All Content Related to Overblocking

Australian Goverment Releases Paper Detailing Filtering Pilot

jillian — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:38:50 -0500

Ban.This.URL, a blog documenting and examining online censorship in Australia, reports that Australia's The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) has released a paper detailing the technical specifications of Australia's proposed Internet filtering plan.

In the paper [PDF], the filtering pilot is detailed:

"To the extent possible, the aim is to test a range of different types of filtering including:
• ACMA blacklist filtering only (for a blacklist of up to 10,000 URLs); or
• ACMA blacklist filtering plus the filtering of other content using different approaches
to filtering which would, for example, include:
- Index filtering of different sized blacklists;
- Dynamic analysis filtering;
- IP versus URL filtering;
- DNS poisoning.
The Pilot seeks to test a wide range of filtering solutions and is deliberately flexible."

The paper also addresses the issue of circumvention:

It is acknowledged that filtering can be circumvented by motivated people with a
sufficient level of technical knowledge.

The Pilot will seek to test the ease with which different filtering solutions can be circumvented and the capacity of filters to detect and provide warnings on circumvention attempts.

You can download the paper here.

UK Blocks Access to Wikipedia Entry on Controversial Scorpions Album

jillian — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:39:37 -0500

On Monday, December 8, it was reported that a number of UK Internet service providers have decided to block access to a controversial Wikipedia entry showing an image of a naked girl. The ISPs acted after online watchdog the Internet Watch Foundation warned them that the image might be illegal.

The entry in question is that of German heavy metal band Scorpion's 1976 album, "Virgin Killer." The cover art of the album depicts a prepubescent girl in a provocative pose, with an image of broken glass superimposed over her genitals (the album cover can easily be found by searching in Google Images).

This isn't the first time "Virgin Killer" has come under fire. The original cover art was banned in the United States and replaced with the above image of the band. Earlier this year the same Wikipedia page was reported to have been investigated by the FBI by WorldNetDaily, a conservative U.S. news site.

While the image most certainly does depict an underage nude girl and is a potential violation of child pornography laws, there are two major questions that need be answered: 1) What is the purpose of the Wikipedia entry? and 2) Could this have been handled differently?

As for the first question, the Wikipedia entry is not meant to be provocative; in fact, the text primarily details the controversy surrounding the album and its cover and the problems that it has caused the band. The entry is, on the whole, an historical record of the album and the controversy which has dogged it for the past 32 years.

And as for the second question, I believe that yes, it could have. An unfortunate effect of the UK block is that a number of Wikipedia editors based in the UK have been unable to access the editors' pages of the site. As the photograph itself has its own URL, there seems to be no reason for the entire entry on "Virgin Killer" to have been blocked; rather, if the offending photo is indeed in violation of child pornography laws, only the photo URL itself need be blocked, or better yet, taken down by court order.

It appears that the Internet Watch Foundation itself is reconsidering its choice. According to The Guardian, the ban is being reconsidered under the IWF's appeals and corrections procedures.

If the ban is upheld, it could have serious repercussions for other web sites which host the album cover.

Australia's Slippery Slope

jillian — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:02:56 -0500

With all of the news lately regarding Australia's Internet filtering scheme, one might think Australia were the first or only country to ever filter the Internet.

Since the filter was announced in 2007, it has been widely criticized. First, Australia announced their filtering scheme, which includes blocking nearly 10,000 sites. Then an Australian youth cracked the filter. Later on, Australian ISPs were told to keep quiet about their disagreement with the scheme.

The latest news reports state that Michael Malone, head of Australian ISP iiNet, has expressed distaste with the plan, going as far as to say that his main purpose was to: "provide the Government with "hard numbers" demonstrating "how stupid it is" - specifically that the filtering system would not work, would be patently simple to bypass, would not filter peer-to-peer traffic and would significantly degrade network speeds."

Malone is not the only one speaking out against the scheme. Two weeks ago I reported that Australian activists were protesting the filters. Today I spoke with Antoun Issa, an Australian journalist, to get his take on the filter.

The first issue that activists have with the filter is its effectiveness. Issa explains: "...When there was only 2% of network degradation, it performed only to 80% accuracy. When it reached its peak of 94% accuracy of sites blocked, the network degradation was as high as 30%." Given the fact that Australia's Internet speeds are generally lower than those in the United States and Europe, Australian subscribers would be hit with significantly low Internet speeds.

The second major problem with any filtering scheme, of course, is that of overblocking. Although the non-opt-out filter in Australia intends to block only illegal materials, including hardcore pornography, Issa explains that "There's a good chance sexuality-based websites and sexual-health sites would be mistakenly overblocked, because the filtering system simply cannot distinguish between what's 'good' sex and 'bad' sex."

