[liberationtech] WSJ Op-Ed: No Quick Fixes for Internet Freedom
Jillian York
jyork at cyber.law.harvard.edu
Mon Nov 22 07:17:08 PST 2010
"I am not in favor of bringing such political considerations into the
funding process for two reasons"
If political considerations weren't a part of the funding process, then we'd
see more funding targeting the other countries with pervasive filtering
regimes (Syria, Tunisia, etc) and not just to China/Iran. And yet, the
entire discourse remains primarily about China and Iran, even--to a
degree--on this list.
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 9:32 AM, Hal Roberts <hroberts at cyber.law.harvard.edu
> wrote:
> Hi Mehdi,
>
>
> On 11/22/10 8:43 AM, Mehdi Yahyanejad wrote:
>
>> China at least seems to block each tool in proportion to the
>> degree to which the tool embarrasses the regime (*not* in proportion
>> to the technical efficiency of the tool). The gifc tools hugely
>> embarrass the Chinese government because they are both falun gong
>> run and explicitly political.
>>
>>
>> This is not a proven fact. More likely, Chinese government will put
>> resources in blocking any successful tool regardless of the
>> embarrassment factor. Also so far, GIFC has been successful in defeating
>> the Chinese government's censorship and there is no reason to believe
>> that they won't be able to do so in future.
>>
>
> It is not proven (and can't be without access to the inner rooms of the
> Chinese government where these decision are made). But the evidence I see
> strongly suggests that this is the case. Last time I checked, the Chinese
> government blocks tor nodes every few months (and not at all until about a
> year ago). They block every gifc front end proxy within seconds (and have
> blocked them aggressively for years). I know of at least two other China
> focused tools that I won't disclose for obvious reasons that have similar or
> greater usage as the gifc tools that have been completely unblocked for at
> least the past couple of years.
>
> These differences have been one of the great mysteries of the GFW: Why is
> it that with all of the technical resources China has poured into the gfw,
> any of a half dozen people on this list could greatly improve the proxy
> blocking of the gfw with a couple days of writing perl scripts? The best
> possible answers are either that the folks running the filter are
> incompetent or that the proxy blocking decisions are made by political
> rather than technical folks. I think the latter is much, much more likely.
>
> The gifc tools, as a testament to the incredible smarts and dedication of
> their volunteers, have remained mostly functional in the face of very
> agressive blocking. But they have reported to me that their usage has
> dropped dramatically at times as they respond to the blocking attempts.
> Just this week I was told by someone in China that everyone he knows has
> stopped using the gifc tools altogether because they are useless now (I
> don't think that this is the case generally -- it's common to hear
> conflicting reports of this sort because usage of the tools tends to be very
> clumpy within local communities -- but it's evidence that the gifc tools are
> not immune to the effects of blocking as your portray them).
>
> Of course, a tool with sufficient usage will eventually embarrass the
> government, but current evidence suggests that the level of usage necessary
> to encourage blocking by itself is higher than the usage of any of the
> current tools.
>
>
>
>> I am not in favor of bringing such political considerations into the
>> funding process for two reasons:
>>
>> 1) It is hard to agree on political considerations. For example, some
>> people see the political background of GIFC as a negative factor, I
>> don't. The success of GIFC's products is partly due to their
>> understanding of the context which must have come from their political
>> background. Considering that they have created the tools for a political
>> goal, they are not getting distracted by having a design which would be
>> admired in academic circles/. /They know that their primary job is
>> getting as many people as possible to the blocked content.
>>
>
> Well, insofar as you are talking about funding by the USG, it is
> non-sensical to say that funding should not be guided by political
> considerations. Politics is the whole point.
>
> I'll point out, though, that I have stayed entirely away from the
> diplomatic or cultural politics involved with falun gong (which is to say
> that some folks at state don't want to fund gifc because the funding will
> upset diplomatic relations and other folks disagree with funding gifc
> because they disagree with the culture of falun gong general). The only
> point I'm making is that the evidence I see says that the gifc tools are and
> will continue to be much more aggressively blocked in China than any other
> tool and that bigger, more public chunks of USG money seems likely to
> increase the aggression of that blocking.
>
>
>
>> 2) Such political considerations brings in lobbyists to the funding
>> process. Groups that have not received funding due to such political
>> considerations will use outside pressure to defeat the political
>> considerations used against them. If it is true that gifc has used
>> lobbyists, it is the direct result of such political considerations that
>> prevented them from getting funding before.
>>
>
> The answer then is that the USG should not be the major funder of these
> tools. If the USG is funding these highly political tools, lobbying will be
> involved. Even moreso at the higher levels of funding that the GIFC's
> lobbyists are pushing.
