On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 02:30:19PM -0500, technews wrote: > Read the TechNews Online at: http://technews.acm.org > > > "A Sneak Peak at a Fractured Web" > Wired News (11/13/06); Anderson, Mark > > The OpenNet Initiative is putting together an unprecedented report on > government censorship of the Internet, with the help of about 50 cyber law, > free speech, and network specialists from nations where censorship is known > to occur. Transparency of censorship practices vary: from Saudi Arabia > where blocked sites are listed and users are urged to recommend sites for > censorship; to countries such as Tunisia where the government uses "Page > not found" messages made to look "exactly like the Internet Explorer 404 > page" to hide their censorship practices, says Elijah Zarwan, an ONI > consultant from Cairo. Some government utilize denial of service (DoS) > attacks, carried out by a third party, that allow them "some plausible > deniability," says Nart Villeneuve of the University of Toronto's Citizen > Lab. While DoS attacks primarily target opposition party sites, commercial > motives also exist for censorship: the United Arab Emirates grants a > monopoly to its telecommunications provider, therefore the government > blocks VoIP citing legal reasons. Attempts to prevent, or get around, > censorship include Web applications and browsers that hide a user's IP > address and emails sent from ever-changing addresses. While China was the > first nation to censor Internet material, many dictatorships have followed > its lead in the past five years, says Reporters Without Borders' Julien > Pain, who praises the ONI project. However, the project has its risks: > even project manager Rob Faris recognizes the danger that the project will > provide valuable information that enhances governments ability to censor > content, such as revealing Web sites that governments would want to block > but had not known about. > http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,72104-0.html >
Anybody care to hazard a guess about how many of these censorship tools are open-source free software? -- hendrik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
