Slashdot Mirror
US Tests System To Evade Foreign Web Censorship
D1gital_Prob3 excerpts from a Reuters story that says "The US government is covertly testing technology in China and Iran that lets residents break through screens set up by their governments to limit access to news on the Internet. The 'feed over email' (FOE) system delivers news, podcasts and data via technology that evades web-screening protocols of restrictive regimes, said Ken Berman, head of IT at the US government's Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is testing the system. The news feeds are sent through email accounts including those operated by Google, Microsoft's Hotmail, and Yahoo. 'We have people testing it in China and Iran,' said Berman, whose agency runs Voice of America. He provided few details on the new system, which is in the early stages of testing. He said some secrecy was important to avoid detection by the two governments."
China and Iran don't read slashdot.
So the obvious way to maintain such secrecy is have it posted to slashdot.
Brilliant...
You've invented Listserv.
I am sure our Australian friends can make good use of this too in the near future...
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
this looks like an interesting and useful technology for us, can we please have it too?
Signed,
The US Citizens
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
US companies (OK not the government, but the government didn't exactly frown at them) help setup these filters for foreign countries. The US government itself sets up 'free speech zones' and practices increasing amounts of censorship within the US... and I'm to believe that they want to genuinely promote free speech outside the US?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Not covert any more.
...in wanting censorship. Otherwise, why would another government be interested in evading it?
Will the government be making sure ads are also escaping censorship or will they be paying for the content they're sneaking in? If the ads are going to be left in, will they be made for the Chinese population? If it's stuff it owns, like the Stars and Stripes or Voice of America, will they get as many views?
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Didn't RMS claim somewhere that the way he browses the web is sending an e-mail to some machine, which then grabs the content, and e-mails it back to him?
If this system is run by the US government, will they apply their own censorship?
http://news.cnet.com/2010-1028_3-5204405.html
But it gets better...
So oppressed homosexuals in Iran found themselves circumventing the Iranian government only to be thwarted by the US government. But that isn't even the best bit.
Yes, there are legitimate limits to what taxpayers should cough up for - and I think helping a foreign government keep its gay population from accessing the wider international community most definitely falls into that category!
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The U.S. government loves freedom! Just ask the beneficiaries of Operation Iraqi Freedom, they love the U.S.A. and American Freedom!
UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
F O E
It's a bit spooky that this is a project of the US gubmint.
This can help others where they can not see the content from the US. Hulu and others come to mind. Oh right, it isn't censorship if it isn't done by the government.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Finally our government is helping others dis-empowered by their own government, and allowing them to be able to bypass any sort of government imposed oppression on the people. Although this could be considered treason if you twist it one way, say...if it was done in the US, and the oppressed were the ones being held for terrorism, but you know what i mean!
I knew someone that could not use their computers to chat (msn, skype) with their wife back in Syria, and the long distance was through the roof. I told him not only about Tor, but also that these were not the only chat apps, and that I could provide something
that was not know to anyone to be able to block it, running on port 80.
Sure enough, he is now using this program, and has no long distance, and able to lead encrypted conversations without fear of being
snooped on.
FOE is your acronym? couldn't they have called the system SPECTRE or ENEMY? (Special Propaganda Emulsifying Communication Targetting Regime Email or Email Normalizing Exchange of Missives Y'know)
someone fire the acronym guy please. learn public relations 101: its not assassination, its neutralization. its not violent overthrow, its regime change. its not obamacare, its euthanize the downs syndrome and the elderly. geez, this stuff should be easy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
*Brick smack to the head*
okok... but seriously. It's a good idea, but who put this on slashdot? I'm going to guess that at least 1 chinese censorship officer reads stuff on this website.
FTFS:
He said some secrecy was important to avoid detection by the two governments.
good job upholding that secrecy.
For a real success, they should be runnable for all email accounts, not only those using Gmail, etc. The reason is that China or Iran may simply block those providers (and it's true that China has blocked several services of Google). Also, encryption is needed, as China now filters all the traffic, including SMTP, POP3, IMAP. Moreover, it should be quite easy for the end users.
Hey, fucking bastards are the best kind. Who wants a non-fucking bastard?
First they test their filtering proxy with the Chinese and Iranians. Once the beginning problems are ironed out, they roll it out to Australia and the UK, and soon after in the US itself. Of course on a "voluntary" basis first, carefully registering those who do not volunteer...
(That's foreign to them)
All this will achieve is even greater restrictions, until ultimately countries' censors will be operating entirely autonomous, independent, local versions of what was once referred to as The World Wide Web and just so that they can put their version of the facts in front of a small minority of people in other countries who might just care.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Disclaimer: I'm not a US citizen (and my English is terrible).