>
> -hal
>
>>
>>
>> -mehdi
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 7:13 PM, Hal Roberts
>> <hroberts at cyber.law.harvard.edu <mailto:hroberts at cyber.law.harvard.edu>>
>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> I wrote a similar (though vastly less well written!) oped to
>> Rebecca's this week for Radio Free Europe:
>>
>>
>> http://www.rferl.org/content/Breaking_Internet_Censorship_Will_Take_More_Than_Circumvention_Tools/2222401.html
>>
>> The careful argument I've been trying to make about circumvention
>> funding is that there's plenty of reason to fund these tools for the
>> absolute amount of good they do -- allowing hundreds of thousands or
>> millions more people more freedom of expression on the Internet.
>> There's real good in giving ultrasurf / tor / ultrasurf / psiphon /
>> hotspotshield enough money to be able to provide more freedom of
>> expression to a million more people.
>>
>> But the gifc tools at least are not being sold that way -- they are
>> being sold as the way to make the internet (and even authoritarian
>> societies!) free, which they clearly will not do by themselves.
>> It's fine to spend money battling the low hanging fruit of network
>> filtering simply because that's where the easy (if slight) leverage
>> is, but we need to be clear that that's what we're doing.
>>
>> The other issue that I don't discuss in my oped (for space reasons)
>> is that the gifc tools are easily the best in the world at evading
>> blocking because they are easily the most aggressively blocked tool
>> in the world. China at least seems to block each tool in proportion
>> to the degree to which the tool embarrasses the regime (*not* in
>> proportion to the technical efficiency of the tool). The gifc tools
>> hugely embarrass the Chinese government because they are both falun
>> gong run and explicitly political. One likely effect of the USG
>> publicly granting a much bigger chunk of money to gifc will be to
>> embarrass the Chinese government even more and encourage them to
>> ramp up their blocking efforts. Again, this is not sufficient
>> reason to not to fund these tools, but it is reason to carefully
>> consider whether it's the best idea to publicly give them a much
>> bigger chunk of money.
>>
>> -hal
>>
>>
>> On 11/19/10 6:44 PM, 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. Since they were made for China, they must be doing
>> better
>> there. There has been much more funding for other projects with
>> less
>> impressive result. Why don't we hear about the funding spent on
>> other
>> projects? Criticizing the funding for one of the most successful
>> circumvention tools to make an argument on why there should be
>> different
>> priorities for Internet Freedom is not helping the argument.
>>
>> 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.
>> That is
>> not the case with the legal and regulatory issues. Until we do
>> have that
>> list of priorities, we better keep our eyes on the technical
>> challenges
>> and not get distracted.
>>
>> -mehdi
>>
>> On Nov 19, 2010, at 7:57 AM, Evgeny Morozov wrote:
>>
>> I'd like to chime in here and defend Rebecca's conclusions,
>> which are
>> very similar to my own. My impression is that none of this
>> money is
>> meant specifically for either a) circumvention or b) Iran.
>> As such, I
>> don't see how the facts that Mehdi cites - i.e. that GIFC
>> tools are
>> actively used in Iran or that other projects got more money -
>> is
>> relevant for our discussion here. That the US government may
>> have
>> overspent on other tools is no good reason to continue doing
>> so in the
>> future, even if the portfolio is diversified with GIFC.
>>
>> The government may not have a real strategy on how to
>> address some of
>> the other challenges/threats to "Internet freedom"
>> highlighted in
>> Rebecca's piece (and for the record, I don't think that
>> "Internet
>> freedom" is a useful way to describe the problems facing
>> them), but
>> this is certainly NOT a good excuse to continue funding
>> projects
>> without drawing up a list of both regional and topical
>> priorities
>> first. As I once already said on this list, while I
>> appreciate Mehdi's
>> concern about the accessibility of his web-site to users in
>> Iran, this
>> surely can't be the guiding principle of US foreign policy on
>> "Internet freedom".
>>
>> Evgeny
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 3:50 AM, Mehdi Yahyanejad
>> <yahyanejad at gmail.com <mailto:yahyanejad at gmail.com>
>> <mailto:yahyanejad at gmail.com <mailto:yahyanejad at gmail.com>>>
>>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Since 2007, Congress has inserted a total of $50
>> million of
>> earmarks into the State Department's budget to fund
>> organizations
>> dedicated to fighting Internet censorship. One group
>> that has
>> been lobbying hard for the money is the Global
>> Internet Freedom
>> Consortium, run mainly by practitioners of the Falun
>> Gong, a
>> religious sect banned in China. The GIFC has
>> produced a suite of
>> circumvention tools that work well, as long as the
>> user doesn't
>> mind that GIFC engineers can see their unencrypted
>> communications, or that the security of the tool has
>> not been
>> vetted by independent experts.
