet is playing in getthing the message out, including attempts by the government to shut it down. Two CBC radio interviews that I did with Eli Glasner, slightly different, can be found here and here. There is also a New York Times report appearing today to which I contributed that can be found here.

I did an interview with Clark Boyd about Burma here

The reclusive military regime in Burma -- or Myanmar -- can't stop the news of protests there from spreading around the world. Information technology like the Internet and cell phones are helping Burmese pro-democracy activists get the word out. That wasn't the case in 1988 -- the last time there was a pro-democracy uprising in Burma. From BBCNews

Al Jazeera International has a great show called Listening Post hosted by Richard Gizbert. I wish we were able to see this show in Canada! Last December 2006, the Listening Post did a feature story on psiphon around the time of its public release. Thanks to the kind folks at the Listening Post we were able to get an archive of the copy of post it to youtube HERE.

The group of pro-Tibet activists in China that caught the world's attention this week by chronicling a series of stunts over the web used an “age-old tactic” with a savvy, modern twist, says an expert in the field. From GlobeandMail

CBC Dispatches invited me back to discuss Internet censorship, the state of blogging in the Middle East, and psiphon. The interview can be found HERE.

Psiphon pstops pcensorship, NOW Magazine (July 12-18, 2007).

Toronto-developed software opens the Net to restricted surfers

By DAVID SILVERBERG
In Saudi Arabia, net users can't get access to websites of opposition groups. Jordan and Bahrain both briefly banned Google Earth, citing security concerns. The Chinese government doesn't let netizens get to the BBC site in any language.

So what's a curious Web surfer to do in these Net-filtering countries?

They should get to know a kind-hearted soul using Psiphon (http://psiphon.civisec.org/), a software tool created by researchers at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. By downloading this piece of software, someone in a free-thinking country like Canada can let a person in a restrictive society gain safe access to a portal to the uncensored Web.

Yesterday was the Amnesty International conference. I enjoyed the discussions, which ranged far and wide.

You can see the archived webcast here. CBC had a pretty good report on it. One correction, however: I never said we tested 41 countries in 2002.

June 5, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- State censorship of the Internet is growing and the techniques used are becoming increasingly sophisticated, according to the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a partnership of British, US, and Canadian universities.

The group has released an initial list of countries engaged in Internet censorship, which includes China, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. The group believes that states will target other means of electronic communication next, such as mobile phone text messaging.

Although as many as 25 countries make the current list of countries that engage in Internet censorship, the list is by no means exhaustive, according to Ron Deibert, one of OpenNet Initiative's principal investigators and director of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab.

Found HERE

Amnesty international is having an event on Wednesday June 6th in the UK that I'm speaking at by webcast. The event is called "irrepressible.info" and is about threats to freedom of speech and access to information online. You can read more about it here:

Leading up to the event, I wrote this editorial comment that has been published on the Open Democracy website

I will be participating in Amnesty International's Irrepressible.info one year anniversary conference, the details for which can be found here. We at the OpenNet Initiative have been providing background information and data for the campaign.

Here is a Guardian/Observer story on the upcoming event, and the way in which the campaign has had an impact so far.

The first ONI woodstock is over. I had a very productive time, and particularly enjoyed the debate at the Oxford Union.

Here are a few selected media stories about the ONI's reports:

International Herald Tribue

Sci-Tech Today

National Post
archived here locally

CityTV

...and here is a separate news item in the

Guardian UK on Murdoch's moves into China with a special version of MySpace.

Additionaly, I did a recent interview with SAP Online on the psiphon project.

The OpenNet Initiative is holding its first public conference to discuss the current state of play of Internet filtering worldwide. The conference will be hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute and held at the University of Oxford on May 18, 2007. The conference is free of charge and open to the public.

Results from the first global study of Internet filtering carried out by the OpenNet Initiative will be on the table for a day of discussion involving ICT development experts, speech and human rights advocates, journalists and bloggers, international laywers and scholars, and others interested in state responses to online information flows.

Click here for more information

We are proud to announce the Spanish language version of the Psiphon user guide, which can be found HERE. Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, and French versions are forthcoming. (Thanks to Txitua for the translation).

I am posting two recent news items for the archive. The first is a brief story (with an interesting looking map) from the Financial Times on Internet censorship. The second is an older interview I did on December 1st with CNN International about psiphon. The interview has been posted on youtube here.