Abstract
This Chapter briefly describes, with a more technological approach, instruments and techniques used in critical contexts to circumvent filters, to give to the user a good level of anonymity, to encrypt data, to connect to sites banned by several regimes, to spread sensitive information using blog platforms and other means. After a first introduction to the concept of “liberation technology” and to the most common strategies used to operate safely in repressive contexts, the Chapter will list, with a short comment, the most used software tools, such as Tor, the proxies system and the best techniques to make information circulating free.
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- 1.
See Sect. 6.2.7.
- 2.
Concerning the interesting (technical) issue of how to circumvent the Great Firewall of China (from an introductory point of view), see Copeland notes and his dialogue with a dissident (Copeland 2012): “When I saw Leah (last name withheld until she’s back in the U.S.) in May a week before she left for a 3-month trip to China, she admitted it would be difficult to break her Facebook and Twitter habit. But, like any good addict, it took Leah less than a week to get settled and circumvent the Great Firewall of China. Along the way, she learned it was a relatively easy process. Leah, a 21-year-old student at the college where I teach, emailed me this week. She figured out that for about $9, she can download a virtual private network, which effectively nullifies China’s efforts to block access to certain websites. Every time she logs onto the Internet, she also signs into the VPN, which gives her access to Facebook, Twitter and all the other sites the Chinese government tries to censor. “It was fairly easy for me to set up,” Leah said. China did try to crack down on VPNs last year, but the effort seemed to primarily focus on university and corporate connections. Home users were largely unaffected. China, of course, is not trying to block all users from accessing those sites. An all-encompassing censorship strategy for all of the country’s 513.1 million Internet users is not feasible or practical. The government’s hope is that if it can make access to Facebook, Twitter and other sites enough of a pain, it will deter most people from bothering […] Six years after Google launched a government-monitored version of its search engine in China, and 2 years after Google said it would stop self-censoring in the country, Leah said few people still use it. They instead opt for the more widely popular Baidu. “Most people wouldn’t even think to use Google for online searches the way I would,” she said. “I actually had an experience like this the other day when I was asked how I found some information, and I said in an obvious tone that I Googled it, not remembering that normally they wouldn’t even think to use Google as a search engine. Leah also noted that Weibo, a Chinese social network that combines Twitter- and Facebook-like features, remains hugely popular as an alternative to the better-known but banned American social networks. And QQ is also gaining traction as an instant messenger, video chat and file-sharing client”. (Copeland 2012).
- 3.
See Sect. 6.2.14.
- 4.
See Sect. 6.2.6.
- 5.
See the web page of the project at https://alkasir.com/.
- 6.
See Sect. 6.2.12.
- 7.
For a complete overview see the Grimmelmann’s study regarding this strange start-up (Grimmelmann 2012).
- 8.
See the web site of the project at the address http://tails.boum.org/. Accessed 24 November 2011.
- 9.
See the web site of the project at the address https://ssd.eff.org/. Accessed 24 November 2011.
- 10.
See the web page of this tool at the address http://www.dit-inc.us/dynaweb. Accessed 27 November 2011.
- 11.
See the web page of the project at the address http://www.internetfreedom.org/FreeGate. Accessed 24 November 2011.
- 12.
See the web page of the project at the address http://www.internetfreedom.org/Gtunnel. Accessed 24 November 2011.
- 13.
See the web site at the address http://hotspotshield.com/. Accessed 24 November 2011.
- 14.
See the web site at the address http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html. Accessed 24 November 2011.
- 15.
See the web site at the address http://psiphon.ca/. Accessed 24 November 2011.
- 16.
See the Tor web site at the address https://www.torproject.org/.
- 17.
See the web site at the address http://ultrasurf.us/. Accessed 24 November 2011.
- 18.
See the web site at the address http://your-freedom.net/. Accessed 21 November 2011.
- 19.
See the web page of Roger Dingledine at the address http://freehaven.net/∼arma/cv.html. Accessed 21 November 2011. See, also, his interesting recent studies regarding trust-based anonymous communications (Johnson et al. 2011), concerning Tor (Ngan et al. 2010) and on statistical data in the Tor anonymity network (Loesing et al. 2010). Of fundamental interest is, also, his paper with one of the first accurate descriptions of the Tor network (Dingledine et al. 2004) and, before Tor, of the Free Haven Project (Dingledine et al. 2000).
References
Copeland, D. 2012. How to get around the great firewall of China. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how-to-get-around-the-great-firewall-of-china.php?utm_source=ReadWriteWeb+Newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dfd3f8bc22-RWWDailyNewsletter. Accessed 12 June 2012.
Dingledine, Roger. 2010. Ten things to look for in a circumvention tool. https://www.torproject.org/press/presskit/2010-09-16-circumvention-features.pdf. Accessed 24 Nov 2011.
Dingledine, Roger, Michael J. Freedman, and David Molnar. 2000. The free haven project: distributed anonymous storage service. http://www.cs.princeton.edu/∼mfreed/docs/freehaven-pet00.pdf. Accessed 24 Nov 2011.
Dingledine, Roger, Nick Mathewson, and Paul Syverson. 2004. Tor: The second-generation onion router. https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-design.pdf. Accessed 24 Nov 2011.
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Grimmelmann, James. 2012. Sealand, HavenCo, and the rule of law. http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=james_grimmelmann. Accessed 13 Nov 2012.
Johnson, Aaron, Paul Syverson, Roger Dingledine, and Nick Mathewson. 2011. Trust-based anonymous communication: Adversary models and routing algorithms. http://freehaven.net/∼arma/anonymity-trust-ccs2011.pdf. Accessed 21 Nov 2011.
Loesing, Karsten, Steven Murdoch, and Roger Dingledine. 2010. A case study on measuring statistical data in the Tor anonymity network. Workshop on ethics in computer security research. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/∼sjm217/papers/wecsr10measuring.pdf. Accessed 24 Nov 2011.
Ngan, Tsuen-Wan “Johnny”, Dingledine, Roger, and Wallach, Dan S. 2010. Building incentives into Tor. Financial cryptography and data security. http://freehaven.net/anonbib/papers/incentives-fc10.pdf. Accessed 24 Nov 2011.
Roberts, Hal, Ethan Zuckerman, Jillian York, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey. 2010. Circumvention tool usage report. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/2010_Circumvention_Tool_Usage_Report.pdf. Accessed 24 Nov 2011.
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Ziccardi, G. (2013). The Use of Liberation Technology. In: Resistance, Liberation Technology and Human Rights in the Digital Age. Law, Governance and Technology Series, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5276-4_5
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