The third and most important issue in terms of the economy is that the filter is an enormous expense, one which is not justifiable.

Additionally, Issa warns that the filtering scheme presents a slippery slope: While intended to only block illegal sites, it could easily be expanded to include other sites, including GLBT ones. In an interview Issa conducted with Greens Senator Scott Ludlum, the Senator warned that GLBT sites are at a great risk of being included in the filter eventually.

In an e-mail to me, Issa concluded: "It's just a completely flawed proposal. Not only does it leave our freedom and civil liberties open to manipulation by interest groups, but the impacts, including cost, that it will have on our internet speed and functionality is just astronomical. What's worse is that there's no demand for it. No one knows where on earth this policy has come from! If parents want to protect their children, they can buy their own personal filtering systems which can be far more aggressive than what the government is proposing."

Image credit: Janet Hawtin
"No filtering" t-shirt available online.

Adiós Diego: Argentine judges cleanse the Internet

chris — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:46:58 -0500

By: Firuzeh Shokooh Valle and Christopher Soghoian

Since 2006, Internet users in Argentina have been blocked from searching for information about some of country's most notable individuals. Over 100 people have successfully secured temporary restraining orders that direct Google and Yahoo! Argentina to scrub the results of search queries. The list of censorship-seeking celebrities includes judges, public officials, models and actors, as well as the world-cup soccer star and national team head coach Diego Maradona.

Both Yahoo! and Google have implemented the court-order mandated filtering, although only Yahoo! has implemented complete blocking of all results for specific names. Both search engines have appealed the numerous restraining orders, and in a few cases, the firms have been fined for not sufficiently complying with some of the courts' censorship demands.

This is not the first time that a judge or government has tried to filter the Internet in an ill-considered way, an approach that is in the same stroke both disproportionately over-broad and ineffective. Recent examples of similar missteps include the blocking of scientist Richard Dawkins web site in Turkey and a US judge's order to shutter wikileaks.org.

The situation in Argentina is notable due to the fact that a search for many of the 100+ public figures on Yahoo! Argentina will result in zero results. That is, it is not a few particularly nasty or libelous results that have been removed, but all results for these celebrities, and anyone else unfortunate enough to share the same name, have been obscured from the Argentine web for those that rely on this search engine.

Try it yourself, and compare searches for Diego Maradona on Yahoo! Argentina (which blocks all results), as well as Yahoo! Mexico and Google Argentina (both of which do not block results).

In many cases, all of the search results for the public figures' names have been eliminated, while in others, only specific search results to pornographic, defamatory or copyright infringing websites have been removed. This is not just about tabloid celebrities; a central figure in this story is the judge María Servini de Cubría who has sought to block Internet content about herself that she finds personally offensive. Governments officials succeeding in limiting access to online information about themselves also sets a worrisome precedent.

All of the clients are represented a single lawyer, Martin Leguizamon Peña, who has claimed to have achieved a 80% success rate in obtaining restraining orders against Google and Yahoo!. Peña is also seeking compensation of 300,000 to 400,000 pesos ($90,000 to $120,000) from the search engines for each of his clients.

Peña has brought successful cases before scores of different judges. While the first restraining orders were issued back in 2006, we understand that the number of legal orders skyrocketed in May of 2008. Peña is reportedly obtaining new restraining orders for the same clients, week after week, with revised lists of websites, articles, blogs, and keywords that must be blocked. Many of the orders contain specific web pages to be blocked, however, some also ambiguously order the search engines to block all sites containing defamatory or scandalous portrayals of Peña's clients. It is then presumably up to Yahoo! and Google to determine which content is defamatory -- a task that neither company wishes to or is qualified to perform.

A representative from Yahoo! told us that the censorship order relating to Diego Maradona was first issued in September 2008. The order required Yahoo! Argentina to block all search results for Diego Maradona containing either pornography or images of the star and has since been expanded to include sites that reference thirty-three members of his family. Rather than dedicating the considerable resources to manually determine which sites on the Internet met this standard, Yahoo! instead implemented a block for all search results containing the football player's name.

The actual reach of the court orders, of course, is fairly limited. Internet users in Argentina who know about the censorship are free to use many of Yahoo!'s other Spanish-language search sites, for example, Yahoo! Mexico or Yahoo! Spain. Even those users unaware of the censorship are likely to seek out other search engines, such as Google, once they come across a search page with zero results. Poor typists are also in luck, as Yahoo! has clearly implemented the orders narrowly, not removing results for "diegomaradona" or "diego maradone," for example.

