Internet Freedom and Technology, Social Forum, Helsinki 2011-04-02

1. Internet Freedom and
Technology
tommi.karttaavi@isoc.fi

2. Repressive governments and the Internet
● Many ways to stifle activism and dissidence on-line
● Censorship
● Blocking
● Tracking
● Disinformation and propaganda
● Intimidation
● Malware and hacking
● Cutting connections altogether

3. Are Google, Facebook and Twitter activist's
best friends?
● Companies are in it for the money, saving the world is not
on their agenda
● Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and other companies have
cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing
a system of internet censorship in mainland China
● Several Chinese dissidents have been sentenced to long
prison terms with cooperation from Yahoo!

4. How to be an on-line freedom fighter and get
away with it?
● The same technologies that help activists organize themselves can
also be used against them
● Internet service providers or a social networking sites may be legally
obligated to disclose user information to the authorities
● Identities can also be revealed indirectly by combining data from
social networks and public records
● Technologies exist to provide anonymity and circumvent censorship
● Distributed social networks
● Anonymity networks
● Ad hoc networking

5. Diaspora
● Distributed social networking service, providing a
decentralized alternative to social network services like
Facebook
● Users can set up their own server (or "pod") to host
content
● Pods can interact to share status updates, photographs
and other social data
● Allows users to host their data with a traditional web host,
a cloud based host, an ISP, or a friend
● https://joindiaspora.com/

6. Tor anonymity network
● Composed of client software and a network of servers
● Client is based on open source and the network is free to
use
● Protects users' personal freedom, privacy, and ability to
conduct confidential business, by keeping their internet
activities from being monitored
● hides communication patterns by relaying data through
volunteer servers
● Also able to evade many internet censorship systems
● https://www.torproject.org

7. Freenet
● Decentralized, censorship-resistant distributed data store
● Creates a private network where users can create
websites, share files and send/receive emails between
other members of the network
● Content is hosted by sharing it amongst users of the
network
●
Users cannot select what content they host, and it is
stored in an encrypted form
● https://freenetproject.org/

8. Psiphon
● Web proxy designed to help Internet users securely
bypass the content-filtering systems used to censor the
internet
● No centralized control; hard to block but also hard for a
user to find a server
● No additional software needed
● http://psiphon.ca/

9. Ad hoc networking
● A wireless ad hoc network is a decentralized type of
wireless network
● Does not rely on a preexisting infrastructure, such as
routers in wired networks or access points in managed
(infrastructure) wireless networks
● Each node participates in routing by forwarding data for
other nodes, and so the determination of which nodes
forward data is made dynamically based on the network
connectivity
● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network

10. Netsukuku
● Experimental peer-to-peer routing system, created to
build up a distributed network
● Anonymous and censorship-free
● Fully independent but not necessarily separated from
Internet
● No need for servers or Internet service providers
● No central authority, no backbone router or any routing
equipment other than normal network interface cards
● http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/

11. Delay tolerant networking
● Background in ad-hoc and wireless networking
development starting from the 70's
● Later driven by the Interplanetary Internet research
iniative
● Could be used in a situation where existing internet
connections are down
● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking

12. Thank you!
Contact:
tommi.karttaavi@isoc.fi