15 November 2006
Assistant Professor Derek Bambauer on Internet Censorship
USINFO Webchat transcript, November 15
Derek Bambauer, assistant professor at Wayne State University Law School, answered questions about government censorship of blog posts, search results and websites, and the legal implications of these actions in a November 15 USINFO Webchat.
Following is the transcript:
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of International Information Programs
USINFO Webchat Transcript
Digital Development Free Speech, the Internet, and Cyber-Censorship
Guest: Derek Bambauer
Date: November 15, 2006
Time: 10:30 a.m. EST (1530)
IIP Moderator: We'd like to welcome you to today's webchat on Internet censorship with Derek Bambauer, professor at Wayne State University Law School, and we'd like to him for joining us. You may begin sending in your questions at any time, and be sure to check back between 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. EST on Wednesday, November 15 for the answers.
Welcome! I'm Derek Bambauer, an assistant professor at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, Michigan. Until August, I was a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and a member of the OpenNet Initiative; ONI studies Internet censorship in countries world-wide. Cyber-censorship is a hot topic these days and I'm eager to hear your thoughts and to discuss the difficult questions in this area. I'll start responding to the questions that I see already submitted - please keep your thoughts coming.
Question [MLS86]: Isn't there a bill bouncing around in the [U.S. House of Representatives] that would make it illegal for companies like Google and Cisco to be complicit in Chinese censorship? Thanks.
Answer [Derek Bambauer]: There is indeed - the Global Online Freedom Act. It was introduced in the House of Representatives. You can obtain the text of the bill by searching http://www.thomas.loc.gov
(a wonderful tool, by the way) for the title of the bill. It was introduced by Rep. Christopher Smith of New Jersey, who has been very involved in Internet censorship issues. If you'd like a lucid summary, see my colleague Rebecca MacKinnon.
Q [JACorrea]: What are the best ways to avoid censorship, if, say, you're writing a blog you hope Chinese people or Iranian people can read? Are there technical tricks?
A: There are a number of technical tricks - two things to think about are 1) the sophistication of the country's filtering system and 2) how much work you want to put into this. (My colleague and friend Ethan Zuckerman has written a brilliant guide to anonymous blogging that has a number of useful tips - I highly recommend it to you.) A number of countries block certain Web hosts altogether; you can check the ONI's country reports on Iran and China to get a sense of this. (ONI is at http://www.opennet.net.)
Hence, if you're writing on one of these blogs, you're invisible to readers in that country, unless they're savvy enough to use a proxy server or other circumvention tools. Second, there are a number of technical work-arounds, such as re-posting to a number of hosts and using RSS feeds to distribute content, that can evade filtering. The challenge is how much effort you want to put into adapting your blogging to the contours of a filtering country's system versus relying on readers to take steps to reach your material. It's also worth thinking about additional means of circulating information, such as via e-mail, that are less readily controlled.
Q [mugalu]: my complaint is actually connected to the junk emails I do keep receiving every now and then. For the sponsors claim that these are National Lotteries done by the US government each year and that they are aimed at improving and increasing the number of internet users World Wide, but what confuses me is that given fee that these people claim, and it's a requirement before any transaction is made. Yet lately the myth behind this all thing r just con-men on the net but in the shadow of US authorities.
Here therefore I get to ask you Sir, that can't there be put tariffs upon such responses for the betterment of us internet users........? Or could it be the US govt behind this? Thanks
A: You're likely suffering the same spam that I am. This is a problem that plagues users world-wide; I presented research done by me, my friend and former boss John Palfrey, and my colleague David Abrams on Spam at the ITU's cybersecurity session last year. Taxing spam is a great idea - the challenge is how to implement that tax, especially in a technical environment where sending e-mail with falsified return address and host information is trivial.
There are a number of proposals to put in place anti-spam measures such as e-postage or cryptographic verification, but it's been very hard to get the various vendors to agree on a single proposal. (See, for example, the debate over SPF.) As for the U.S. government being behind these e-mails, I don't believe that's accurate... this is likely spammers covering their tracks.