Even though the blacklist is easy to circumvent, it has the potential to cause significant collateral damage beyond those 100+ celebrities who have sought court orders. This is due to the simple fact that many of those individuals are unlikely to have unique names. Just as America's "no-fly list" has caused countless problems for innocent passengers who shared the name with someone else listed on the government's secret watch-list, so too does Argentina's Internet blacklist have the real potential to cause harm to others. These innocent people have now essentially vanished from a good portion of the Argentine Internet, simply because they happen to share their name with a celebrity.

Just a few weeks ago, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and a number of other groups, including the Berkman Center, announced the creation of the Global Network Initiative (GNI) -- a code of conduct and supporting structures to protect free speech and privacy against government mandated intrusions -- and to individually and collectively address situations such as these. While recognizing that the GNI is new, the framework would appear to directly forbid the silent implementation of court-ordered censorship that Yahoo! was performing:

Participating companies will seek to operate in a transparent manner when required to provide personal information to governments. To achieve this, participating companies will:

Clearly disclose to users the generally applicable laws and policies which require the participating company to remove or limit access to content or restrict communications....

Give clear, prominent and timely notice to users when access to specific content has been removed or blocked by the participating company or when communications have been limited by the participating company due to government restrictions. Notice should include the reason for the action and state on whose authority the action was taken.

Yahoo's lack of transparency in its implementation of the court orders, at least up until yesterday, is particularly concerning. Until Monday November 10th 2008, Yahoo! silently removed search results from queries on Yahoo! Argentina, and in some cases, removed all results (such as for Diego Maradona). Yahoo! has since added a note to the empty search results screen explaining (in Spanish) that:

"On the occasion of a court order sought by private parties, we have been forced to temporarily remove some or all of the search results relating to it."

Colin Maclay, who leads Berkman's work on the GNI, said, "this situation is another reminder of the need and urgency for developing clear guidance and best practices for companies, while also engaging in strategies for policy engagement and seeking to better understand evolving legal regimes and practices. Participation won’t change things overnight, but requires a determined, deliberate and sustained implementation. Based on the commitment we've seen by the participants thus far, I am optimistic that we'll make progress on these particular issues both in the near term and over time."

Google is not filtering results to the same degree as Yahoo!. For example, a search for Diego Maradona on Google Argentina returns nearly 2 million results. The company does, however, remove specific pages from the search results on its Argentina site. The search engine notifies its Argentine users of this censorship, just as as it does in Germany, France and China.

An example of Google's filtering in Argentina can be seen by searching for "susana gimenez sexshop" which will result in three links at the bottom of the page to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse -- a project that tracks these incidents and seeks to inform users of their rights.

When we spoke to Alberto Arebalos, Director of Latin American Global Communications and Public Affairs at Google last week, he stated that "we will exercise prior censorship of these sites" when required by a court order, but then added, "even if we were to eliminate all these sites, people in Argentina could look them up in the Google pages of other countries. In specific situations, we could block specific sites, but definitely not all the sites that appear under a name." Finally, he stated that Google is willing to fight the censorship cases all the way to the Argentine Supreme Court if necessary. Early in October, another Google employee similarly outlined the company's position on the company's Latin America blog.

Wendy Seltzer, the founder of the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse described the situation in Argentina as "a telling example of the fragmentation of the Internet via intermediaries. Rather than going directly to the source of objectionable content, complainers find someone in the middle who can be persuaded to block access in at least some locations. This kind of takedown often obscures the source of the objections and removals." She added that, "Chilling Effects aims to add transparency to the process both by showing takedown demands and by allowing people to compare results across various localized versions of search engines."

When reached for his thoughts, Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law at Harvard and an ONI principal investigator, stressed the importance of transparency in cases of government-mandated censorship. "It's crucial for search engines and other intermediaries to be able to make it known when outside parties have ordered or pressured them to alter their results. The crudeness with which the filtering was carried out here made it eventually stand out -- but imagine eliminating half the results instead of all of them." He also added that "this is the first I've seen of filtering based on a search rather than on results, except for the narrow cases where, for example, Google will not permit searching by credit card number."

Globally, these blocking orders may be the tip of the iceberg as more countries and their judges struggle with controlling content online. This also provides a glimpse into the challenges companies face, and those ahead for organizations that hope to combat excessive restrictions on free expression online.

There are unquestionably measures that technology companies operating internationally can take to improve freedom of expression online. Two useful steps are to clearly communicate with their users where restrictions are applied and to appeal inappropriate government orders. This case also highlights the fact that it is the decisions and actions of government officials that are at the root of the issue. It is up to Argentina to decide whether this dubious blocking persists. In this instance, the decisions of the Argentine judiciary and the remedies that they mandate do not reflect the realities of the Internet. Going after the intermediaries with overly broad mandates is poorly conceived and stands to substantially threaten freedom of expression in Argentina.

