Internet Censorship

Don’t Be Fooled: The Horrible Anti-Internet Bill Is NOT Being Shelved Until Next Year

News - Internet Censorship

Saturday, 17 December 2011 13:28

The Committee Members Who Support SOPA Sneakily Changed the Hearing Date to December 21st, Trying to Trick the American People Into Thinking It Was Over Until After the Holidays So We Won’t Fight Back!

Washington’s Blog
Saturday, December 17, 2011

News reports initially said that the despicable anti-Internet bill – SOPA – has been delayed until next year. As Huffington Post notes:

After two days of debate, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) abruptly halted a key hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act, postponing a Committee vote on the bill until 2012. The move marks a win for hordes of internet activists who oppose the bill, but gives lawmakers another opportunity to juice deep-pocketed corporations for campaign contributions.

“This is a huge victory for everyone who uses the Internet — and proof that millions of people speaking out can still make a difference in a Congress usually run by corporate lobbyists,” said Aaron Swartz, co-founder of Reddit and Demand Progress, an organization that has staunchly opposed the bills for months.

***

“It is good news,” said Sherwin Sie, deputy legal director Public Knowledge, a non-profit group opposing the bill. “The last thing you want is to get something like this rushed through at the last minute while people are trying to do something else. That’s been the message of SOPA opponents throughout. What’s the big rush?”

But Tech Dirt gives the following update:

Update…. Or not. Despite the fact that Congress was supposed to be out of session until the end of January, the Judiciary Committee has just announced plans to come back to continue the markup this coming Wednesday. This is rather unusual and totally unnecessary. But it shows just how desperate Hollywood is to pass this bill as quickly as possible, before the momentum of opposition builds up even further.

Get Internet Access When Your Government Shuts It Down

News - Internet Censorship

Friday, 09 December 2011 17:10

Does your government have an Internet kill-switch? Read our guide to Guerrilla Networking and be prepared for when the lines get cut.

These days, no popular movement goes without an Internet presence of some kind, whether it’s organizing on Facebook or spreading the word through Twitter. And as we’ve seen in Egypt, that means that your Internet connection can be the first to go. Whether you’re trying to check in with your family, contact your friends, or simply spread the word, here are a few ways to build some basic network connectivity when you can’t rely on your cellular or landline Internet connections.

Do-It-Yourself Internet With Ad-Hoc Wi-Fi

Even if you’ve managed to find an Internet connection for yourself, it won’t be that helpful in reaching out to your fellow locals if they can’t get online to find you. If you’re trying to coordinate a group of people in your area and can’t rely on an Internet connection, cell phones, or SMS, your best bet could be a wireless mesh network of sorts–essentially, a distributed network of wireless networking devices that can all find each other and communicate with each other. Even if none of those devices have a working Internet connection, they can still find each other, which, if your network covers the city you’re in, might be all you need. At the moment, wireless mesh networking isn’t really anywhere close to market-ready, though we have seen an implementation of the 802.11s draft standard, which extends the 802.11 Wi-Fi standard to include wireless mesh networking, in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptop.

However, a prepared guerrilla networker with a handful of PCs could make good use of Daihinia ($25, 30-day free trial), an app that piggybacks on your Wi-Fi adapter driver to turn your normal ad-hoc Wi-Fi network into a multihop ad-hoc network (disclaimer: we haven’t tried this ourselves yet), meaning that instead of requiring each device on the network to be within range of the original access point, you simply need to be within range of a device on the network that has Daihinia installed, effectively allowing you to add a wireless mesh layer to your ad-hoc network.

Advanced freedom fighters can set up a portal Web page on their network that explains the way the setup works, with Daihinia instructions and a local download link so they can spread the network even further. Lastly, just add a Bonjour-compatible chat client like Pidgin or iChat, and you’ll be able to talk to your neighbors across the city without needing an Internet connection.

Back to Basics

Remember when you stashed your old modems in the closet because you thought you might need them some day? In the event of a total communications blackout–as we’re seeing in Egypt, for example–you’ll be glad you did. Older and simpler tools, like dial-up Internet or even ham radio, could still work, since these “abandoned” tech avenues aren’t being policed nearly as hard.

