Nestled in the claustrophobic basement of the Munk Centre, the Citizen Lab, a research group composed of activist hackers, “hacktivists” for short, are saving the world. Hunched over computer terminals, they investigate Internet censorship in repressive regimes, writing software to punch through filters. By giving access to Western media and facilitating freedom of speech for dissidents, it’s just a matter of time before these oppressive governments crumble.
Or so the story usually goes.
Since its inception in 2001, Citizen Lab has been one of U of T’s highest profile research groups. It has received coverage ranging from The Varsity and NOW, to Canadian staples like the CBC and the Globe and Mail, to large-scale features in the New York Times, the BBC, and magazines like Wired and Forbes.
One thing the coverage has a penchant for is the dramatic. “Net ninjas take on web censorship,” declares the BBC. The Washington Post labels them a “new breed of hackers,” and even the traditionally staid NYT gets in on the game, headlining their piece “Guerrilla Warfare, Waged With Code.”
Perhaps it’s not surprising that these storylines take the same form. Start with a term that the public fears—“hacker”—and turn it on its head with “hacktivist.” Throw in an exotic setting (the group’s basement headquarters), a form of technology that people don’t understand very well, and clear villains (China and Iran), and you’ve got a pretty compelling narrative.
Other than some technicalities, most discussions concerning this “hacker grow-op” aren’t factually incorrect. So what exactly does the story get wrong?
It’s certainly not in the portrayal of the Lab’s quirky headquarters—indeed, Citizen Lab is located in the type of space usually reserved for gloomy tutorial rooms, or rows of lockers. At the end of a low-ceilinged hallway, behind a barely-labelled door, the group shares a common space filled with monitors, servers, and computer paraphernalia. Stickers, slogans, and posters adorn the walls. Inside a fish tank full of oil is a running computer, one of the many testaments to the group’s DIY flare. Citizen Lab is the least academic-looking place on campus.
As for the group’s primary research, the Internet is being “carved up, colonized, and militarized,” says director Ron Deibert. The Information Warfare Monitor documents how the Internet is used in conjunction with traditional warfare. For instance, in the recent conflict between Georgia and Russia, Georgian websites found themselves under attack while Russian media pages were being filtered.
A major prong of the research is done through the Open Net Inititive. Alongside peers at Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford, Citizen Lab researchers investigate the nature and extent of Internet filtering around the world, with disturbing results. In only a few years, countries that blocked access to certain types of content climbed from four to 26 by 2007.
Perhaps Citizen Lab’s most electrifying project is Psiphon, a software tool written specifically to circumvent the filtering that the group researches. Designed to tap into social relationships across national borders, someone living in Canada can “lend” their unfiltered Internet connection to a friend living in Burma.
The media may have their facts straight, but they’re missing the point. The group’s endeavors, depicted as the superheroes of the information superhighway, obscure a key part of how such filtering actually takes place. North American technology firms often create the programs, search engines, and hardware that allows for filtering to happen in the first place.
To begin cracking apart this skewed coverage, take a look at the CBC. A particularly ambitious reporter attempted to rev up the footage for their piece by coaxing Citizen Lab members into participating in a protest. Any research for the story would have had to be done outside the CBC office, as CBC’s corporate Internet filters block psiphon.ca for being “anonymizing software.”
Most large corporations in North America and Europe implement some form of filtering on their internal networks. One can make a reasonable argument for corporate filtering—most of us know from personal experience what happens to productivity with access to Facebook. But on a national level, according to Deibert, there isn’t much evidence of actual Internet censorship.
In Canada, the only major example is the voluntary filtering of child pornography by ISPs. This process has no direct government involvement and a lack of transparency, but is an issue that most wouldn’t want to debate.
Other examples usually fall along economic lines. Telus blocked access to a union site during a labour dispute, for instance. Other battles have been waged to stop pirating, or blocking users from VOIP services, something that other ISPs fear will disrupt their traditional monopolies.
In America, major examples usually reflect the National American Hangup: sex. Libraries and schools are mandated to have software that blocks pornography, creating an industry of software designed to filter connections. Unfortunately, due to political pressure or simple errors, sites that contain sexual health information or deal with gay and lesbian issues are often collateral damage.
But what happens when the companies that produce this software attempt to expand their markets by selling to foreign governments? Filtering political speech is only a matter of tweaking some internal settings.
The California-based SmartFilter is an industry leader. Rarely confirming or denying their controversial sales, a quote from a spokesperson suggests the true reality behind this practice: “We sell to ISPs where the law allows. It’s really up to the customer how they use our software.”
Iran is an interesting exception: due to sanctions, U.S. law prevents any commercial involvement with the regime. How is it that Iran uses the same Smartfilter technology to implement the country’s filtering initiative? The company responded that the country is using a pirated version, but many researchers suspect the software made its way through a complicated network of resellers.
