The Great Firewall of the Internet: Filtering, Blocking, and Government Censorship

Outline

	Disclaimer and Introductions
	Regional Internet Censorship
		Australia
		China and Saudi Arabia
		South Korea
		Spain
		France, Germany, and Europe
		United States
	Circumvention
	Discussion
	Resources

Disclaimer

	This presentation is for informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice nor does it create an attorney/client relationship.
	Consult an attorney if you are considering anything that may engender a legal risk.

Introductions

	Will Doherty, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Online Policy Group, USA
	Ben Edelman, Harvard University, USA
	Kimberley Heitman, Electronic Frontiers Australia
	Kijoong Kim, Jinbonet, Korea
	Arturo Quirantes, University of Granada, Spain

Australia

	Kimberley Heitman of Electronic Frontier Australia will provide a devastating critique of the effects on Australian citizens of a nationwide Internet blocking law called Schedule 5 to the Broadcasting Services Act of 1992.

Kimberly Heitman Bio

Kimberley Heitman is a Perth, Western Australia, lawyer specialising in technology law and Internet governance. He is President of the Western Australian Internet Association, former Chairman and current Board member of Electronic Frontiers Australia, Deputy Chair of the Australian Domain Authority (auDA) and is involved in a number of "digital divide" projects.Kim is a father of three and is employed as a university lawyer and company director. Web http://www.kheitman.com, email kheitman@kheitman.com

China

	Harvard University’s Ben Edelman will summarize research about China’s filtering systems which block news and political sites as well as portions of Google.

Saudi Arabia

	Harvard University’s Ben Edelman will summarize research documenting Saudi Arabia’s blocking of thousands of sexually explicit sites as well as pages related to alcohol, drugs, Middle Eastern politics, and religion.

Ben Edelman Bio

Benjamin Edelman is a student at the Harvard Law School and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.  He has studied Internet filtering for three years, including both commercial filtering applications and nationwide filtering used by certain governments. He served as an expert in Multnomah County Public Library et al., vs. United States of America, et al., challenging the constitutionality of the Children's Internet Protection Act, a 2000 statute requiring filtering software in certain public libraries and schools receiving federal funding.  Mr. Edelman's other major areas of research are domain names, ICANN, and quantitative analysis of Internet usage. Web http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/edelman, email edelman@law.harvard.edu

South Korea

Kijoong Kim will discuss the Internet Contents Regulation System in South Korea. The Korean Ministry of Information & Communication (MIC) proposed requiring a PICS rating system for all web content in 2000, but the proposal was defeated after activists initiated DDOS attacks on the MIC website. A Korean organizer will describe the 2001 version of the law, which passed including a provision prohibiting online protests.

Kijoong Kim Bio

	Legal counsel for Jinbonet in South Korea
	Litigant in constitutional cases involving film and Internet censorship

Spain

	Among other topics, Arturo Quirantes will discuss Spain‘s 2002 law requiring web publishers to register sites with the government or pay large fines. 415 Spanish webmasters responded by replacing their websites with a protest page. Spain also passed legislation authorizing judges to shut down Spanish sites and block access to websites that don't comply with national laws.

Arturo Quirantes Bio

	Arturo Quirantes is a professor at the University of Granada (Spain).He is a member of CPSR-Spain (the Spanish chapter of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility), a freelance researcher,and a writer on cryptography (including its historical ramifications),as well as co-organizer of the Big Brother Awards Spain. Web http://www.ugr.es/~aquiran/cripto/cripto.htm, email aquiran@ugr.es

France, Germany, and Europe

	France and Germany passed laws to block hate speech online and pressured U.S.-based sites to remove content. In addition to the familiar Yahoo France case concerning Nazi memorabilia, the Council of Europe is considering a measure to ban anti-racist content.

United States

Will Doherty (Electronic Frontier Foundation and Online Policy Group) will cover recent research on the effects of the U.S. Congress’ passage of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in 2000 to require schools and libraries that receive certain federal funding or discounts to install Internet filtering software. The library portion of CIPA is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. No legal challenge has yet been filed against the part of CIPA that requires schools to install filtering software, damaging the educational opportunities of millions of U.S. school children.

US Censorship Legislation

	No Internet censorship yet found constitutional:
	Communications Decency Act (CDA)
	Child Online Protection Act (COPA)
	Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA): library portion before US Supreme Court, school portion unchallenged
	Legal focus on:
		Obscenity
		Child Pornography
		Harmful to Minors

Blocking Policies: United States

	Local Jurisdictions:
		Holland, MI (referendum requiring Internet blocking defeated by popular vote)
		Livermore, CA (Kathleen R., mother whose son brought porn home from library, non-blocking policy upheld by court)
		Loudon County, VA (strict adult blocking requirement overturned by court)
		San Francisco, CA (against blocking)
		Santa Clara, CA (blocking in children’s area only with access to adult area)

Legal Background / Key Cases

	“Harmful to minors”: Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629 (1968)
	Obscenity:  Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973)
	Child pornography: New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 (1982)
	CDA and Internet speech: Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997)
	COPA: ACLU v. Ashcroft, 217 F.3d 162 (3d Cir. 2000)
	Blocking: Mainstream Loudoun v. Bd. of Trustees of the Loudoun County Library, 24 F.Supp.2d 552 (E.D.Va. 1998)
	Library’s role: Kreimer v. Bureau of Police, 958 F.2d 1242, 1255 (3d Cir. 1992) (“quintessential locus of the receipt of information”)
	Library liability: Kathleen R. v. City of Livermore and librarian working conditions case

Blocking Technology Limitations

	Don't block all they are supposed to block
	Block lots they are not supposed to block
	Bias through categorization and categorization scheme
	Humans can't cover the entire gigantic evolving web or keep up with all the changes
	Software cannot judge due to complexity of human culture and language
	Cannot distinguish legal materials from illegal materials
	Circumvented by clever “children”
	Reduce system performance with crashes, etc.