In order to get around the total shutdown of all of the ISPs within Egypt, several international ISPs are offering dial-up access to the Internet to get protesters online, since phone service is still operational. It’s slow, but it still works–the hard part is getting the access numbers without an Internet connection to find them.

Unfortunately, such dial-up numbers can also be fairly easily shut down by the Egyptian government, so you could also try returning to FidoNet–a distributed networking system for BBSes that was popular in the 1980s. FidoNet is limited to sending only simple text messages, and it’s slow, but it has two virtues: Users connect asynchronously, so the network traffic is harder to track, and any user can act as the server, which means that even if the government shuts down one number in the network, another one can quickly pop up to take its place.

You could also take inspiration from groups that are working to create an ad-hoc communications network into and out of Egypt using Ham Radio, since the signals are rarely tracked and extremely hard to shut down or block. Most of these efforts are still getting off the ground, but hackers are already cobbling together ways to make it a viable form of communication into and out of the country.

Always Be Prepared

In the land of no Internet connection, the man with dial-up is king. Here are a few gadgets that you could use to prepare for the day they cut the lines.

Given enough time and preparation, your ham radio networks could even be adapted into your own ad-hoc network using Packet Radio, a radio communications protocol that you can use to create simple long-distance wireless networks to transfer text and other messages between computers. Packet Radio is rather slow and not particularly popular (don’t try to stream any videos with this, now), but it’s exactly the kind of networking device that would fly under the radar.

In response to the crisis in Egypt, nerds everywhere have risen to call for new and exciting tools for use in the next government-mandated shutdown. Bre Pettis, founder of the hackerspace NYC Resistor and creator of the Makerbot 3D printer, has called for “Apps for the Appocalypse,” including a quick and easy way to set up chats on a local network so you can talk with your friends and neighbors in an emergency even without access to the Internet. If his comments are any indication,  Appocalypse apps may be headed your way soon.

Tons of cool tech are also just waiting to be retrofitted for these purposes. David Dart’s Pirate Box is a one-step local network in a box originally conceived for file sharing and local P2P purposes, but it wouldn’t take much work to adapt the Pirate Box as a local networking tool able to communicate with other pirate boxes to form a compact, mobile set of local networks in the event of an Internet shutdown.

Whether you’re in Egypt or Eagle Rock, you rely on your Internet access to stay in touch with friends and family, get your news, and find information you need. (And read PCWorld, of course.) Hopefully with these apps, tools, and techniques, you won’t have to worry about anyone–even your government–keeping you from doing just that.

DHS Shut Down Blog For A Year On False Pretenses

News - Internet Censorship

Friday, 09 December 2011 15:51

Homeland Security is seizing websites for “copyright infringement” with no evidence

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com

In a chilling illustration of how far Internet censorship has advanced, the Department of Homeland Security seized a popular music blog and shut down the website for over a year on charges it now admits were completely false.

The website in question – www.dajaz1.com – was not some obscure, dubious blog – it was a popular platform for DJ’s that was once featured on MTV.

“Around Thanksgiving 2010, the Department of Homeland Security seized more than 70 domains with no trial, accusing them of copyright infringement,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

Dajaz1.com was caught in the dragnet after DHS claimed four songs posted on the website were used without permission, when in fact the musicians and publicists concerned had sent the tracks directly to Dajaz1 with express authorization.

That didn’t stop Homeland Security from seizing and shutting down the blog for over a year, violating the law by refusing to tell its owner why the website was taken and subsequently missing the 90 day deadline for explaining why the owner should forfeit the property permanently.

“Or at least that’s what the owner assumed when he heard nothing. Then the court told him that the government got an extension.”

“But the owner couldn’t see the extension because all the filings in the case were sealed, and was not allowed to testify in court to ask for his property back, says TechDirt.”

The saga finally came to a close when the owner was handed back control of the website only yesterday.

The lesson to take from this is that Homeland Security can now just claim your website contains copyrighted material with no evidence whatsoever and seize it without any recourse.