Filtering a high flux of information is difficult enough for a country to do properly. For the Great Internet Firewall of China, it’s a whole other matter. U.S. technology company Cisco, one of the country’s largest, readily admits that it has sold government authorities the hardware devices necessary to handle massive routing operations. However, has the company also provided the specific technical assistance.
Citizen Lab’s Nart Villeneuve produced a report detailing how North American companies participate in Internet censorship by restricting search results.
Villeneuve was originally a student in a Political Science course taught by Deibert. As part of his coursework, he handed in a paper that described his personal investigations into filtering in China. “When I saw the way he was approaching things, I said, ‘Wow, this is really interesting. This is exactly what I want to encourage and promote,’” Deibert recalls. Villeneuve was hired.
In some cases, Villeneuve found more blocked Chinese content online than that blocked by Baiku, China’s largest search engine. Originally, researchers thought the Chinese government controlled the process, but Villeneuve suspects that it’s a softer model. While companies interpret general guidance on what to censor, they also respond to specific requests.
There’s no need to congratulate ourselves for having so little filtering in North America, especially in the United States. “They don’t need it. They have the biggest, most massive, most intensive Internet surveillance system ever,” notes Villeneuve.
By its very nature, surveillance is harder to investigate than filtering, but equally disruptive to freedom of speech. Citizens aren’t as open when they know there’s a chance the government is listening.
“It’s hard because you can’t get data on it unless there are whistleblowers,” observes Villeneuve. Several years ago, a former AT&T employee revealed the existence of a secret room allowing the National Security Agency to monitor all Internet traffic passing through one of the Internet’s main backbones. Congress quickly scrambled to grant retroactive immunity to the telecoms operating these so-called “back rooms.”
The media tales of circumvention software abroad neglect the reality of surveillance in North America. “I wish there was more of an emphasis on surveillance,” concludes Villeneuve.
Most North Americans would agree that freedom of speech is crucial, but is the media right to glorify programs subverting controls that governments have decided their country needs?
Consider what might happen in a culture that believes U.S. citizens are being unduly deprived of the right to access narcotics—The Great Drug Firewall of America, let’s call it. How would we handle those breaking through these barriers to provide access to drugs?
Deibert sees the difference as being that freedom of speech is a universal human right, one that many countries, including China, have agreed upon—on paper anyways—when they signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Villeneuve agrees: “If you find a comparable example, something that would be considered a human right,” he says, it might be legitimate to circumvent North American controls. He’s not interested in breaking down every wall society constructs. “It’s not my job to make sure Saudis have access to porn.”
Deibert and Villeneuve take no issue with censoring specific types of content, including child pornography. Their chief concern is how these decisions are made. In most countries in which Internet censorship takes place, citizens don’t have the opportunity to openly discuss cultural taboos. Some don’t even know that the discussion is happening elsewhere. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” Deibert argues.
As Citizen Lab collaborator Jonathan Zittrain wryly observed, the Internet is the greatest force for spreading pornography and Youtube videos of cats flushing toilets. But is an open Internet the greatest force for spreading democracy and freedom?
“There’s this myth about The Internet as this magical, mysterious tech realm that government couldn’t control,” says Deibert. How could a country maintain oppressive control in the face of a global communication network? As Citizen Lab research shows, filtering and Internet warfare are two ways governments can regain command.
Certain regions of the world hint that an open Internet connection is not dial-up for a free state. In spite of having some of the least restricted Internet access in the world, Russia and the former Soviet Bloc have recently taken an authoritarian turn. It seems that traditional political forces of control still prevail.
Why haven’t traditional human rights groups taken a stance on uncensored Internet usage? Do other political issues take precedence? “I think so,” Villeneuve says. “It’s slowly being recognized that an open communication environment does have an impact on these other areas because it allows for information exchange and organizing.” Furthermore, Internet usage is still growing—long term effects are unknown at this point.
At the end of the day, does this portrayal of “net commandos” battling for freedom bother the members of Citizen Lab? A poll on their own site asks what content ISPs should restrict; one of the responses is “media coverage of the ‘hacker prof.’” It’s not Villeneuve’s preferred way to be represented, “but I understand why they want to do it. They have to sell a paper.”
Not to mention the sheer number of technical errors and mistakes about the nature of filtering. “There’s always something wrong,” Deibert acknowledges, especially when singling out China’s technology practices. Villeneuve has since refused to discuss the lab’s online interference, eventually relenting.
A former Citizen Lab member describes an “unspoken bargain” with the media: in exchange for glorified but often sloppy reporting, their cause receives widespread coverage. It may be, like she says, just “the cost of getting the message out.” But at the expense of discussing the effects of our own interference?
Unfortunately for a net-ninja operating in an unfiltered media environment, there’s only so much you can control.