Q [Marek]: Should the UN declare access to Internet a human right? I think that information power, ability to move forward in life, and opportunity. Therefore, a country that limits access is denying someone their human rights.
A: I believe the U.N. would view the opportunity to receive information over the Internet as falling under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which is broadly viewed as a settled guide to human rights (even if only in terms of aspirations). The challenge with a more specific declaration is balance: is the right to Internet access more or less weighty than, say, the right to employment or to sustenance? I would be happy with some sort of affirmation that users have the right to receive information via the Internet so long as that information is not expressly unlawful; of course, this posits a system of governance that is reasonably democratic and accountable in terms of creating laws to regulate information. The default, at least, should be towards unfettered access.
IIP Moderator: To learn more about the "$100 Laptop" project our speaker mentioned earlier, please visit the transcript from our webchat "Digital Development: How the $100 Laptop Could Change Education" which took place on November 14 and featured Dr. Seymour Papert, a consultant to the project.
Q [Kuba]: How will the United Nations address the idea of the global "digital divide". Technology is moving very quickly while some areas remain in the 19th century. This can be a real recipe for problems.
A: I agree completely that the digital divide is a serious problem. Lack of human development, particularly as regards information and education, is a significant factor in limiting economic development and mobility. The U.N. has tried to address this question via the World Summit on the Information Society, but unfortunately that forum has largely recapitulated the standard North-South divide on this topic. My hope, frankly, is that private initiatives, such as Nicholas Negroponte's work on the sub-$100 USD computer, will fill some of the gap between the aspirations (worthy ones) of the WSIS and the reality on the ground in the developing world. (Of course, it will be vital for developing countries to take positive steps such as encouraging competition in their telecommunications sectors and avoiding censorship in order for these efforts to bear fruit.)
Q [Marek]: Do you think that the internet will bypass governments' attempts to limit access? Will technology always find a way around the firewalls?
A: This is a classic and challenging question for Internet scholars, activists, and users. The early phase of the Internet was characterized by a great deal of optimism on this topic - cyberspace was going to be a place where the "weary giants" of nation-state governments (to borrow John Perry Barlow's phrasing) would be powerless to block expression.
Unfortunately, as the OpenNet Initiative's work demonstrates, terrestrial governments are quite effective in limiting or mitigating the effects of the Internet to bring completely open access to information. Technology can almost always bypass firewalls, but it's a question of what I call AOL versus Linux users. Most of the world - including in the U.S. - falls into the AOL camp: people with limited technical skills who aren't comfortable using proxy servers or circumvention software. It's relatively straightforward for states to block access to most information deemed "sensitive" for these users. The Linux-type users - those with technical expertise - can bypass censorship, but there are relatively few of them, and they can be brought under control by other measures, such as surveillance, threats, and legal pressures.
Hence, I think that it's a case of what my colleague Jonathan Zittrain describes as the idea that "low fences can keep in large mammals" - to succeed in blocking access to material, governments need not censor it entirely; they just need to affect the average user's average experience. (I'd commend to you, by the way, Tim Wu and Jack Goldsmith's book "Who Controls The Internet?".)
Q [Erick]: Who governs cyber-censorship worldwide?
A: I don't think anyone governs cyber-censorship. Right now, it's less a case of one Internet than a series of Internets - different states permit access to materials at different levels. In Vietnam, one can surf any pornographic site that one wants, but the sites of opposition political parties are blocked. In Saudi Arabia, it's largely the reverse. The Internet governance mechanisms that exist tend either to be technical in nature (ICANN) or largely rhetorical (the working group formed after the WSIS meeting in Tunis). There have been proposals for the U.N. to have a greater role in this area, but nothing concrete has emerged. Cyber-censorship is thus currently a state-by-state issue.
