Scaling the firewall of digital censorship

[Guest guest]

Scaling the firewall of digital censorship

 

OLIVER MOORE

 

Globe and Mail Update

 

TORONTO — More than fifteen years after the Berlin Wall was shattered

with hammers and bulldozers, a Canadian-designed computer program is

preparing to break through what activists call the great firewall of China.

 

The program, in the late stages of development in a University of

Toronto office, is designed to help those trapped behind the blocking

and filtering systems set up by restrictive governments. If successful,

it will equip volunteers in more open countries to help those on the

other side of digital barriers, allowing a free flow of information and

news into and out of even the most closed societies.

 

The program is part of a quiet war over freedom of information. Even as

countries considered repressive, such as China, North Korea, Iran and

Saudi Arabia, pour money into stopping the free exchange of data, small

groups of activists keep looking for ways around the technological barriers.

 

At the University of Toronto, in the small basement office of Citizen

Lab, researchers are getting ready for the release of Psiphon, the

latest weapon in the fight.

 

" I was always interested in the idea of using computers for social and

political change, " said Nart Villeneuve, who has been dabbling with the

project for about two years. " It was a matter of creating a program for

really non-technical people that was easy and effective. "

 

Psiphon is designed to eliminate a drawback of anti-filter programs:

incriminating the users behind the firewall. If found by authorities,

that anti-filter software can lead to coercive interrogation, a bid to

uncover the suspect's Internet travel secrets using a tactic known to

insiders as " rubber-hose cryptoanalysis. "

 

Mr. Villeneuve built a system that won't leave dangerous footprints on

computers. In simple terms, it works by giving monitored computer users

a way to send an encrypted request for information to a computer located

in a secure country. That computer finds the information and sends it

back, also encrypted.

 

An elegant wrinkle is that the data will enter users' machines through

computer port 443. Relied on for the secure transfer of data, this port

is the one through whichreams of financial data stream constantly around

the world.

 

" Unless a country wanted to cut off all connections for any financial

transactions they wouldn't be able to cut off these transmissions, " said

Professor Ronald Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab.

 

A drawback to Psiphon is that the person behind the firewall has to be

given a user name and password by the person offering up the computer.

With this kind of setup, Mr. Villeneuve said, activists may end up

working with specific dissidents and people in repressive countries may

rely on relatives abroad to help them get connected. Canadians, with

ties to every country in the world, are in a particularly good position

to use such a system.

 

Although this reduces the program's reach, a relationship-based system

could also minimize improper use. People who know the owner of their

proxy computer are less likely to abuse their system, the logic goes.

 

" The big novel thing here is that you have a one-to-one connection, "

said Danny O'Brien, activism co-ordinator at the Electronic Frontier

Foundation, a San Francisco-based group. " That's a great innovation,

because so many people have computers that are always on, and this lets

you deal with someone you can trust. "

 

If the remote user begins to view illegal material, their access can be

limited in several ways, such as allowing access to text only. In

extreme cases, Mr. Villeneuve said, people found with evidence of

illegal activity on their computer would be able to prove through

forensic analysis that it had been done by the remote user.

 

The team at Citizen Lab is now racing to put the final touches on the

program in time for its public debut at the international congress of

the free-speech group PEN in May. Billed as a uniquely Canadian approach

to " hactivism, " the first generation of Psiphon will then be made

publicly available.

 

Its release is set to come against a backdrop of ever-diminishing free

access to the Internet. Just last month the popular search engine Google

agreed to self-censor, restricting access to certain content and

websites in order to gain access to the Chinese market.

 

Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China, an

international NGO, said the country has managed to create " a culture of

fear and self-censorship. " They are helped, she added, by Western

countries willing to sell Internet-monitoring equipment to Beijing and

bend to its terms.

 

Mr. O'Brien noted that public knowledge of monitoring can have as major

an effect as the surveillance itself.

 

" You don't need to arrest every dissident and you don't need to take

down every website. You just need to give the impression that you're

watching, " he said. " Merely establishing that you are being watched has

a great effect on freedom of expression. "

 

Activist groups around the world work to shine a spotlight on such

repression, hoping that publicity and pressure will bring about change.

 

Although Psiphon is a purely Citizen Lab project, Prof. Deibert's team

is also part of the Open Net Initiative. It's a partnership that

includes Harvard and Cambridge universities and tries to document the

extent of state interference on the Internet.

 

In Prof. Deibert's words, they try " to turn the tables on the watchers,

to watch the watchers. "

 

© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.