What Gets Blocked?

	Some illegally obscene, child pornographic, and harmful to minors materials
	Lots of “controversial” content: Activist groups, civil rights groups, reproductive and child abuse info, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community sites, Democrat more than Republican sites, critics of blocking products, etc.
	Lots of totally “non-controversial” materials US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Koran, Smithsonian Institution, San Diego Zoo, the American Red Cross, Republican Congressional Candidate Pollock’s site, blocking product sites themselves, etc.

Alternatives to Internet Blocking

	Media Literacy Education
		Parents, teachers, librarians, administrators, students, patrons
		New technologies often engender fears due to speculation and unknown outcomes
		Education reduces fears that children know technology better than adults
	Internet Use Policies
		Fashioned with local community input and according to local community standards
		Respecting community diversity and constitutional protections
	Supportive Supervision (non-invasive)
	Referrals for Problem Cases

US Department of Justice

	Department of Justice seizes domain names:
	iSONews.com website: prosecuted under Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for alleged sale of bootleg Xbox microchips (resurfaced at stolemy.com)
	“Operation Pipe Dream” seizes drug paraphernalia sites like OmniLounge.com redirected to DOJ-created website with potential for website visitor tracking and email surveillance

Slide 23

US Internet Service Providers

	US Internet service providers refuse service:
	YellowTimes.org apparently for posting POW pictures
	Al Jazeera: recently found European provider and Akamai mirroring when US provider cancelled service, DNS hacked by Verisign or other unknown party
	Rage Against the Machine: when FBI called ISP host
	Yahoo account closures: peace organizers, sexuality and gender support groups, other communities
	Everyone’s Internet removes sites featuring Palestinian and Taliban fighting personnel
	Hypervine removed allewislive.com…and many more...

Will Doherty Bio

Will Doherty serves as the Media Relations Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation where he pays special attention to Internet blocking and censorship issues. Doherty also serves as the Executive Director of the Online Policy Group (OPG), with the motto “One Internet With Equal Access for All". Prior to founding OPG, he was the Director of Online Community Development at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, where he focused on the online rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual,and transgender communities. He managed GLAAD's Digital Media Resource Center in San Francisco, cultivating strategic partnerships in Silicon Valley and beyond. Doherty has more than twenty years of experience as a computing consultant and online activist. In the early 1980's, he worked on the ARPANET, precursor of the Internet. He served as the Globalization Operations Manager at Sybase, Inc., and as a Localization Program Manager and a Technical Writer for Sun Microsystems, Inc. He has designed and implemented Internet strategies and websites for many nonprofit community and advocacy organizations. Doherty holds an MBA from Golden Gate University and a BS in Computer Science and Writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Circumvention I

	Seemingly contradictory to CIPA, U.S. Representative Christopher Cox re-introduced in Jan. 2003 the Global Internet Freedom Act (H.R. 48), which would provide $100 million over two years to help private companies circumvent censorship by foreign governments. Bill status: under review by House International Relations Committee.

Circumvention II

	Attempts to subvert censorship by penetrating government firewalls have included efforts from Peekabooty and Hacktivismo (6/4).
	SafeWeb’s last remaining client for the TriangleBoy filtering circumvention software is one of the Voice of America’s projects to drill holes in the Great Firewall of China.

Discussion

	Should all countries be held to the same standard--the one-world jurisdiction of the Internet? What about cultural and political differences? This panel presentation and audience discussion will explore issues and tactics designed to counter government censorship, preserve free expression, and strengthen the end-to-end connectivity of the Internet.

BOF Sessions

	Strategies for Countering Internet Censorship – 9:30pm tonight – Tribeca room
	The Pennsylvania Child Pornography ISP Liability Law – 9:30pm tonight – Room TBA

Anti-Censorship Resources I

	American Library Association: http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/index.html
	Ben Edelman and Jonathan Zittrain at Harvard University: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/
	Censorware: http://www.censorware.net
	Chris Hunter at Annenberg School: http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/chunter
	Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://www.eff.org
	Electronic Frontier Australia: http://www.efa.org.au
	Electronic Privacy Information Center: http://www.epic.org
	Freedom of Expression Network: http://www.freeexpression.org
	Freedom to Read Foundation: http://www.ftrf.org
	Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (Access Denied): http://www.glaad.org
	Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC): http://www.gilc.org/

Anti-Censorship Resources II

	Karen Schneider’s “A Practical Guide to Internet Filters”: email kgs@bluehighways.com
	LSSI Campaign in Spain: http://www.ugr.es/~aquiran/cripto/tc-lssi.htm
	Online Policy Group (Online Service Provider Assessment): http://www.onlinepolicy.org
	Peacefire: http://www.peacefire.org

Pro-Censorship Resources

	American Family Assocation: http://www.afa.org/
	Enough Is Enough: http://www.enough.org/
	Filtering Facts: http://www.filterfacts.org/
	Filtering Info: http://www.filteringinfo.org/
	GetNetWise: http://www.getnetwise.org/
	NetMom: http://netmom.com/ikyp/samples/ask_protect11.shtml
	National Law Center for Children and Families: http://www.nationallawcenter.org/