How to circumvent Internet Censorship

A fellow Mod just showed me the following link: Anticensorship in the Network Infrastructure, a paper from the University of Waterloo. While I dont fully grasp the technology involved, the possibilities are interesting:

Telex is a new approach to circumventing Internet censorship that is intended to help citizens of repressive governments freely access online services and information. The main idea behind Telex is to place anticensorship technology into the Internet's core network infrastructure, through cooperation from large ISPs. Telex is markedly different from past anticensorship systems, making it easy to distribute and very difficult to detect and block.

Follow the link to see illustrations of the Telex process.

Its already difficult to censor the Internet, it may ultimately be impossible without pulling the plug.

These are the Internets "black holes" (places of Internet Censorship):



Thoughts?

reply to post by Skyfloating


looks like a very interesting thread. I will have to do some research and find out if there is something I can add. Thanks for the info.

As far as I know (maybe Im wrong) NorthKorea would be the only nation who does not allow public Internet altogether, so there would be nothing to circumvent there.

Telex doesn't help in cases where a government pulls the plug on the Internet entirely. .

reply to post by Skyfloating


I kind of get the whole idea behind it but wouldn't it be possible for a certain government blocking access to blacklisted sites to spread some kind of trojan that informs them when somebody is running this software (Telex client app) on it's computer?

They don't need to know what and where you have been, they know (by the software you're running) that you must be doing something "illegal".

Not much into the internet technique myself but this seems like a possibility.

Peace

reply to post by Skyfloating


Anonymity needs to be achieved if we are to have free speech on the internet. If they can't track us, they can't threaten to harm us for exercising our rights to speak our minds. I doubt we will ever win the war that is being waged against the internet, but at least we can keep up the fight. Two excellent weapons are TOR and Privoxy. When used together, these programs can provide a great deal of protection for the identity of the user from both ISPs and external sources. Unfortunately, because of the potential for forum members to use these programs to make multiple accounts, many forums have safeguards in place so that people cannot access their site using these programs. It is my opinion that we need to allow proxies to be used to access forums and implement other safeguards to prevent fraud, so that people may feel more empowered by the First Amendment.

Edit to add: Tor encrypts all data that is sent and received through your ISP, therefore if you connect through a proxy in another country that has a free internet, there is no way for them to keep you from accessing any blacklisted sites.

reply to post by Skyfloating


It is very interesting to see that they have found a way through the ISP as this has been one of the main weak spots when it comes to regulation. The ISP will still be able to get a copy of everything that moves between you and the internet, but with a secure encrypted channel it will take a lot of resources to crack. I have not fully looked into how strong and secure it all is but appears promising. It is also interesting to hear that the ISP's have been involved in its development. With the American constitution supportive of free speech it is a culturally adapt solution towards net neutrality. Sounds like lots of power games going on though so keep your head up.

As far as I know (maybe Im wrong) NorthKorea would be the only nation who does not allow public Internet altogether, so there would be nothing to circumvent there.

North Korea has produced a government website that is available on the internet www.korea-dpr.com... It does sound like the connection is regulated but there has been some progress made.

Another good source for tools to circumvent internet censorship is the 'Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber Dissidents' by Reporters Without Boarders en.rsf.org...

Operator Overloading

When I saw the title, my first impression was that someone was proposing the use of the antique Teleprinter Exchange system to bypass the Internet.

I may have missed it, but ironically found no mention of the previous (and widespread) Telex network on the newfangled Telex website.

The idea that we may be forced to use old-fashioned teletype machines to bypass Internet censorship and surveillance, however, does have a rather quaint Matrix or Brazil flavor to it.

Meanwhile, I think this may be the Achilles Heel:

Telex doesn't require active participation from the censored websites, or from the noncensored sites that serve as the apparent connection destinations. However, it does rely on ISPs to deploy Telex stations on network paths between the censor's network and many popular Internet destinations. Widespread ISP deployment might require incentives from governments.

Anything that requires ISP deployment and potential government incentives is suspect, and anything involving governments (who are some of the worst offenders when it comes to both Internet privacy and censorship) is going to be prone to hijacking and subversion.

As it is, we can assume that some percentage of "free proxies" out there are either monitored or outright owned by government agencies, who gain the benefit of attracting a self-selected portion of the population who feel the need to use proxies.

While this is an interesting idea and may bear fruit, I am somewhat skeptical in light of the kinds of resources that can be brought to bear against such technology.

Still, it's always worth trying.

This is a step in the right direction...

The joke is the real 'terrorists' don't use social media, internet, or mobile phones.

And the govt introducing 'added security' on the internet for our 'protection'
will mean more activists will abandon these communication methods
and return to good old 'word of mouth', posters, dead drops, etc.