All Content Related to United States/Canada

ONI Releases 2009 Year in Review: Filtering, Surveillance, Information Warfare

Jillian C. York — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:28:13 -0500

The OpenNet Initiative is proud to release its 2009 Year in Review, a look into instances of filtering, surveillance, and information warfare around the world in 2009.

The events of 2009 demonstrated a global rise in third-generation Internet controls. Within the first two weeks of January 2009, both Pakistan and Thailand had ordered the filtering of several Web sites, and Germany announced plans to filter certain types of pornography, garnering outrage from free speech activists. By mid-year, the events surrounding the elections in Iran had taken center stage, prompting Iranian authorities to crack down on Internet use and sparking outrage throughout the world, which then rippled through social media.

The OpenNet Initiative estimates that at the end of 2009, 32% of all Internet users were accessing a filtered version of the Internet.

United States: Is Filtering in Schools the Answer?

Jillian C. York — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:36:32 -0400

Is filtering in schools the answer? That's the question being asked across the United States. Although it is required by federal law to filter pornographic and other obscene content, many K-12 schools are choosing to also filter social networks, video sites like YouTube, sexual education sites, and other potentially valuable content, much to the chagrin of some educators.

A recent piece in Education Week focuses on school districts which have chosen a different route: educating students on digital citizenship. One school system profiled in the article, that of Trussville, Alabama, has taken that mantra a step further, maintaining Twitter and Facebook accounts and providing all of its 880 students with e-mail addresses. The school chooses not to filter sites like YouTube (at some educational levels) which - despite containing plenty of inane entertainment - contain a wealth of educational information.

As one teacher argues, "I’m a big advocate for experiential learning, but it’s kind of hard to teach Internet etiquette or rules of how to act and interact online without exposing them to the stuff that’s out there."

U.S. software company says China stole Green Dam code

Rebekah Heacock — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:47:33 -0400

A California-based software company has accused a Chinese company of lifting parts of the Green Dam Youth Escort filtering software directly from its own CyberSitter program.

Solid Oak Software Inc. claims that parts of the Green Dam code, including "blacklist" files and code using "proprietary encryption methods," are identical to code used in its own Internet filtering software.

Solid Oak is seeking an injunction to stop American companies from selling computers containing the software. The legal issues surrounding the injunction are murky, as the fact that Green Dam is only sold in China means the case would need to be settled according to Chinese law.

Representatives of Jinhui, the Chinese company that developed Green Dam, deny the charges.

For more information about Green Dam, check out "China's Green Dam: The Implications of Government Control Encroaching on the Home PC," a recent OpenNet Initiative bulletin evaluating the software.

Facebook: What is Private?

Jillian C. York — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:33:35 -0400

Users of Facebook beware: In a precedent-setting decision by a Toronto judge, a man injured in a car accident has been ordered to turn over information from his Facebook page which is off-limits to the public.

The lawyers of the lawsuit's defendant, Janice Roman, believe information posted on John Leduc's private Facebook page may be relevant to a claim he made that an accident in 2004 interfered with his quality of life. Leduc is now required to submit to cross-examination regarding the content of his Facebook page.

The February 20 ruling also makes clear that lawyers are now required to explain to clients in relevant cases that social networking postings may become relevant to legal allegations, a situation which could easily occur when a litigant claims that his or her quality of life has been affected.

Although bloggers and others who make information public should be aware that information they post could be used against them, this case sets a precedent for the release of private information in a court case.

Geofiltering: How to Alienate Business Customers Without Really Trying

Jillian C. York — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:14:55 -0500

Many a DVD collector over the years has been disappointed upon learning that their rare DVD from Taiwan or France can't be played on their American DVD player. Just as DVD region codes limit viewing to a geographic area, the geofiltering of web-based videos and other sites limits viewers from outside of a particular region from accessing them.

This technique is often applied to the Web sites of television stations (such as CBS, Hulu, and Netflix in the United States), gambling sites, and dating sites, as well as a number of U.S. and other military sites, but appears to be catching on in other realms.

In contrast to government-mandated filtering, geofiltering is typically applied for business reasons: typically as a defense strategy against spam or harassment.

In a recent post, Professor John Palfrey notes that Stylefeeder (a site which "discovers products for you based on your unique tastes") has been mulling over geofiltering since discovering that much of their spam traffic comes from India and Pakistan.

