'Hactavists' Get $3M for Internet Monitoring

raceface writes "The CBC is reporting that a group from the University of Toronto know as the Citizen Lab has received a $3 million grant. They intend to use the grant money to monitor and determine who is blocking information access on the internet." The grant, given to an international project that fights censorship, was given to the group by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a Chicago-based institution.

Comments

Good for them...

[Mad_Rain]

I think this is a great project to keep the information flowing to censored places in the world, but I suppose the problem I've got picturing this set-up is two-fold.

First, how do you start receiving "blocked" information if the government blocks you first (which they're sure to do, now that you've just announced a $3M grant to fight censorship)?

Second, how do you know the information is going to the right people (activists and such, rather than just "the man")?

And on a third note - How much of this organization will be concerned with the truthfulness, usefulness, or goodness of the information being sent? It's one thing to be able to see the Tienamin Square results unfiltered by Google, it'd be another thing to be spending a $3M grant on ways to sneak porn (or illegal stuff) past the government proxies.

Re:Good for them...

[meringuoid]

And on a third note - How much of this organization will be concerned with the truthfulness, usefulness, or goodness of the information being sent? It's one thing to be able to see the Tienamin Square results unfiltered by Google, it'd be another thing to be spending a $3M grant on ways to sneak porn (or illegal stuff) past the government proxies.

No it isn't. It's exactly the same. Information on what happened in Tiananment Square is 'illegal stuff' in China.

Free speech is free speech, whether it's political protest or Lady Chatterley's Lover. If we're setting up to monitor censorship, we should not differentiate here, lest we become censors ourselves.

Just think about this for a moment...

[MarkChovain]

Last month, Google said it would adhere to Beijing's censorship policies and limit certain search results in China to get broader access to the large market.

Deibert and his team help dissidents access banned information, "assisting them in ways to get around censorship and surveillance, developing tools that will help them protect their privacy online and get around censorship," he said.

At to the first paragraph, it's been mentioned by a number of people here on slashdot that Google really doesn't have much choice about their decision to ban content Either they block the content that 1% of the population is interested in, or withdraw their service, which connects people with information , from everyone in China; the second option seems more evil to many of us than the first.

The second paragraph suggests that Deibert and his team want to use the funds to help people such as the people of China break the laws of their country. The Chinese government's track record seems to suggest that they have no problems holding a grudge (Falun Gong?). I know this is a somewhat controversial opinion, but would you want money donated by you being used in a way that is likely to piss off the Chinese government, given that you may want to deal with them in the future?

Now, before everyone downmods me for my "anti-free-speach" opinion here, keep in mind here that the donors may have more valuable services to provide to these people!

Finally, am I the only one who read that guy's name as Dilbert? :D

Free Speech 2.0

[SavvyPlayer]

It's only a matter of time before the Chinese government realises that free speech is no threat to a well-organized propaganda machine. The formula we've perfected in the west requires only four components:

1. Single-party rule, or dual-party rule provided there is no meaningful difference between each party.
2. Polarization of the citizenry such that members of each party are inclined to prefer gravitas-laden Spin-Alley journalism over fact-based reporting. The beauty of this is that market forces guarantee the creation of these entities at no cost to the taxpayer.
3. An efficient staff chartered with discrediting any voice that speaks out against the establishment. Again, very little money needs to be spent here -- talking points with which Spin-Alley journalists are free to clog the airwaves are simply published to the web.
4. Convenience. A comfortable citizenry is a complacent citizenry.

Item #4 will be the most difficult to implement as it requires a rich market infrastructure that China will likely not achieve for another 10 years.

Re:Free Speech 2.0

[hey!]

1. Single-party rule, or dual-party rule provided there is no meaningful difference between each party.

2. Polarization of the citizenry such that members of each party are inclined to prefer gravitas-laden Spin-Alley journalism over fact-based reporting. The beauty of this is that market forces guarantee the creation of these entities at no cost to the taxpayer.