>>
>> The GIFC has found powerful allies in Mark Palmer,
>> who was U.S.
>> ambassador to Hungary when the Iron Curtain fell,
>> and Michael
>> Horowitz, a former Reagan administration official
>> and longtime
>> advocate for human rights and religious freedom.
>> They argue that
>> if the GIFC can get sufficient funding to scale up
>> their tools,
>> authoritarian regimes will be brought to their knees.
>>
>> The State Department has come under fire in the
>> Journal, the
>> Washington Post and the New York Times for failing
>> to support
>> GIFC. And it's true that of the $20 million already
>> allocated,
>> most went to other groups that are less radioactive
>> as far as
>> U.S.-China relations are concerned. Some of these
>> groups work to
>> help activists with training and security against
>> surveillance,
>> cyber-attacks and other threats, in addition to
>> circumventing
>> censorship.
>>
>> In August, $1.5 million out of $5 million available
>> for 2009 was
>> finally awarded by the State Department to the GIFC
>> via the
>> Broadcasting Board of Governors. The bidding process
>> for a
>> remaining $30 million is expected to start soon.
>> With the
>> mid-term elections now finished, we can look forward
>> to a new
>> surge in the war over who gets to be hero of the
>> fairy tale
>> "Toppling the Iron Curtain 2.0"
>>
>>
>>
>> The GIFC tools are the most adopted circumvention tools
>> among the
>> users in Iran. I am stating this fact based on what I
>> see in the
>> log files of Balatarin and what I was told by other
>> people who run
>> major Iranian websites. Also, I know that other
>> circumvention tool
>> projects have received much more funding than the $1.5
>> million
>> which GIFC is going to get. For that matter, it
>> completely makes
>> sense for the GIFC to ask for political support in the
>> congress to
>> pressure the State Department in spending the money on
>> the project
>> which has been delivering the numbers.
>>
>> -mehdi
>>
>>
>> On Nov 18, 2010, at 8:14 PM, Rebecca MacKinnon wrote:
>>
>>
>> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704104104575622080860055498.html
>>
>> NOVEMBER 18, 2010, 10:21 A.M. ET
>>
>> No Quick Fixes for Internet Freedom
>> The hard work to promote free speech online has
>> barely begun.
>>
>> By REBECCA MACKINNON
>>
>> Just before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
>> arrived in
>> Hanoi late last month, Vietnamese authorities
>> redoubled their
>> assault on Internet dissent. Two more bloggers were
>> arrested and
>> another due to be released had his sentence
>> extended. Dissident
>> websites came under cyber attack, taking them
>> offline at a time
>> when they most needed to be visible.
>>
>> Meanwhile in Washington, a battle is raging over
>> funding for
>> organizations and projects supporting "Internet
>> freedom." Like
>> many Washington fights, this one makes it harder for
>> the U.S.
>> government to help real people with real problems.
>>
>> I study how governments seek to stifle and control
>> online
>> dissent. Activists from the Middle East to Asia to
>> the former
>> Soviet states have all been telling me that they
>> suffer from
>> increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks. Such
>> attacks disable
>> activists' websites at politically crucial times.
>> Email accounts
>> are hacked and computer systems are breached,
>> enabling intruders
>> to install spyware and monitor every electronic
>> move. They are
>> desperate for training and technical help to fight
>> increasingly
>> sophisticated, well-funded adversaries.
>>
>> The cyber-attacks are one of several new and
>> intractable problems
>> faced by online activists, alongside the older and
>> more clear-cut
>> problem of Internet censorship. A number of repressive
>> governments, including Vietnam, Iran and China,
>> block local
>> Internet users from accessing politically sensitive
>> overseas
>> websites, as well as commercial social networking
>> services like
>> Facebook and Twitter. Anybody can get around this
>> blockage if
>> they know how to use what is called "circumvention
>> technology."
>> Several U.S-based organizations have developed a
>> range of
>> circumvention tools.
>>
>> Tools for circumventing censorship are indeed
>> important for
>> activists. But they do nothing to protect against
>> cyber-attacks,
>> or to address a growing number of other ways that
>> governments
>> work to prevent activists from using the Internet to
>> access
>> information, get their message out, and organize.
>> Still, many in
>> Congress and the media have bought into the fantasy
>> that all the
>> U.S. needs to do is put enough money into these
>> circumvention
>> tools, and one in particular—and freedom will flood
>> through the
>> crumbling firewalls.
