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

Sun Nov 21 11:55:11 PST 2010

Hi all,

Let me chip in here and try to indicate that for a person coming from the
Middle East, like Mehdi, I should emphasize that it is a waste of time to
try to find one universal solution to all forms of oppression against online
freedom of expression. That's why if we are to help people access
information, we need to:
- Understand what challenges are faced by users in each country/region
- What solutions are more feasible and efficient to each group
- How could sponsors help solutions that meet the needs for different
countries/regions

That's why I find that this is the perfect time for researchers to come
together and discuss where and how are things different for every reason and
come up with recommendations. I have already started studying
censorship/filtering trends in the Arab world and from my findings I could
say that it is possible to save bandwidth through split-tunneling for
example (through the use of alkasir, a research tool and circumvention
solution I am currently developing). The solution I introduced is simply to
activate the tunnel dynamically only when the user is attempting to open a
filtered URL. This solution may not be the ideal 'anonymizer' that many
activists wish to use but it is what many regular Internet users in the Arab
world are actually using. Some just want to reach dissident and other forms
of content that their governments don't want them to look at regardless if
they will be anonymous all or half of the time.

However, I would be dead wrong if I say that this solution may be what the
Chinese or Iranians may like. That's I am argue for the need to fragment the
problem of filtering and circumvention based on beneficiaries. We can start
by doing it geographically, but then we can cluster countries with similar
filtering methods for example together. We may also want to cluster them
based on the cultural norms of countries.

This is just an invitation to go back to the drawing board and see how to
move the agenda forward more efficiently and perhaps with the initial
hypothesis that there is no one-method-fits-all solution.

And I totally agree with the notion that circumvention tools should not be
seen as the 'savior' of online freedom of expression. They are just one
method to contribute to enhancing freedom of expression online. They are
just one piece of the jigsaw puzzle and it makes perfect sense not to see it
as the ultimate solution. Much much more needs to be done in this area.
However, I also warn not to marginalize their contribution. They do have a
significant role to play, but it is just one role in a large set of actors.

Sincerely,

Walid

-----------------

Walid Al-Saqaf
Founder & Administrator
alkasir for mapping and circumventing cyber censorship
https://alkasir.com <walid.al-saqaf at oru.se>

On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 8:33 PM, Katrin Verclas <katrin at mobileactive.org>wrote:

> 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
>
> A global network of people using mobile technology for social impact
> http://mobileactive.org
>
>
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