Rafal Rohozinski on Internet Surveillance and Monitoring

My former ONI colleague Rafal Rohozinski, now of Information Warfare Monitor, has a great interview where he discusses methodology and findings for both projects. Well worth a read!

Australia to Filter Online Games

One beneficial side effect of Internet filtering is that it points up quirks in how countries make content decisions: what’s blacklisted, and why? The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Australia’s proposed Internet censorship system (currently in its second phase of testing) will block access to on-line and downloadable games that aren’t MA-15 or milder. This [...]

Iran and the New Net

Iranian demonstrators protesting the recent election results (which look dicey) – and their opponents – are using networked technologies to communicate and organize, including Twitter, blogs, SMS, and the like. John Palfrey, Rob Faris, and Bruce Etling point out, though, that these capabilities, while empowering, won’t carry the day. Whether the demonstrations succeed depends on [...]

Germany Joins Iran and China

Nope, not a post about the World Cup – these are three countries that have been in the news for government-mandated Internet censorship. It’s a bit weird to see that grouping, but as I’ve argued elsewhere, filtering is becoming ubiquitous – no longer limited to “bad states” like Burma.
In Germany, the major parties in Parliament [...]

Filtering v3.0

Great panel on filtering at CFP 2009 yesterday – we took up the question of whether John Gilmore is still right in that the “Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” Ian Brown talked about Cleanfeed and how filtering operates, from the most basic to the most sophisticated. TJ McIntyre described the bizarre [...]

Follow CFP 2009 Live

You can follow along with Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2009 (”Creating the Future”) even if you’re not here in DC (where the weather is surprisingly lovely for June): via Twitter at Tweezup, the CFP blog, and streaming video. The Filtering panel, which also now includes Catherine Crump from the ACLU and Nicole Wong from Google, [...]

China Blocks Popular Web Services

China has blocked Flickr, Hotmail, Twitter, MSN Spaces, Bing, and YouTube among other services. Hmm, I wonder why that could be? Commentary from Danwei and coverage from Reuters, the Register, and Fox News.
Update 11:45PM 3 June: Danwei has more details, including a link to a spreadsheet that’s purportedly tracking blocked sites.

Great Lakes Water Law Blog Wins Award

My friend and colleague Noah Hall, an internationally-recognized expert on water law, runs the Great Lakes Law blog, which has been named Great Lakes Information Network Site of the Month. Congrats, Noah! If you live anywhere near the Great Lakes and water plays a role in your life – showering, drinking, swimming, etc. – you [...]

Australian Blacklist Revealed?

According to BoingBoing and Slashdot, the blacklist compiled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority has been posted to Wikileaks. It appears that the posted blacklist is an older one. What’s made this controversial is that Australia is now evidently blacklisting Wikileaks. As I suggest in my paper on this topic, this type of expanded [...]

Interview with Background Briefing on Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Wendy Carlisle, of the ABC, has an excellent Background Briefing piece on Australia’s Internet filtering controversy. (I’m biased, because I’m interviewed in the piece.) Background Briefing is influential in Australia – probably similar to Frontline or the Jim Lehrer Newshour here in the U.S. – and so this piece could help drive the debate. You [...]

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