[liberationtech] List of Online Risk/Security Resources (was Re: Resignation)

[Prabhas Pokharel]

Ethan Zuckerman had written a while ago a post called "Internet Freedom:
Beyond Circumvention<http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/02/22/internet-freedom-beyond-circumvention/>"
that should add much to this (emerging) discussion. In that essay, he posits
three main points:

>
> In short:

*- Internet circumvention is hard. It’s expensive. It can make it easier for
people to send spam and steal identities.*

*

- Circumventing censorship through proxies just gives people access to
international content – it doesn’t address domestic censorship, which likely
affects the majority of people’s internet behavior.

- Circumventing censorship doesn’t offer a defense against DDoS or other
attacks that target a publisher.

*

1 and 2 are absolutely crucial, and I'll leave it to Ethan to add nuance.
His follow-up post, Internet Freedom: Protect, then
Project<http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/03/22/internet-freedom-protect-then-project/>is
also worth a read, as he discusses many of the responses he got to
that
earlier post.

Cheers,
Prabhas Pokharel
http://twitter.com/prabhasp
+1 970 314 6388 / skype: prabhasp


On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 10:40 PM, Jim Youll <jyoull at alum.mit.edu> wrote:

>
> On Sep 14, 2010, at 9:25 PM, David Sasaki wrote:
>
> Katrin,
>
> I love the idea of aggregating these resources using a published google
> spreadsheet. The list looks pretty complete to me, but is missing
> FlossManuals' Circumvention Tools book, which is also available in Farsi,
> Russian, Arabic, Chinese ... and newly added, Spanish:
>
> http://en.flossmanuals.net/CircumventionTools
>
> Translations available from:
>
> http://en.flossmanuals.net/
>
> In other news, get ready, I'm preparing my argument that "circumvention
> systems" (with the exception of VPNs and Wikileaks) are all over-hyped. Hmm,
> and come to think of it, Wikileaks is probably over-hyped too. I figure it
> will help bring some unity to the list as I'm sure just about everyone
> disagrees. And if I end up being wrong, at least I stand to learn something
> in the process.
>
>
> That's a really interesting (if bold and not immediately popular) argument.
>
> Questions is provokes, and perhaps these have been answered already. it's
> certainly not a fringe topic:
>
> - is "the need for circumvention" really "the most significant problem" ?
>
> - how much usage of these tools is for consumption of banned entertainment
> media, how much for transmission of the illegal thoughts? Of the
> transmissions of illegal thoughts, how do those messages make the round trip
> to the internal audiences it must reach in order to effect change? (That's
> my over-simplified, cartoonish sketch of a popular expression of the
> "need").
>
> After all, it's probably always possible to get a single message to
> outsiders (" <N> has been imprisoned for ___ and is presently _____. Her
> condition is ____...") from time to time. That's not a use case for an
> entire technological infrastructure.
>
> What about the "dialogue" that these technologies are presumably supposed
> to support. Can that ever really be achieved or are older means sufficient?
> Note that outsiders' ability to watch or measure the discussion (as
> facilitated by networked messaging facilitated by those outsiders) does not
> make the communication more useful to those engaging in it.
>
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