War against the internet

About

As the internet has entered the general public awareness and people have begun to depend upon it as a means of communication, and to depend less upon the traditional news sources, powermongers have slowly come to realize the tremendous threat potential it has for them. No longer can they succeed in suppressing stories by top-down control of the media; on the internet, any individual can ultimately spread the word to as many people as necessary.

Links

Reference

• wikipedia:Scientology versus the Internet describes successful and often non-obvious tactics used to close down open discussion (in this case, by advocates of Scientology)

Projects

• PeaceFire is a dual-purposed site:
  • shows how site-blocking software "for the protection of children" is subject to abuse as a device for censorship
  • provides practical tips for circumventing such software
• Megaphone desktop tool allows individual users to "slave" their voting and posting to a central server, so that votes and posts are made on their behalf without exposing the users to the actual arguments under discussion. While participation is entirely voluntary, use of this tool (especially given that it does not offer users the choice of whether to take action in each case, much less which action to take) violates the "citizen participation" spirit of the internet.

Related

• 2014/04/23 [L..T] Russia Orders Bloggers To 'Register'; Outlaws Anonymous Blogging, Continues Clampdown On Social Media "As we've reported, Russia has been steadily trying to bring the Internet under control with ever-more stringent measures. After tackling general Web sites through powers that allow them to be blocked more easily, it now seems to be the turn of the bloggers..."
• 2014/04/14 [L..T] Out in the Open: Inside the Operating System Edward Snowden Used to Evade the NSA
• 2014/04/10 [L..T] Turkey to maintain YouTube block despite 'free speech' ruling "YouTube will remain blocked in Turkey in spite of a court order ruling that the ban is a violation of freedom of speech. The prohibition of social media in Turkey sparked public ire and mass protests against internet censorship."
• 2014/03/22 [L..T] Turkey reportedly cuts off Twitter backdoor by blocking Google DNS "Turkey has reportedly blocked Google DNS inside its borders, eliminating a backdoor that briefly helped Turks stay connected to Twitter after the country banned access."
• 2013/09/06 [L..T] Has the NSA broken SSL? TLS? AES? "Indications suggest that SSL and other fundamental Internet security technologies have indeed been compromised by the NSA."
• 2011/07/12 [L..T] How committed are ISPs to graduated response?
• 2010/03/27 [L..T] The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters
• 2009/11/18 [L..T] How we discovered Verizon's Spamdetector could be twisted into a disguise for censorship “According to the laws of Verizon Central, once you've been labeled spam, there is only one course of action and it goes like this:...”