Subject: Censorship and control of the Internet

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:22:10 -0400

>From time to time, people in this forum make statements of the form
'we cannot do X because it would enable censorship' and go on to
describe a use case that really has no connection to how the Internet
is used against repressive regimes.

I would just observe that we currently have a vast experiment going on
that is showing exactly how the Internet is used against repressive
regimes. At this point the visible hero is Twitter and the unsung hero
is Tor. There are also ISPs around the globe who are helpfully
blocking DDoS bots which are being run by well intentioned idiots who
think that taking out the Iranian ministry of information is worth
trashing the bandwidth for the resistance.

This is not the first revolution to be driven by a new media, the
Leipzig demonstrations were driven by fax and photocopier. The '79
Iranian revolution by compact cassette tape. It is however, the first
time that mass communication technologies explicitly intended for
revolutionary purposes have been critical.

The basic information cycle is that information is collected inside
Iran, funneled to the outside through the Internet and then
re-injected into Iran via satellite TV. While satellite TV is of
course illegal, the further people are from centers of population, the
easier it is to hide a dish. In the population centers people can see
the demonstrations first hand.

In the short term what people are asking for is more Tor entry nodes
and for help against the DDoS attacks trashing the bandwidth.

But it is also clear that we should be thinking about improved tools
for use in the longer term, possibly not even Internet connected tools
at all. The Cuban resistance uses USB sticks heavily. Lots of people
have been thinking about long latency Internet, this is an
application.

But here we have a perfect laboratory for looking at the real
requirements and use cases. Twitter channels are overloaded with
retweets of irrelevant material, there is no contextual memory like
there is in wikipedia. There is a huge problem with Iranian government
agents, supporters and spammers injecting noise into the channel.

We need better means of protecting the identity of the Iranian tweeters.

And whatever comes out of those observations may be useful in other
contexts. Imagine if we could use the same type of social media
effectively in a situation like Katrina. There were plenty of people
who knew about army and airforce resources that were not being used
because the President was incompetent and had not given the order to
override Rumsfeld.

-- 
New Website: http://hallambaker.com/
View Quantum of Stupid podcasts, Tuesday and Thursday each week,
http://quantumofstupid.com/

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:47:27 -0500

> is used against repressive regimes.

At the same time, we have the "Green Dam" experiment launching in China:

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE55L0YD20090622

However, we are still letting people with the backing of the Chinese 
government participate in the development and oversight of Internet 
protocols. While I wish to cast no aspersions against any particular 
contributor who just happens to be from the nation in question, there's 
definitely a potential conflict of interest. It's hard to say "no" when 
your government demands support. The history of US telcos assisting with 
illegal interception (and no, the US government can't retroactively 
legalize it with an ex-post-facto law no matter what the court says) 
should prove this assertion.

While other governments have their own forms of Internet oppression, 
probably their own technical agendae, and may well subsidize IETF 
participants towards questionable ends, Green Dam is a particularly 
horrifying spectacle. It therefore serves as a reference example for 
bringing this particular conflict of interest up for examination.

Green Dam also serves as a reminder: even end-to-end security isn't good 
enough when the attacker can mandate an integrity compromize in at least 
one end.

Further, I worry that with the economic decline, only people backed by 
the financial reserves of oppressive governments will be able to 
participate in the IETF at the level required for non-com, IESG, etc. It 
would be a great disappointment to cede control of the Internet to the 
world's tyrants just because they're the only ones who can be bothered 
to show up at meetings.

Perhaps there is a principle here that should be coded into noncom 
procedures, althoug I'm not sure how to state it explicitly.

--
Dean Willis