The Internet Censorship Debate

As with most things are life, there are always positive and negatives. This is especially the case with the net, the internet censorship debate has many different views.

It is inarguable that the internet has changed the world. It has made the way we research easier; we have the wonders of the world at our finger tips; delight and desires realised at the touch of a button and it has revolutionised the way we shop and keep in touch with one another. This is especially helpful for those in remote places who long to keep connected to the rest of the world.

But there are negatives to the World Wide Web. It is now easier to access inappropriate material and the internet is a scouring ground for criminals to prey on the young and vulnerable.

As the internet has become more mainstream and embraced by society, the powers that be have censored the internet. All countries have some form of censorship imposed upon them; some may be rather lax whilst others take firm control over what can be viewed over the World Wide Web.

No one is disputing that the internet can be a dangerous place full of uncertainties. But the level of censorship that government applies can be questioned.

Within certain countries the internet is totally restricted, the government decides what can and can not be viewed. Impossible, I hear you cry! But it is true. In these countries the government control all computers that have internet connection capability. Now, this obviously is the extreme of internet censorship.

But the government will obviously always argue that censorship is for the good and the welfare of the public. Protecting the young and the vulnerable is the reason for censorship. Yet, when there are no clear definitions of what is offensive or harmful, and then the debate flares.

The reason that there is such a debate over internet safety is down to the impact that this censorship has over the basic human right of Free Speech.

Some argue that censorship of the internet limits free speech and this goes against basic human rights. This is true, however there are laws relating to Free Speech that concern speech when it id classed as harmful, offensive or insights hate.

The problem arises, however, when considering what is classed as offensive. Everyone has a different view point built up by their own beliefs and experiences. If the internet was censored due to what every person found offensive, I doubt that there would be anything left.

This is where the internet censorship debate begins to get stuck. Depending on the individual’s viewpoint depends on whether internet censorship is a positive or negative regime.

Australian Internet Censorship Laws

The internet censorship regime was implemented in relatively recent years and has been the topic of many heated debates. The Australian internet censorship regime is comprised of both law and regulation. These are implemented at both commonwealth and State and Territory level. This is because the Constitution does not have the power to issue this regime independently.

The Commonwealth part of this regime applies to the any “objectionable” material or anything that is deemed unsuitable for children. If there is anything on the internet that falls into these two categories the sites will be issued with a “Take Down” notice. This will be issued by the government regulator OFLC. They will be given a time frame in which they are to remove the content.

The State and Territorial side of this regime then tag team with the Commonwealth and can prosecute the providers or creators of the “objectionable” material. The procedures however vary from state to state and territory to territory.

The Censorship regarding the internet has raised many questions about the restrictions and the impact that these have on free speech. In relation to any other parts of the western worlds, the internet censorship laws are the most restrictive. They operate in secrecy and withhold some information about how categories are judged. This has raised more that a few eyebrows with not only activists, but also the general public.

Having it in the law that the internet is restricted, filtered and monitored, creates some issues with the people who brought this regime in.

The Australian internet censorship laws consist of two filters. One of which is mandatory and prevents any “Unwanted” material to be viewed by the general public, along with filtering any illegal material as decreed by the internet laws. These laws are comprised of: The Protection of Children Act, 1978; Civil Government Act, 1982; Sexual Offences Act, 2003; Memorandum of Understanding, 2003.

No one is questioning the filter preventing the illegal content coming through; in fact this can only be a positive thing helping to squash such internet sites. The public, however, have an issue with the “Unwanted” aspect of the legislation. This has never been defined by the Telecommunications Minister and this dictates what the filter prevents the country from seeing. However there was no survey or vote taken place as to what the general public feel is “Unwanted”.

The law is there to safe guard the vulnerable and young, and ministers argue that it has been successful in this, although there is yet to be any formal evidence of this.

Bypassing Internet Censorship

It sounds strange, I mean the need to bypass Internet censorship. I mean why should we all be treated so differently on the internet? Why are the people we trust to run our countries, governments and legal systems be allowed to control what we see, say or do on the internet.

Of course I’m not talking about the plainly illegal activities, we’d all be better off if all the countries could unite to catch and jail these people. No I’m talking about matters of opinion, freedom of speech and just plain social interaction with our fellow man. Isn’t that what the internet is about?

So is there a need to bypass internet censorship?

Well yes, I believe there is, take for example a country I spend lots of time in – Turkey. A wonderful country with warm and kind people, a place you can feel safe and where there is a tangible sense of democracy. A vast secular country, a republic created by an inspirational man called Kemal Ataturk. But Internet access is not following his secular ideals, or more to the point certain elements are using weaknesses in Turkeys Internet policies to censor content and websites.

For instance, you’ll find until recently that all of wordpress self hosted blogs have been banned and blocked in Turkey. It’s true a website which contains words and expressions from millions – all blocked because a few people disagreed with some content. Same goes for Youtube although I believe this might have changed since my last visit, Turkey had recently blocked access to the whole site.

Pretty bad, huh and turkey are rightly taking some flak from this ridiculous censorship from other democratic nations.

To be fair they are trying to change this – there is an interesting article here on some of the issues – Turkish Internet Censorship – the original article from Columbia University seems to have been removed.

The simple fact is that there are very real reasons why we should bypass internet censorship. No government has the right to block free speech and open political discussion at least if it wants to be though of as a democracy.