Q [Regina]: What your opinion of viewing access to www as a public good...to be treated as water, electricity, or another utility?
A: My sense, Regina, is that while Internet access is quite important, it's less so than access to clean drinking water, health care, or electricity. If a developing country has limited funds, I'd rather they spend them on sanitation than on broadband.
With that said, I think your question points towards the issue of rights: should access to Internet information be considered a basic right? My take is that it's hard to state that everyone should have costless access to the WWW, because that's largely not able to be achieved, even in the developed world. I would like to see an explicit norm that users have a right to uncensored access to Internet information, except where that information has been judged unlawful by a competent, independent tribunal. (Not everyone will agree with that sentiment; there are countries in Europe, for example, that filter hate speech more broadly than this.) I think it's a question of positive versus negative rights - a classic issue in these debates.
IIP Moderator: Today's webchat is part of a three-part series "Digital Development." The final webchat "Digital Development: Boosting Economies with Low-cost Laptops, Cell Phones and Other Technologies" takes place tomorrow and features Dr. Shalini Venturelli an expert on Internet regulation and international policy at American University.
Q [possible_worlds]: I wonder if guerrilla armed groups are allowed to have a website on the internet, and what are the processes behind this?
A: Whether groups of this type are "allowed" to have sites varies - some countries make it unlawful; others block such sites; some don't exert this type of control. Of course, defining a "guerrilla armed group" is an extremely difficult and normative process.
The OpenNet Initiative looks at this via our testing of the SPMIPO list (Separatist, Para-Military, Intelligence, and Political Organizations) and by testing sites that are listed by the State Department as terrorist entities. Blocking is sporadic by different countries. The challenge is that if a state decides to ban a group from having a Web site, that group can easily set up a site on a free Web hosting entity (for example, Geocities) or on a server in a country where that ban doesn't apply. This often leads countries to try to filter these groups' sites.
In my experience, these groups often have both official and unofficial Web presences - for example, there is a thriving network of information about insurgent and jihadist operations against U.S. forces in Iraq, even though these entities rarely have "official" Web sites. This may well be the flip side of the benefits that the Internet offers in terms of easy information access.
Q [Marek]: Will the forum address the actions of countries such as China that limit the freedom of Internet users?
A: The WSIS forum, and other fora, have tried to address this issue, but it's been quite contentious. (My colleague John Palfrey has pushed very hard for the WSIS and the UN to focus on the issue of Internet censorship and filtering; it's my hope, though a faint one, that they'll heed his wise advice.) The difficulty is that many countries want to censor something - pornography, dating sites, political dissent, religious conversion materials - and so there is a reluctance to establish more specific rules or norms against censorship.
I think there's a middle ground, which focuses on the normal processes in countries with democratic systems of government for declaring information unlawful, but I am doubtful this idea will be adopted - it's likely too nuanced and too controversial.
Q [Marek]: Does the UN see a need for global governance of the Internet...how and what would be the substance of this?
A: I'd hesitate to characterize a "UN" position here. Many countries would like to see a shift to governance of the Internet, including its technical aspects such as domain name and IP address assignments, that is more under the control of a multi-national or international body, rather than under ICANN (which is viewed, unfairly in my opinion, as unduly influenced by the United States government).
The details of setting up an alternative are extremely tricky. Existing entities such as the ITU have campaigned for a role in such an oversight function, but of course this isn't a perfect solution either. This was a focus of the recent forum on Internet governance, but there wasn't much resolution. I think that control over the DNS "root" is mostly a symbolic issue, rather than one of large practical significance, at this point, but it remains quite controversial and a number of people and states would disagree with me on this point.
