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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?
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?
Yup, and it's quite an old idea. There used to be an app for the Psion Series 3 that did this too. The machine didn't have a native web browser, but if you bought the modem it came with a mail client, and there was a service you could use to get web pages as plain text (or possibly RTF). Back then, web pages didn't have frames or stylesheets and only had a few tags for text markup and occasionally images (but most people browsed with images turned off by default, because they took too long to load) so you didn't lose much.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
(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 ?
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!
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.
Hulu has not been granted the license to distribute some content beyond the U.S. In some cases those distribution rights have been given to other entities, in other cases the rights may have been more expensive than Hulu wanted to pay, given the limitations of global-play ad sales.. In all cases, it was a business decision. Information may "want to be free," but network television does not. To even imply "censorship" is just ignorant.
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
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.
He did indeed claim this
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
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. !
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.
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