>>
>> Since 2007, Congress has inserted a total of $50
>> million of
>> earmarks into the State Department's budget to fund
>> organizations
>> dedicated to fighting Internet censorship. One group
>> that has
>> been lobbying hard for the money is the Global
>> Internet Freedom
>> Consortium, run mainly by practitioners of the Falun
>> Gong, a
>> religious sect banned in China. The GIFC has
>> produced a suite of
>> circumvention tools that work well, as long as the
>> user doesn't
>> mind that GIFC engineers can see their unencrypted
>> communications, or that the security of the tool has
>> not been
>> vetted by independent experts.
>>
>> The GIFC has found powerful allies in Mark Palmer,
>> who was U.S.
>> ambassador to Hungary when the Iron Curtain fell,
>> and Michael
>> Horowitz, a former Reagan administration official
>> and longtime
>> advocate for human rights and religious freedom.
>> They argue that
>> if the GIFC can get sufficient funding to scale up
>> their tools,
>> authoritarian regimes will be brought to their knees.
>>
>> The State Department has come under fire in the
>> Journal, the
>> Washington Post and the New York Times for failing
>> to support
>> GIFC. And it's true that of the $20 million already
>> allocated,
>> most went to other groups that are less radioactive
>> as far as
>> U.S.-China relations are concerned. Some of these
>> groups work to
>> help activists with training and security against
>> surveillance,
>> cyber-attacks and other threats, in addition to
>> circumventing
>> censorship.
>>
>> In August, $1.5 million out of $5 million available
>> for 2009 was
>> finally awarded by the State Department to the GIFC
>> via the
>> Broadcasting Board of Governors. The bidding process
>> for a
>> remaining $30 million is expected to start soon.
>> With the
>> mid-term elections now finished, we can look forward
>> to a new
>> surge in the war over who gets to be hero of the
>> fairy tale
>> "Toppling the Iron Curtain 2.0"
>>
>> Meanwhile in real life, the human rights watchdog
>> organization
>> Freedom House warns of a "global freedom recession."
>> They point
>> to a decrease in online freedom even in many
>> countries that
>> engage in little or no website blocking.
>>
>> Take Russia, for example. In a new book published by
>> the Open Net
>> Initiative, "Access Controlled," University of
>> Toronto scholars
>> Rafal Rohozinski and Ronald Deibert point out that
>> while the
>> Russian government doesn't block many websites, it
>> stifles online
>> dissent in a range of other ways. Government critics
>> in Russia
>> face cyber-attacks, surveillance, and good
>> old-fashioned
>> intimidation.
>>
>> In a growing number of countries including China,
>> domestic
>> Internet companies are enlisted in this effort
>> through regulatory
>> pressures. Laws and mechanisms originally meant to
>> enforce
>> copyright, protect children and fight online crime
>> are abused to
>> silence or intimidate political critics.
>>
>> In real life, conceiving and implementing an
>> effective set of
>> policies, programs, and tools for promoting a free
>> and open
>> global Internet requires hard work by both the
>> public and private
>> sectors. This work has barely begun.
>>
>> A range of fast-evolving technical problems requires
>> an array of
>> solutions. Activists around the world need technical
>> assistance
>> and training in order to fight cyber-attacks more
>> effectively. We
>> need more coordination between human rights
>> activists, technology
>> companies and policy makers just to understand the
>> problems, and
>> how they can be expected to evolve in the next few
>> years.
>>
>> What's more, existing research indicates that many
>> of the
>> problems aren't technical, but rather political, legal,
>> regulatory and even social. Other obstacles to free
>> expression
>> are probably best addressed by the private sector:
>> Social
>> networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter
>> should be urged to
>> adhere to business practices that maximize the safety
>> of
>> activists using their platforms.
>>
>> Circumvention technology is one tactic to support
>> access to
>> information and online dissent. It makes sense to
>> keep funding
>> these tools, so long as activists are given choice.
>> On their own,
>> however, they are not the silver bullet that many
>> claim. The
>> State Department and Congress need to approach
>> freedom of speech
>> issues strategically, based on a clear understanding
>> of purpose
>> and effect.
>>
>> Ms. MacKinnon is a Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow
>> at the New
>> America Foundation.
>>
>> --
>> Rebecca MacKinnon
>> Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation
>> Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org
>> <http://GlobalVoicesOnline.org/>
>>
>> Cell: +1-617-939-3493
>> E-mail: rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com
>> <mailto:rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com>
>> <mailto:rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com
>> <mailto:rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com>>
>>
>> Blog: http://RConversation.blogs.com
>> <http://RConversation.blogs.com/>
>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rmack
>>
>>
>>
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Berkman Center for Internet and Society |
https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jyork
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