So the US govt is providing ways for foreign citizens to access content that is considered illegal in their countries...
What would be the US govt reaction if some other country provides a way for US citizens to access content that is illegal in the US ?
Well... U.S. all against censorship but still censoring some shit like Pandora and Hulu... Very Clever!
I can't see this being very popular. If people care enough to sort out an external news source to email them, then they care enough to set up a proxy or VPN. Why settle for someone else's choice of news to be mailed to you when you can go and get your own?
The issue is not whether the censors can be evaded, it's the cost/benefit of bothering. Most people don't care enough to try.
to get news in such a way that the FBI does not know about it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In the meantime, everyone in those countries will continue to use Tor, I2P, and hacked proxy servers.
Ohhh. I hope we're sending them links to great, unbiased American news sources like CNN and Fox News. Those folks will be enlightened in no time!
Just because it is announced does not mean that they know where or for what to look. There are LOADS of US secrets announced and right out in the open. BUT because it is wrapped in half truths, it is not seen for what it is.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Isn't it ironic that western governments are developing systems to circumvent Internet censorship, while at the same time deploying censorship infrastructure and laws?
There's probably a good joke somewhere in there.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm hungry for spekkoek now.
Wish I had mod points today...
Sounds like a Usenet to email gateway to me!
Muahahhaha!
Best Slashdot Co
if they ever enter the US. Otherwise the US Gov just complains.
Best Slashdot Co
Why is the IBB intentionally trying to circumvent other countries laws? I'm all for net neutrality, but I understand that other countries have their own cultures and their own political spheres that is complex and not easy for us to understand. We can't even understand half the things our own government does. However, when was it policy to help citizens of other countries to break their own laws? What's the point of this other than to infuriate foreign governments? Amusement? And lastly, if it is our policy to infuriate foreign governments and prod them with a 4000 mile stick. We should send "semi-collector grade" samurai swords to Britain. I heard their parliament is so afraid of ninjas they banned samurai swords in an effort to prevent a ninja-takeover of London.
TFA did not mention who provided the technology. Wouldn't it be a hoot and a half, if it was Siemens Nokia Networks?
They're the folks that provided Iran with the filtering technology in the first place.
That would be an excellent double-dipping business strategy: sell one side the stuff to close off the net; sell the other side stuff to open it up again.
Repeat until your pockets are full.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Hell Yeah! It should always be up to the user to censor themselves... not some organization with an agenda (whatever that may be)
Aren't some U.S. authorities taking action against online gambling sites?
So we have a fairly short list of things that can get you in trouble in the U.S. - kiddie porn can get you prosecuted, gambling can result in forfeitures, and downloading copyrighted material can get you sued. Only the first two are directly caused by government action; in the last case, the government is merely complicit.
Can anybody think of any more?
I'd say we have it pretty good in the U.S. It could be better, though.
Where I work had, in the early days of the web, a policy that only the chosen few could journey via http outside our firewall. We could get email from anywhere, though.
I used to make much use of email-to-web servers. You sent an email to a particular address. You included the URL you wanted on the subject line. The receiving server would fetch the web page and email it back to you. I don't remember the server that I used the most but I do remember that it was in the .jp domain.
When the censorship in Iran popped up, I went looking for those servers. They don't seem to exist anymore.
Maybe they're no big loss. They're really only useful for static html or really simple pages, anyway. But I can't help think that they might have some limited utility in routing around censorship, even today.
basically doing nothing but accusing the usa of hypocrisy
folks, the most radical most liberal most openminded society you could ever imagine will have some sort of censorship of SOMETHING. pedophilia, for example
at that point, would it be valid to compare such a hypothetical state to a country that punishes people harshly merely for expressing a political opinion?
according to some of you, it is
the usa is imperfect. the usa does evil in the world. let me repeat: the usa is imperfect. the usa does evil in the world. have i sufficiently innoculated myself yet in some of your minds of being a blind ultranationalist american yet? can i still criticize you without getting that ridiculous charge? then good, here goes: to compare what the usa censors with what iran and china censors is ignorance on your part
as an example: plenty of you in the usa, critical of the usa, are freely posting a political attitude critical of the usa from within the usa, on american servers. you do realize that in some countries like gee, i dunno, china and iran maybe? that that gets monitored, and if it bothers someone, you get punished, perhaps harshly if you get indignant? can you imagine that in the usa? of course not, that's why you freely post. in china or iran, none of you would be bravely fighting for the assumed status quo of freedom implicit in your comments that you see as ideal, no, you'd be meekly bowed in fear, and would say nothing critical of the government. because you don't speak from nobility, you speak from a position of crass jackass ignorance
here is an objective fact: your freedom of expression in the usa is vastly, by orders of magnitude, superior to that in china and iran. that is an OBJECTIVE FACT. what does that fact mean to you? do you give it any value? are you thankful for it any way? or do you find that the usa is imperfect in its policies, therefore, i will mouth off about the usa being the equivalent of the worst censoring authoritarian governments on the globe. does that sound intellectually honest to you?