So if you won’t to learn how to bypass the censorship on the internet, please keep reading and I’ll explain some issues and methods where you can browse the internet freely.

Blocked Websites Everywhere you Surf

You might not believe it but censorship is rife on the internet. I’m not talking about illegal and criminal stuff either. The social sites like wordpress, youtube, facebook and any where else that people can speak their mind and voice their opinions. Of course if you live in a country who likes to control how people think, then they will always have a problem with sites like these.

You might be surprised about how many web sites have been blocked across the world – check out the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship. It’s definitely gathering pace as the internet becomes the medium of choice for citizens all over the world.

It’s kinda sad that we can’t even be treated equally online, where as most democratic countries allow pretty much unrestricted access to the internet apart from obviously criminal sites when they can block them. In places like China, Thailand, Burma and the like you’ll have thousands of websites blocked. No facebook, youtube for those guys, increasingly the countries are taking charge of their ISPs and running themselves, which makes bypassing their restrictions even more difficult. Sure you can use proxies, but the open, free ones soon get blocked anyway and obviously have their own security difficulties. (as many of them are run by individuals and organisations with their own agendas!)

How to keep your Internet Surfing Privacy

Everyone’s getting more concerned with internet privacy and with good reason. A large part of our lives is conducted online, we shop, bank, socialise even date on line in some cases. All that involves information, personal information being transmitted online.

So what’s involved in keeping your internet surfing privacy in tact ? We transmit so much personal information across the internet that it is not surprising that online theft is growing at an alarming rate. The simple fact is that the internets success has been built on a very simple protocol called HTTP (Hyper Text Transport Protocol) which is fast, efficient but unfortunately transmits everything into clear text. Anyone who intercepts this data can pick up an awful lot of information about each and everyone of us.

So how do I get some Internet surfing privacy?

Well there’s a few key areas but these are the most important.

Information Stored on your PC
Your browsing is tracked and monitored and personalised by a long collection of techniques of which the most common are cookies. These little text files are stored on your computer to record account details, preferences and personal details. To be fair they are used primarily to improve your browsing experiences mostly but they still represent an extensive record of your browsing. Fortunately if you are concerned with Internet surfing privacy you can easily delete these records. Most browsers allow you ‘delete browsing history’ which will delete all the cookies, temporary internet files and images stored on your PC. Google Chrome even has an incognito mode which does this automatically.

Hiding your IP address
Every web site you visit has logs, and they will record your IP address in these logs. Everything you do, download andlook at is recorded in these logs which can be tracked down to a specific computer via the IP address. This is also quite easy to fix and it requires using an anonymous proxy server. This server sits in between the web site you visit and hides your IP address so that it canot be recorded. There are anonymous proxy servers all over the internet but be careful, a large proportion of them are hacked virus infested servers which actually steal your information anyway. These are much, much worse than just getting your IP address logged in a web server,never use an anonymous proxy server that you don’t know about as it will be the worse move possible for your internet surfing privacy.

Encrypting your Web Browsing

The most important in my opinion for real privacy in your surfing. All your browsing is conducted in clear text as mentioned above, in fact the most detailed and comprehensive list of all your online activities exists in your ISP. This is why governments across Europe and the world ensure that they have access to these logs and ISPs are legally bound to store them for up to two years. However if you encrypt your connection then these and all other logs of your browsing are unreadable. How do you achieve this? Well there are two main methods using an encrypted SSH tunnel or an SSL Tunnel. This creates an encrypted session which can protect your surfing privacy completely.

This is just a starter but probably the most important thing is to be aware, think of the web sites you are visiting, realise that you could be monitored or intercepted. Be very wary of entering any personal details onto any suspect sites sites. Here’s a useful video about hiding your location (IP address)

The Technology Lag of Internet Censors

It’s quite reassuring in some ways that the technology that those who wish to censor and filter access the internet have at their disposal is often someway behind. Wiretappers, content filters are far from cutting edge but nevertheless they are unfortunately getting much more sophisticated.

If any one has ever worked with or worse had to configure these content filtering devices, you’ll realise the huge amount of work that is involved even maintaining them. The false positives and perpetual complaints you get when even a minimal level of filtering is applied is extremely surprising. Sure you can block words or URLs or patterns but you’ll always end up blocking more than you intended.

Take for example using DNS modifications to restrict access to banned web pages, most of the Scandinavian countries do this routinely. But it’s a pretty hopeless way of restricting content in my opinion. Firstly all you have to do is point your client at a different DNS server and you’ve bypassed it, secondly reason is that if you use the DNS method to say block a bad page on Youtube that you don’t like, you’ll have also blocked the entire domain Youtube!

But my funniest internet censoring attempt has to go to the Republic of Yemen, they’ve used a pretty decent content filter called Websense, they have control of the two ISPs so they should be able to control pretty much everything. Yemen of course seeks to block loads of stuff but fortunately they’ve done it rather badly. You see they didn’t buy enough licenses for Websense, in fact no where near enough. So if you’re unlucky you’ll be subject to a backward, restrictive internet policy but when enough Yemen users are online you’ll get unrestricted access as when the user amount is exceeded then no filtering happens.

You have to smile 🙂

Filtering

So is there a need to bypass internet censorship?