One solution to eliminating such spam is, of course, geofiltering. By blocking all users from countries like India, Stylefeeder could easily prevent spam from those countries without losing business.

But in the company's own post on the Stylefeeder Tech Blog, CEO Philip Jacob explains why Stylefeeder is choosing a different route. Jacob says:

"I felt that this approach, however, was too heavy-handed in that it was inevitably going to be a blunt instrument that caused a lot of collateral damage. Plus, we needed a solution for social media spammers within North America and those using proxies and cracked hosts, so it wasn’t going to save us much."

He goes on to argue that the long-term impact outside of North American and Europe in cases where geofiltering is applied could eventually affect businesses.

Indeed, though it might seem like a smart move for a business being hit by waves of spam and is often legally necessary for copyright reasons (i.e. Netflix videos are unwatchable outside of the United States as their licenses do not allow it), geofiltering creates a sense of mistrust amongst a company's users, who may feel they are being unfairly discriminated against.

As Jacob so succinctly puts it, the question is not who is to blame, but who suffers:

"Who suffers? Well, if country-level blocking was deployed by a large number of startups, it’s clearly the Indian non-spammer regular users who would suffer, at least in part due to actions of their own countrymen. When you look at companies like Friendster - with something like 80% of their traffic coming from outside the USA - you have to wonder if opportunities might be inadvertently lost. Or Orkut, which is hugely popular in Brazil. Whether explicit or not, most startups adopt a usage policy that keeps their sites open to the entire Internet and then add in specialized rules to limit access over time."

Launch of M-Lab as Net Neutrality Tool

charles — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:35:41 -0500

The recent launch of Measurement Lab (M-Lab) provides consumers, regulators, and content providers with the details about their network’s performance, according to CNET. Backed by Google, the New America Foundation (affiliated with the Democratic Party), and the PlanetLab consortium, M-Lab aims to increase network transparency by allowing researchers to share data relating to network performance and regulation.

The launch of the platform has a great deal of significance in the ongoing Net neutrality issue. Part of the current American economic stimulus package stipulates that federal regulators must define and enforce open access rules for various broadband and wireless networks. It is generally difficult, particularly for policymakers, to determine when network providers are interfering with end-user access, as the 2007 discovery of Comcast’s attempt to thwart BitTorrent traffic illustrates.

Ed Felton, director of the Center for Information Policy stated that M-Lab “will help you gather the evidence you need” if you “believe the government should take more active steps to mandate Net neutrality.” Moreover, Felton claims that a higher degree of transparency will give Internet service providers “true market incentive” to behave in consumer-friendly ways.

Within six months, Google will augment the existing three servers by providing researchers with 36 servers in 12 locations worldwide. All of the data collected by these servers will be made publicly available.

SonicWALL Filters Harmless Sites

Jillian C. York — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:46:47 -0500

It is the right of private companies to block access to certain sites for their employees or customers, certainly. But in the United States, some customers of Panera Bread, a popular nationwide chain restaurant that offers free wifi, are frustrated. It seems that Panera practices what is popularly known as overblocking: the unintentional filtering of harmless web sites.

One such harmless site is http://tinyurl.com, which SonicWALL classifies doubly: As "Category 27: Information Technology/Computers" and "Category 28: Hacking/Proxy Avoidance Systems" (see image). While the former is certainly correct, the latter is questionable. Tinyurl is not a proxy, rather, it is simply used to shorten URLs, which are then re-directed. In theory, if a tinyurl were used to re-direct to a filtered site, the site would still not be visible.

Tinyurl is particularly popular with users of micro-blogging service Twitter; most Twitter applications automatically turn long URLs into tinyurls. Therefore, SonicWALL's filtering of tinyurl renders Twitter nearly useless.

Tinyurl is not the only case of overblocking by SonicWALL. Popular comic xkcd is known to be blocked in businesses using SonicWALL filters as well.

FCC Plans Filtering for 2155 MHz Spectrum

brendan — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:13:28 -0500

Facing heavy pressure from Congress, the FCC last week delayed its planned auction for the 2155-2188 MHz band of spectrum. Among the points of contention, the auction as it is currently designed would require that the winner filter pornography from the freely-available portions of its network. I've already blogged about whether such a requirement is legally possible. Here I'll briefly touch on whether such a requirement is technically feasible.

