Archive for December 15th, 2009

Ron Deibert of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto recently gave a talk at Google HQ where he discussed the the evolving challenges of measuring and combating Internet censorship. Deibert, one of the founders of the Open Net Initiative, has been on the forefront of studying and fighting censorship for years.

In the speech, he explains that states have become more advanced in their censorship efforts – instead of simply blocking IP addresses based on keyword analysis, censorship now includes a host of either methods including patriotic hacking, outsourcing to private firms, malicious computer network attacks, just-in-time blocking, targeted surveillance and malware attacks, legal measures and informal requests.

This complicates the common understanding of the “Great Firewall of China” or Twitter vs. Ahmadinejad. The whole speech is worth watching.