This to some degree contradicts your first point. If there is truly no diffrence between parties, there is no need to influence the results. But we know a great deal of effort goes into influencing results.

The parties are different, but the differences bewtween them are inherently self-limiting. Elections in a two party, plurality voting system are won in the middle. The parties structure themselves on either end of a somewhat artificial spectrum, and peddle their goods to the center. Meanwhile they lay confident claim to their end of the spectrum, up to the point on the tail end of the distribution where appeasing an extreme voter limits their centrist appeal.

This tendency of the parties to try to crowd into the center of the see-saw means that people who control money have the opportunity to tip the election by putting their thumb on the scales. Furthermore, since election reform limits the amount of money in the system, money is scarce therefore dear. Money, which is artificially limited, has little pernicious effect in itself, it's the influence of money, which is unrestricted as ever. The net effect is to make buying a congressman, economically speaking, a bargain.

What is shocking about Washington is not that money buys influence, but that it buys it so cheaply. The real costs lay in coordination and bringing pressure to bear so you can convert that influence into real power.

3. An efficient staff chartered with discrediting any voice that speaks out against the establishment. Again, very little money needs to be spent here -- talking points with which Spin-Alley journalists are free to clog the airwaves are simply published to the web.

This is where you are seriously wrong. A great deal of money needs to be spent, although if you do this right, it largely swirls around in your incestuous group of cronies. To be sure, the money is nearly useless without coordination and discipline. The object is to control the very terms of the debate so that no process approaching critical thinking has a chance to arise in the public mind. But conspicuousness counts: you need a large soapbox and a megaphone that is as loud as possible. Fox News, for example, is a huge investment of capital. But it would be useless without two things, a coordinated messages, and having enough people who count beholden to you that they don't start running off and talking as if they think for themselves.

The interesting thing about the US system is the degree to which it rewards conformity. If you don't have the substantially same opinions or repeat the same kinds of language, no matter how inane, you are instantly written off by the media as not serious. In effect, in US politics, you must demonstrate a minimal willingness to engage in insincerity before you are considered credible. If you appear uncomfortable with this, you are considered phony; if you go so far as to show signs of individuality, then you risk being considered downright crazy.

It takes money to accomplish this, but the effect of well leveraged wealth and power is that anybody who stands out from the herd is immediately savaged. The last presidential contender who was unabashedly individual was Ross Perot, who was painted as a nutcase and didn't stand a ghost of a chance, but was to wealthy to ignore.

Bringing this back on track, the system as it has evolved here works very well for its masters. However, I don't think it woudl work for the Chinese Communist party. Any concentration of wealth can participate, so that party power will be diluted. Controlling wealth is going to be difficult givin their growth rate.

Re:Is Internet access the only measure of freedom?

[stinerman]

Is the press free all around the world? Do undertrials or accused enjoy fair trials everywhere? Does corporate money/advertising implicitly censor what we see in the media? Do citizens in democracies have access to all information that concerns them? Can the poor ever have equal chances to attend universities and schools?

The point of Internet access is that, by nature, access opens the door to so much information. Your local totalitarian government can censor the paper media and just about everything in their country (if the citizens let them get away with it). They can not censor the media in other countries. Of course China is trying to do this, but they still haven't gotten it all covered. Trying to completely censor anything people in a non-free country might want to search is difficult, so most often people will gain the insight that only a diverse media can bring ... hence the fixation on Internet access.

Don't forget, universal control of media.

[twitter]

You need to make sure only two or three companies have the ability to "clog the airwaves" with "official" opinion. With a single telco, you can sell your broadcast spectrum to two or three of the highest bidders which you can threaten and pit against each other. While the public debates the specious arguments you troll them with, real policy is decided by you and your friends. Everone else will then be a non mainstream crackpot easy to ignore.

If you allow a free press, true local cultures and thoughts will spring up and things are much more difficult to arrange.