Turkey's Capricious Filtering - Just Too Easy

jillian — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:31:33 -0500

Turkey has made headlines lately for its capricious filtering; although previous incidents involved filtering sites which insulted Kemal Ataturk or "Turkishness" in general, lately, the filtering seems nearly impulsive.

A site entitled List of websites blocked by Turkish Telecom...or how Turkey disgraces herself shows that, while many of the blocked sites are pornographic by nature, there are plenty which aren't. One can search by categories on the site: the category entitled "Harun Yahya/Adnan Oktar" refers to Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar, who of late has come under fire in the news for his incessant filtering requests in Turkish courts; another category entitled "Mistake/Overkill" shows that the Turkish Telecom isn't even careful: "imbd.com" appears to be filtered in place of popular film database "imdb.com" (why that site was meant to be filtered in the first place remains unknown).

It seems that the majority of filtered sites not relating to gambling or pornography fall into two categories: those which insult Turkishness (including those insulting Kemal Ataturk) and those which Adnan Oktar has managed to get shut down. As we said earlier, it's amazing that one man has the ability to get so many sites filtered.

The administrator of Mindtrick.net pointed me to a Turkish site to which anyone may submit a filtering request. The site [in Turkish] breaks sites down into nine simple categories, making it simple for anyone to register a complaint.

In other words, anyone could play the role of Adnan Oktar. It seems that, without change, it won't be long until Turkey has censored the entire Internet.

Wireless: you might not have to pay for it, but it won't be free, says FCC

sally — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:03:34 -0400

Earlier this month, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission released a report , addressing their efforts to build broadband access. So far, recent efforts have centered around auctioning off portions of the wireless spectrum, and some with the requirement that the spectrum be used to offer free wireless connectivity. Don't get too excited yet. Free (as in you don't pay for it) wouldn't quite be free. Provisions to require companies offering free wireless to block pornography - "content harmful to minors". This could require the blocking of many hard-to-monitor uses of the Net, such as encrypted messaging and VOIP.

Wendy Seltzer points out:

To block naked pictures among the 1s and 0s of Internet data, you need first to know that a given 11010110 is part of a picture, not a voice conversation or text document. So to have any hope of filtering effectively, you have to constrain network traffic to protocols you know, and know how to filter. Web browsing OK, peer-to-peer browsing out. You’d have to block anything you didn’t understand: new protocols, encrypted traffic, even texts in other languages. (The kids might learn French to read “L’Histoire d’O,” quelle horreur!) “Should any commercially-available network filters installed not be capable of reviewing certain types of communications, such as peer-to-peer file sharing, the licensee may use other means, such as limiting access to those types of communications as part of the AWS-3 free broadband service, to ensure that inappropriate content … not be accessible as part of the service.”

We often write about how ineffective filtering is at blocking access to content, and how difficult it is to be accurate -- blocking only what is unlawful, no more, no less. This case brings up several disturbing points. First, pornography (with the exception of child pornography) is not illegal in the United States. It is only illegal to provide it to minors. Internet service providers cannot determine who is a minor and who is not, creating a situation of blatant overblocking for any user over the age of 18 (even if they get the block list right in the first place). Second, to block access to technologies, simply because they could carry porn is not even close to an option under the first amendment. It may, instead, be up to all of us to come up with better ways to carry out age verification and the like. The FCC is stretching uncomfortably into content control territory, from which precedent and common sense advise staying away.

A Blind-date with the Censors in UAE

ONI-MENA — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:29:18 -0400

Western software companies continue to make key decisions about what is acceptable speech in numerous countries around the world by compiling the lists of web sites that fall into potentially undesirable categories, such as provocative content and hate speech.

Livejournal.com, a free service for journaling and blogging, was blocked in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this week, apparently because it was categorized as a dating site in the database of the filtering software Secure Computing. The UAE uses SmartFilter, a product of Secure Computing, to block access to various content categories including dating, porn, sex, and gambling.

We checked livejournal.com and three other URLs currently blocked in the UAE for current categorization in the SmartFilter database and found that all were categorized as “dating” sites, even though many will argue against this categorization.

Western companies sell to ISPs not only filtering software, but also decisions on speech. This blocking highlights serious issues surrounding coverage, quality, accuracy and inaccuracy of Web filtering. Secure Computing, used by ISPs in various countries in the Middle East, has a database of 20 million blockable Web sites in over 91 categories. So when ISPs purchase SmartFitlter, they also buy 20 million decisions and 91 potential inaccurate categorizations.

It is up to the ISPs to make corrections and exceptions in either direction. Web sites such as friendster.com and hi5.com were unblocked in the UAE a few weeks ago, even though they are still categorized as dating Web sites by SmartFilter. These processes, however, are not always clear or easy to figure out, and site owners may not be easily able to appeal the blocking of their site.