but that's ok by me, that's what freedom of expression leads to: lots of loud dumb idiots mouthing off. its a small price to pay to live in a free society that i cherish, and i accept all of your ignorance, even though i feel compelled to smack your ignorance down
here's a magic word for you to consider next time: "scale". the scale and reach of the censorship involved. what does that concept mean to you? here's an example question question ot consider the concept of "scale" in relation to censorship: does censorship of pedophilia have the same impact on society, the same meaning, as censorship of political opinion?
ruminate on the concept. then open your mouth
you may now accuse me of being a dick cheney cock sucking neocon. since obviously, if i criticize your words, i must be the worst kind of american ultranationalist, right? not just some neutral guy asking for a little intellectual honesty on your part, right?
zzz
so predictable and ignorant. god i hope the lot of you are 13 years old. its the only way your ignorance is excusable
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
F.O.E. F.O.E. !
What about abortion?
A medical procedure. That would the test of just how bias they are.
Living in Chile
Don't take your mouth too full - I think the current American government is way too bright to actively engage in that kind of nonsense. The Voice of America may be a broadcaster paid for by American public funds, but that hardly makes it "the government".
Another thing is - what is so remarkable about this? Is even as advanced as wrapping html packages in another protocol? The article is sparse on technical detail, and for all I know, it could be nothing more than sending HTML emails or attaching mp3 files. To me this looks more like yet another annoying, but trivial stunt to attract a bit of attention to a non-issue.
Just like they did with allofmp3.com.
Well, at least we finally know what those "hikers" who got "lost" near the Iranian border were really doing.
'"We have people testing it in China and Iran," said Berman, whose agency runs Voice of America.'
VoM is a propaganda service, always has been. And I mean that in the strict technical sense, not with any negative connotation. It is their job to present information that can be received in countries elsewhere, which the US wants believed.
In this case, they want the residents of those countries to believe (ie "know") it is possible to have contact with information from outside that their own government doesn't want them to see. True or not, it encourages growth of anti-whatever sentiment and positions the US as a helpful ally. It doesn't have to exist because those people who fail to find it will assume it's something their government successfully blocked, but since the news of it didn't get blocked, they will believe it exists and will continue to search for anything that can help them.
Also, the governments this is intended for know it may not exist, or may even know it doesn't exist, but as long as their people might believe it does, they have to take steps to counter it. Taking those steps serves as evidence to those citizens this was intended for that it is real, and reinforces their belief.
TFA was not a news article. It was a normally fully-automatic information warfare weapon being fired in single-shot mode, from right between your legs, just like Christian Slater in "Broken Arrow". Where else can such an obvious lie be given credence and be likely to directly or indirectly reach those people it's intended for? Its content makes it likely to get posted to effective places such as here, and reposted to others like it, as well as forwarded from them to places that focus on these 'censorship' issues. Having "come from" here and places like it gives it street cred.
It is also a very effective piece, in that any information regarding its nature and as info-bullet can also be seen, and it will remain effective. All this can be said and it can *still* work. Between the pro--and-con arguments that appear tending to average each other out to zero by both discrediting the other, and the need for the intended recipients to believe in it and things like it, it will work. A well done piece like this is like saying to someone "I'm going to blow your head off" and having them duck, even though they see you're only pointing your finger at them. Because, hey, the finger might be loaded.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
WOW - This just jumps out to me as our government sponsering a hack of another government's system. Now what would our government do if a massive hack like this was directed at us. Oh, and isn't china working on a missle delivery system - lets go mess around with them some more and see what happens.
I prefer non-fucking bastards. That way they get weeded out of the gene pool.
We have already lost our rights to access the Internet freely. If you Americans implement this system, we would lost our email soon... -a PRC citizen
I don't understand how you can be for free speech and then in the same breath, recommend that one would need a "permit" to assemble, regardless of the reason. Have you ever read the bill of rights? Hint: check out the first one. There is no requirement to reimburse the state or any other agency for "services used". That excuse is a simpletons attempt to control what is happening. It gives them the excuse they need to say No - and that's just what it is...an excuse.
You are advocating, in some instances, to request a permit from the very people you are protesting against. Does that not seem contradictory to you?