IIP Moderator: Let me just commend to all of you the Moderator's link to the $100 laptop project - I had forgotten about this previous discussion (even though, embarrassingly, it was just yesterday), and it's a hopeful development in terms of the digital divide.
http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/USINFO/Products/Webchats/papert_14_nov_2006.html
A: If I may, I'd like to suggest two additional, brief resources that all of you might find worthwhile. First, Wired magazine previewed the OpenNet Initiative's work to compare and contrast filtering by over 40 countries worldwide - this is due for release early next year and is a monumental, ground-breaking project. I was involved in the early work on this, so I'm hardly unbiased, but I think it will set a baseline for this type of scholarship.
Second, Business Week magazine covered Reporters Sans Frontier’s designation of the Internet's leading censors. Julien Pain at RSF is a colleague who is very smart and very informed about these issues.
A: I'd also like to bring to your attention the Psiphon anti-censorship software program developed at the CitizenLab at the University of Toronto - Ron Deibert, the brilliant leader of the CitizenLab, has posted a Maclean's article about the program.
IIP Moderator: "Media Emerging" was the subject of a recent U.S. State Department eJournal USA. You can view this online journal in several languages here:
Q [inktank]: Hi, Derek. Isn't it dangerous for a dissident group to register a domain name, for this means losing their anonymity to an institution related to the government they most likely are fighting? and if so, isn't this a kind of ideological censorship? Thanks.
A: Thanks for your question - this is a difficult choice for a dissident group. Imagine, for a moment, a pro-democracy political party in China. If that group tries to register a domain name in cn, the PRC's country-code top level domain (ccTLD), they are likely to face problems such as harassment and even imprisonment. On the other hand, if the group registers the domain name in .com with a registrar that is not located in China or a similarly repressive country, their risk is much lower - especially if they avail themselves of the option to keep the registration information private.
Hence, this choice is something that a dissident group must think carefully about. (It also holds for where such a group hosts its Internet content - if it's on an ISP in the state where they're located, that state can take the Web site down by the simple expedient of sending security officials with guns to the ISP's server room.
If the content is hosted on a Web server abroad, the country will have a much more difficult time pulling down the material, at least without the cooperation of the country where the server is located. Of course, filtering is always possible here.) In addition, as your question anticipates, it's quite hard for dissidents to post material on-line via blogs and discussion forums - doing so can expose members to scrutiny and retribution since it's generally possible to trace back the poster's IP address to a physical location and even an ISP account.
A: Let me also add this: filtering - blocking of material from Internet users in a particular location - isn't just a characteristic of authoritarian regimes. France and Germany, based on their unique historical experiences, require search engines to de-list hate speech, Nazi, and white supremacist content. British Telecom (BT) uses its CleanFeed system to block images of child pornography/child abuse. These practices would strike many as unobjectionable, yet the underlying technology and techniques are the same that are used to keep Iranian dissident materials away from that country's citizens. I think we need to consider these questions in a more complex way that takes into account how states define material as objectionable or unlawful and the processes by which their citizens can challenge such determinations.
In closing, I thank all of you, and our Moderator, for a thoughtful and enlightening discussion. There are a number of countries where this type of exchange would put me at risk of being imprisoned, and could lead to this Web site being blocked. When we deal with questions of access to information, I believe the default setting - the norm - should be for users and citizens to have the opportunity to read and to create expression without facing a censor's scrutiny or approval. While there are types of content that most would agree are potentially harmful, few countries that filter confine their efforts to these materials, and many of those that do block use these concerns as a fig leaf to mask efforts to prevent access to information such as political dissent.
I hope all of you will continue to engage these issues, and to advocate your views to your political representatives. I look forward to future occasions to learn from you and to exchange ideas. Thanks again, and thanks to the State Department for taking up this vital and fascinating topic.
IIP Moderator: We wish to thank Dr. Bambauer for joining today's webchat. The webchat is now closed. Please visit our USINFO Webchat Station where today's webchat transcript will be posted within one business day.
And please join us for the third chat in this series which will take place tomorrow.
(While guests are chosen for their expertise, the views expressed by the guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of State.)
Derek Bambauer: thanks very much! This has been great fun.
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(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
