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."

Comments

Good thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

China and Iran don't read slashdot.

Right...

[Leonard Fedorov]

So the obvious way to maintain such secrecy is have it posted to slashdot.
Brilliant...

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

"D1gital_Prob3 excerpts from a Reuters story that says "

Yes, because if Slashdot didn't pick it up no one would have ever seen it on that Reuters thingy.

Re:Right...

[gclef]

Well, they presented it just a couple weeks ago at DefCon, so apparently their right hand isn't quite on speaking terms with their left hand. There were some...pointed questions from the DefCon crowd, though, which they didn't have good answers for. One big concern for me, which I didn't see them address well: how do you bootstrap this? (Ie, why not just block downloads of the application itself, or arrest everyone who does download it?)

More uses...

[Asmodai]

I am sure our Australian friends can make good use of this too in the near future...

Dear US Government

[netsharc]

this looks like an interesting and useful technology for us, can we please have it too?

Signed,

The US Citizens

Re:Dear US Government

[FinchWorld]

Your assuming they aren't just using to let them access US Gov approved news, as opposed to the China/Iran Gov approved news they have now.

Re:I'm confused here

[Demonantis]

Exactly the US government's interest is in not in that they get news, but the news that they will get.

Good stuff, but...

[damburger]

If this system is run by the US government, will they apply their own censorship?

http://news.cnet.com/2010-1028_3-5204405.html

the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) invented a way to let people in China and Iran easily route around censorship by using a U.S.-based service to view banned sites such as BBC News, MIT and Amnesty International. But an independent report released Monday reveals that the U.S. government also censors what Chinese and Iranian citizens can see online. Technology used by the IBB, which puts out the Voice of America broadcasts, prevents them from visiting Web addresses that include a peculiar list of verboten keywords. The list includes "ass" (which inadvertently bans usembassy.state.gov), "breast" (breastcancer.com), "hot" (hotmail.com and hotels.com), "pic" (epic.noaa.gov) and "teen" (teens.drugabuse.gov).

But it gets better...

Instead, the list unintentionally reveals its author's views of what's appropriate and inappropriate. The official naughty-keyword list displays a conservative bias that labels any Web address with "gay" in them as verboten--a decision that affects thousands of Web sites that deal with gay and lesbian issues, as well as DioceseOfGaylord.org, a Roman Catholic site. More to the point, the U.S. government could have set a positive example to the world regarding acceptance of gays and lesbians--especially in Iran, which punishes homosexuality with death.

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.

In an e-mail to the OpenNet Initiative on Monday morning, Berman defended the concept of filtering as a way to preserve bandwidth. "Since the U.S. taxpayers are financing this program...there are legitimate limits that may be imposed," his message said. "These limits are hardly restrictive in finding any and all human rights, pro-democracy, dissident and other sites, as well as intellectual, religious, governmental and commercial sites. The porn filtering is a trade-off we feel is a proper balance and that, as noted in your Web release, frees up bandwidth for other uses and users."

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!

Unintended consequences

[petes_PoV]

How will this NOT lead to governments banning email from foreign countries

(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.

Symmetry ?

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ?

Re:This can help others as well

[RobotRunAmok]

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.

all these comments

[circletimessquare]

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

Re:I'm confused here

[Mister Whirly]

Yes, free speech does sometimes mean you have to put up with people acting like douches. Freedom of speech is a double edged sword - you have to make all speech free, even if it is vile, disgusting, ignorant speech - because odds are someone else thinks what you say is vile, disgusting and ignorant. Supporting "Free Speech Zones" means you also support "Restricted Speech Zones" which should not exist in the US. (With the obvious exceptions of the shouting "fire" in the theater, yelling "bomb" at the airport, etc.) But no political speech should ever be silenced.