... to show them how to use technology to communicate. They can even borrow our hardware.
They can test as much as they like, Embassy communications go through satellites anyway.
Once I heard that the CIA rented an office across from the Foreign Office in Beijing to use Laser surveillance on the windows, but they already knew that so they put some sh*t Britney spears music on just to piss them off
and you tell me if it is aggressive or wrong-headed:
if a government is democratically elected by the people, i respect it
if it is not, i do not respect it
the only legitimate and valid point of view is that of the people, of any country. therefore, if a government maintains power through nondemocratic means, the people's will power has not been consulted. therefore, it is illegitimate. as a simple consequence that those governments don't respect the will of their own people. so why should that government be respected by anyone else?
is there any morally or intellectually coherent reason to respect nondemocratic governments according to a simple obvious logical deduction from the simple humanist concern for basic human dignity. respect for simple human dignity invariably demands, out of simple logical deduction, that the people's will be consulted in the construction of the government that lords over it
i do not respect the government of saudi arabia, myanmar/ burma, china, cuba, etc. if i react negatively to a policy of say, the cuban government, the typical propagandistic spin woudl be that i do not respect the cuban people. which is absurd. because it is out of the desire to respect the cuban people that i do not respect a regime which rules over them by dictat, rather than by consulting with and synchronizing with the will of the cuban people, via simple democratic efforts
meanwhile, if a government, like zimbabwe, starts making concrete steps towards democracy away from authoritarianism, like it recently did, i begin to warily respect it again
is there anything wrong with my attitude? does it make me a neoimperialist or a neocolonialist or arrogant westerner? why? aren't those merely propagandistic terms used by dictatorial regimes in order to deflect criticism? how is it logically possible to respect a people, and the government that lords over them nondemocratically, at the same time?isn't that logically incompatible?
how is it logically possible to respect the people of china, and the government of china, at the same time? when these are two different entities? they are obviously two different entities because the agenda of the chinese government is not the same as the agenda of the chinese people. the only way for those agendas to be the same, out of simple logical deduction, is if the chinese people are CONSULTED. the only way to do that is a DEMOCRATIC VOTE. this does not happen. therefore the chinese government is not valid
only in a democracy are the people, and its government, the same entity. if a government is not democratic, its agenda inevitably strays over time from the agenda of the people it lords over. therefore, it is illegitimate, out of simple logical consequence that the most valid humanistic desire is to respect simple human dignity. the chinese government doesn't respect the simple human dignity of its own people, because it doesn't believe the chinese people deserve a voice in their own government. therefore, i disrespect the chinese government, on simple logic and principle, IN THE NAME OF the chinese people
therefore it is perfectly valid to act against the chinese government, not as a matter of imperialism or colonialism, but as a matter of respect for the dignity of the chinese people themselves, however propagandized to the the contrary: that actions against their (illegitimate) government are actions against them, when it is actually in their name actions against their (nondemocratic) government is taken. how can a people defend a government which doesn't respect them unless they are propagandized fools?
what is wrong with this attitude of mine? why is this arrogance, instead of simple logic and reason?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You are advocating, in some instances, to request a permit from the very people you are protesting against. Does that not seem contradictory to you?
So long as the government cannot refuse a permit so long as safety is taken care of, I see no conflict. It's exactly the same as shouting fire in a public theater. Your rights end when they infringe on someone else's, and this includes your right to free speech. If the Klan, or the Nazis, or the G8 protesters want to march down 5th avenue in Manhattan, they should be able to - but they have to pay for the police to ensure public safety. They have to pay for toilets to ensure sanitation. I'm sorry, but you don't get to transform my city into a shit-soaked riot zone just because you have a right to free speech.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Free speech does not extend your right to create unsafe situations or impede the rights of others. It is not logical to allow a protest to cause a threat to the lives of others because you are blocking thoroughfares or preventing access to public buildings or some other situation where the rights of others are potentially threatened.
You are right, restrictions like permits can be abused, but there is nothing immoral or unethical by default about requiring them for certain situations. The government has the duty to keep free exercise of rights from causing harm to others, and a permit system is not a bad compromise, if the permit granting authority is fair and they ensure that the assembly can exercise their free speech rights in some way that will maintain the balance.
My friend,
You are right to criticize many of our pessimistic views, but I think you are neglecting to reflect on the integrated nature of censorship. Look at existing systems we have available and how they have been misused, and now we shouldn't be critical of giving them a new toy because it has been ideologically white washed into something easily digested?
Even if we are to trust our government, there are so many factions and so much bureaucracy that many times the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. Who is to say that this technology will not be misused in the future? Why wait for the bud to blossom when you can pull it up from the roots?