Were filtering requirement to remain in the auction rules, the easiest way for the spectrum winner to filter pornography would be through what is known as TCP/IP header filtering. In this method, the network operator's routers would block any traffic headed to specific IP addresses (e.g. those of porn sites). But there are three problems (pdf) with this sort of method. First, IP addresses often direct to more than one website or service (e.g. email). Therefore users would not be able to access some websites or services because they shared an IP address with a blocked site. Second, no network operator could track every pornographic site, and so the TCP/IP filter would almost certainly fail to capture a significant portion of online pornography. Finally, any filter that identifies sites by keywords would block some sites that were not pornographic in nature. Sites about sexually transmitted infections, safe-sex, or any number of other topics might be blocked that ought not to be.

Ultimately, filtering might not be necessary to protect children from pornography. Depending who wins the auction, consumers might have to pay as much as $150 for the hardware to get on the network, keeping access unaffordable for most children.

Porn on Planes?

Jillian C. York — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:42:17 -0400

The recent announcement from American Airlines regarding wireless Internet service on airplanes has caused quite a stir. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants have raised concern about passengers viewing questionable content during the flight. That questionable content, specifically, would be porn.

Although most people would agree that viewing pornography during a commercial flight is a no-no, it seems that both flight attendants and passengers worry that some might try to do so anyway and have launched a campaign for American to filter its in-flight wireless service. The airline, however, has instead chosen to leave monitoring up to flight attendants, who by all accounts already have plenty of work to do.

According to Fox News, Delta, Alaska, and Northwest, all plan to roll out unfiltered Internet service soon, while JetBlue and Continental intend to filter some content. International airlines also plan to follow American's lead, with the exception of Australia's Qantas.

The hope is that people will use their own good judgment while flying the friendly skies, but what if they don't? Should flight attendants be responsible for determining what constitutes an offensive site?

On the other hand, is filtering the right choice? And will it even be effective? There are two major issues behind this possibility.

GoGo, the company which supplies wireless Internet to the airlines, already filters VOIP (voice over internet protocol) services from fliers, so as not to disturb passengers by allowing customers to make phone calls. Even still, some passengers have already managed to evade this block. Therefore, there's nothing stopping them from evading a block on pornography.

The other issue is in defining "offensive content". Although most frequent fliers would certainly oppose the viewing of porn during a flight, where should the line be drawn? If children are the main concern, should content containing vulgar words or scantily clad women be filtered as well?

While adding wi-fi to flights is a positive for most, there are concerns that come along it, whether filtered or not. Even if what you're viewing would not be deemed offensive by your neighbor, it's worth considering if you'd want your neighbor to see it at all. USA Today suggests investing in a privacy screen to avoid allowing anyone to see your work.

Another potential solution, and one that would find support even from those with no desire to use in-flight wi-fi, would be to create separate family and adult sections that would allow adults to sit away from children, thus eliminating the need for filtering.

U.N. agency to draft possible limits on Internet anonymity

Rebekah Heacock — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:46:59 -0400

A document obtained by CNet News has revealed that the U.N National Security Agency is part of a group drafting a set of technical standards determining how to trace Internet communications back to their original sender, potentially limiting users' ability to remain anonymous, according to a report published Friday.

The group, named Q6/17, is headed by the U.N. International Telecommunications Agency (ITU) and is reportedly acting on a proposal submitted by the Chinese government. The group is meeting in Geneva this week to work on the proposal, and meetings are closed to the public.

The proposal is intended in part to fight distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, but experts claim most experienced hackers would still be able to avoid detection.

The report has raised concerns among digital freedom advocates, who claim the standards would violate human rights and who cite the potential for abuse by governments who may use tracebacks to identify and "quash" political opponents.

Steve Bellovin, a Columbia University computer scientist and IETF member who drafted a different tracebook proposal in 2000, criticized the Q6/17 approach in a recent blog post, saying, "Network design should have as a primary goal the efficient operation of a network. Naturally, security is an important design consideration; the question, though, is what security really means. There are lots of possible definitions; to me, though, none of them include political censorship."

Online anonymity is a legal right in the United States and is recognized by international organizations including the Council of Europe and the ITU itself. Though the U.N. lacks the authority to enforce global Internet standards, the Q6/17 group plans to work with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the United States Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center. This collaboration could lead to acceptance of the standards by national governments.

The proposal is scheduled to be finished next year.