“This whole thing has been a disgrace by the US government, starting with a bogus seizure, improper and illegal censorship, followed by denial of due process and unnecessary secrecy,” reports TechDirt.

The DHS has already seized dozens of websites merely for linking to copyrighted material, despite the fact that such material isn’t even hosted on the website itself, a process the Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized as, “Blunt instruments that cause unacceptable collateral damage to free speech rights.”

The targeted website, now finally back in the hands of its rightful owner, has become a poster child for the anti-Internet censorship movement. The front page of the site urges readers to oppose the Protect IP Act, legislation that will give the government even more power to block websites by creating an official blacklist.

As we reported back in October, the bill that has attracted bi-partisan support in the House will force Internet Service Providers to create a list of banned websites and prevent their users from accessing the sites, creating a Chinese-style ‘ban list’ that could easily be abused to silence free speech. Lawmakers like Senator Joe Lieberman have teamed up with Department of Homeland Security officials to push draconian legislation in an effort to mimic the Communist Chinese system of policing the Internet.

“A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address,” states the bill.

Given the fact that the U.S. government is now ordering You Tube to remove videos that contain “government criticism,” the potential for this legislation to be abused to silence political free speech is clear. Add to that the fact that Verisign, the global authority over all .com domain names, is demanding the power to terminate websites deemed “abusive” when ordered to by government without a court order or any kind of oversight whatsoever, and the threat to web freedom is clear.

U.S. & Israel Launch New Phase Of Cyber Warfare

News - Internet Censorship

Thursday, 20 October 2011 15:48

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com

The re-emergence of the Stuxnet virus in a virtually identical form to its previous incarnation heralds a “new round of cyber war,” and given the fact that the last version was created by the U.S. and Israel, it’s obvious where the finger of blame should be pointing once again.

“Analysts at US firms McAfee and Symantec agreed that a sophisticated virus dubbed “Duqu” has been unleashed on an apparent mission to gather intelligence for future attacks on industrial control systems,” reports AFP.

“This seems to be the reconnaissance phase of something much larger,” McAfee senior research analyst Adam Wosotowsky told AFP about the virus, named for the “DQ” prefix on files it creates.

The new incarnation of the virus is primarily aimed at the Middle East and is designed to “mount a future attack on an industrial control facility” by capturing password data and infiltrating networks undetected.

“McAfee and Symantec said that, based on snippets of the virus they were given to study, portions of the encrypted Duqu code matched identically scrambled portions of Stuxnet,” states the report.

After last year’s Stuxnet worm attack targeted Iranian nuclear plants, the New York Times reported, months after we had first identified “Israel and the United States….as the prime suspects behind the Stuxnet worm attack,” that the virus was indeed created by the U.S. and Israel.

“The covert race to create Stuxnet was a joint project between the Americans and the Israelis, with some help, knowing or unknowing, from the Germans and the British,” reported the NY Times on January 15.

Even after it was all but admitted that the United States and Israel created Stuxnet to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, the establishment media’s coverage of the new incarnation of the worm is completely absent that fact.

Perhaps we can expect to be labeled “conspiracy theorists” once again for stating the blindingly obvious – that while US cybersecurity officials concentrate power and funding in the name of defending against cyber attacks, they are the ones launching them. The US and Israel is once again behind the attack and it will primarily be aimed at disrupting Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

As we documented, before the New York Times reported that the U.S. and Israel were behind the attack last year, numerous talking heads claimed there was no evidence to suggest this, blaming Russia or China instead, and demonizing those who pointed the finger at the obvious culprits for circulating “ridiculous” theories.

It really scales the heights of hypocrisy to hear the arguments of US cybersecurity officials about the need to hand them the power to control the Internet in the name of protecting against cyber warfare, when the U.S. government itself is behind almost every act of cyber warfare.

Earlier this week it also emerged that the Obama administration considered opening its assault on Libya by launching a cyber attack to “disable the Qaddafi government’s air-defense system”.

Given the fact that strong rumors of an attack on Iran have been circulating for several weeks, this round of cyber warfare could be the opening salvo for something far bigger.