[liberationtech] WSJ Op-Ed: No Quick Fixes for Internet Freedom

[Katrin Verclas]

I am with you, Roger, and with Ethan Zuckerman who wrote astutely:  We  
can’t circumvent our way around internet censorship.

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/02/22/internet-freedom-beyond-circumvention/

Relevant paragraphs:

"Let’s assume that systems like Tor, Psiphon and Freegate receive  
additional funding from the State Department. How much would it cost  
to provide proxy internet access for… well, China? China reports 384  
million internet users, meaning we’re talking about running an ISP  
capable of serving more than 25 times as many users as the largest US  
ISP. According to CNNIC, China consumes 866,367 Mbps of international  
internet bandwidth. It’s hard to get estimates for what ISPs pay for  
bandwidth, though conventional wisdom suggests prices between $0.05  
and $0.10 per gigabyte. Using $0.05 as a cost per gigabyte, the cost  
to serve the Internet to China would be $13,608,000 per month, $163.3  
million a year in pure bandwidth charges, not counting the costs of  
proxy servers, routers, system administrators, customer service. Faced  
with a bill of that magnitude, the $45 million US senators are asking  
Clinton to spend quickly looks pretty paltry.
There’s an additional complication – we’re not just talking about  
running an ISP – we’re talking about running an ISP that’s very likely  
to be abused by bad actors. Spammers, fraudsters and other internet  
criminals use proxy servers to conduct their activities, both to  
protect their identities and to avoid systems on free webmail  
providers, for instance, which prevent users from signing up for  
dozens of accounts by limiting an IP address to a certain number of  
signups in a limited time period. Wikipedia found that many users used  
open proxies to deface their system and now reserve the right to block  
proxy users from editing pages. Proxy operators have a tough balancing  
act – for their proxies to be useful, people need to be able to use  
them to access sites like Wikipedia or YouTube… but if people use  
those proxies to abuse those sites, the proxy will be blocked. As  
such, proxy operators can find themselves at war with their own users,  
trying to ban bad actors to keep the tool useful for the rest of the  
users.

I’m skeptical that the US State Department can or wants to build or  
fund a free ISP that can be used by millions of simultaneous users,  
many of whom may be using it to commit clickfraud or send spam. I know  
– because I’ve talked with many of them – that the people who fund  
blocking-resistant internet proxies don’t think of what they’re doing  
in these terms. Instead, they assume that proxies are used by users  
only in special circumstances, to access blocked content. "

Katrin



On Nov 21, 2010, at 2:16 PM, Roger Dingledine wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 03:44:03PM -0800, Mehdi Yahyanejad wrote:
>> Most of the public justification for the Internet Freedom funding has
>> been the specific cases of Iran and China (read congressional  
>> hearings
>> on these issues). It makes sense to ask about the effectiveness of
>> the funding in Iran and China. GIFC tools have been pretty successful
>> in Iran so far.
> [snip]
>> Having a broader strategy for "Internet freedom" and listing  
>> priorities
>> is needed but those other priorities are not as well-defined as the
>> technical problems. A good thing about technical problems is that  
>> with a
>> good mix of money and engineers, you can generate some results.
>
> One of the topics that I think is often overlooked in these  
> discussions
> is the question of sustainability.
>
> I had a good chat this summer with one of the Freegate developers, who
> was complaining that $1.5M would only pay for a trivial fraction of  
> the
> bandwidth they need. I was trying to convince him that he should put
> the money toward work that would continue to be useful in the longer
> term. After all, if you blow $1.5M for three months of bandwidth, what
> are you left with afterwards?
>
> Is the end goal to "deliver" as many youtube views to China as  
> possible,
> as soon as possible? That's a mighty roundabout way to tear down this
> wall. Now, I think number of users who can circumvent is probably a  
> good
> measure of something, and I agree that Freegate and Ultrasurf have  
> been
> doing a good job of increasing the number of users who can  
> circumvent. But
> any senator who's thinking "we just need to push more youtube videos  
> into
> China" is in for some disappointment. The reality is much more  
> complex --
> it has to do with stronger social networks inside these countries, and
> giving people tools to let them change the atmosphere from within  
> their
> country in the ways they see fit, and with making sure the tools can
> provide enough safety for their users. That last point could lead into
> a fine discussion about metrics and how you should define  
> "successful",
> but my big question here is whether three months of increased  
> bandwidth
> is the best way for them to spend their money.
>
> In my world, bandwidth is free. There's some initial cost of building
> relationships and convincing people that your cause is worth giving
> bandwidth to, but once you've done that, the incremental cost of  
> another
> month is in maintaining those relationships. There's the Tor  
> approach of
> getting lots of smaller providers to donate bandwidth (inefficient,  
> but
> useful for distributing trust over multiple places if you want to  
> avoid
> attractive centralized targets). But if you're just trying to maximize
> bandwidth for effort, go to Google and AT&T and whoever and ask to use
> one of their spare gigabit links for a while. Falun Gong has a lot of
> volunteers; surely some of them have connections in organizations who
> can be convinced to help save the world? Even when they can't get  
> "free",
> getting bandwidth at-cost or subsidized would still be better.
>
> Then the majority of the funding can be used for results that are more
> sustainable, that is, will have an impact in future years too --  
> software
> engineering so the tools are easier to maintain and adapt, increased
> developer clue about adversary capabilities and how to play the arms
> race, better tool usability and community education about how/why to
> circumvent and what risks to consider, etc.
>
> Now, here's where it gets controversial (well, more controversial,  
> insofar
> as I think they have no plans to take my above suggestion). Why keep
> these results secret? The Freegate developers should be asking  
> themselves
> whether sharing some of the lessons they've learned would ultimately
> help them achieve their goals better. Their current answer is "no way,
> that would help the censors," and my current answer is "the more  
> people
> you bring up to speed on this topic, the more help you're going to  
> get;
> don't you think the censors are already paying attention?" In a sense,
> this is the "open source vs proprietary" debate yet again. Fine. But  
> the
> *funders* should be asking themselves a similar question: is funding
> a few individuals to privately get better at circumvention the best
> progress we can make to put the world in the position we want to be  
> for
> the future? Or said a different way, are we really at the stage of the
> arms race where every necessary strategy is well-understood, and it's
> just a matter of "deploy it more and bigger and then we'll win"?
>
> There's definitely a role for diversity of solutions here -- I think
> it's good that Freegate and Ultrasurf are getting more funding. Also,
> not every funder needs to have the priority of increasing the  
> community's
> knowledge with the long term in mind. Maybe it makes sense for State
> to leave the research and development efforts to other funders like
> DARPA and NSF, and then State's strategy can be "figure out what your
> priorities are, then take the best known option at the time for  
> achieving
> those priorities and deploy the heck out of it." But people on all  
> sides
> of the question need to think about their goals, what they expect  
> their
> actions to achieve, and what they're giving up (now and in the future)
> by the sustainability strategies they choose.
>
> --Roger
>
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Katrin Verclas
MobileActive.org
katrin at mobileactive.org

skype/twitter: katrinskaya
(347) 281-7191

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