Politicians are supposed to be the tools of the people, to give the government too much control is to offset the balance of power set aside for each party within the social contract and be counter productive to democracy and civil rights. What is more American than that?
with other freedoms
this is simply a logical consequence of free choice, not any aspect of any government. in complete anarchy, no government at all, your freedoms are constantly limited and put in jeopardy by the actions of others. much of what people call government removing citizen's freedoms is actually governments deciding between the validity of two types of freedoms that exist in natural tension
for example, your freedom to sleep, my freedom to blast the stereo at 3 am
your freedom to live, my freedom to drive 100 mph
here's another one: a child's freedom not to be abused, a pedophile's freedom to look at naked children
the open trading of pictures of naked children creates a market of consumption and creation. you cannot divorce the viewing of pictures of naked children from someone somewhere putting a child in sexual poses to create those pictures. those who demand such pictures are culpable for their creation by creating a market for the pictures to exist
therefore, the most liberal, most open minded, most freedom-obsessed society imaginable will still have to decide on rules about the tension between freedoms, and decide upon a policy. such that even the most censorship phobic society will come down in favor of censorship, in some small scenarios, in the name of maximizing the freedom of its citizens
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In communist China, TV brainwash y...
Wait, there's something wrong. Aren't the Chinese supposed to be the experts in brainwashing and water-based torture (dripping as seen on Mythbusters, not waterboarding), not the US?
Or is this just me being unable to distinguish between the pigs and the humans?
First, morphing into a shit-soaked riot zone would be a vast improvement for New York City....
(I kid, I kid. I couldn't resist.)
But more seriously, what makes you think there is a "we" to pay for toilets, police, or whatever else you think is necessary. What if it's just a bunch of people who want change? Look around the world. It used to happen all the time. Who paid for the orange revolution over in Ukraine?
Nobody, that's who. But keep following those rules and filing for permits...
In related news, Americans are advised to travel with the Canadian flag sewn on their backpacks.
First, morphing into a shit-soaked riot zone would be a vast improvement for New York City....
(I kid, I kid. I couldn't resist.)
I knew that was hanging out there when I wrote it :)
But more seriously, what makes you think there is a "we" to pay for toilets, police, or whatever else you think is necessary. What if it's just a bunch of people who want change?
This is a very different thing than what "free speech zones" are built to address. I am very much in favor of the police standing down if a large fraction of the populace suddenly enters the streets in peaceful protest. This is not the case in these political conventions. People organize the resistance and bus people in from the outside. They invade the host city, and some of them use tactics meant to elicit a violent response, or designed to shut down city services. It is not a spontaneous protest like the orange revolution, which was a huge portion of the population disgusted with obvious government corruption. Those people simply walked outside and joined up with other disgusted people. Very different, IMHO.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The point of TOR is to make sure that it is difficult to prove that traffic originates from you or see what you exactly want to surf. That is a bad base to build on in a country like China.
To my limited understanding, a network like Tor is highly suspectible to cancer cells. China plants 10 000 of them and using Tor becomes a lot more risky. In addition, it's not that difficult to see that somebody is using Tor in some form. The officials there can see "That person uses Tor... Okay, let's search his house and computer. If we find anything, let's throw him to jail. If we don't but don't trust him, still throw him to jail. If we don't find anything and trust that he was just an innocent proxy, let's either tell him to stop using Tor or install something to his computer and effectively make it another cancer cell..."
I think that Tor is fine when you want some basic privacy when you surf online but not meant to be the solution with oppressive government that doesn't need to prove that you are guilty to punish you and has the resources to add cancer cells if they want to.
The two faced bastards are telling us, in the western world,
"Think of the children! Government MUST be able to censor your (fill in the blank with P2P, email, browser, ISP, or whatever) We MUST be able to locate terrorists and kiddy porn freaks!"
Out of the other face, we get,
"Think of the oppressed! We HAVE to help the little people break down the firewalls and the censors!"
Why not be honest? "Our evil empire has to beat their evil empire, because that's what evil empires do!"
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The US government also supports internetfreedom.org. It has six different systems for evading net censors, and this year it has made possible as many as 120 million page views a day.
this was sorely needed. once stuff like this is out of the box, there is no stopping freedom. only the people, themselves, can choose what happens and what not.
Read radical news here
Five years ago when my daughter was in 7th grade, the school system (USA) blocked all access to gmail accounts, wanting to force the students to use the official school email package. It took less than a week for the knowledge to get around school that you could go to yahoo, search for google, and then open your gmail up inside a yahoo child window.
A system for delivering a wide variety of data discreetly over SMTP based email systems?
You mean, UUENCODE?