Time to reboot our push for global Internet freedom

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Bruce Irving

By Jackson Diehl | Washington Post | October 25, 2010

Last Tuesday 215,646 Internet users in Iran evaded their regime to visit sites such as Facebook, Twitter and RadioFarda.com, the U.S.-funded Persian-language news service. In Syria, 14,886 people freely surfed; in Vietnam, 10,612; in Saudi Arabia, 14,691; in China, 18,000.

I know this because I saw the internal logs of a company called UltraReach, which created and manages a firewall-breaching system that is allowing as many as half a million people a day to visit Web sites banned by their governments, and circumvent or avoid detection. To watch the traffic stream through the company’s servers is to see a parade of the world’s most oppressed people. In the few minutes I watched I also saw Cubans, Burmese, Uzbeks, Belarusians, Algerians, Cambodians and Libyans traveling via an Internet link to Northern California, where they were able to visit any non-pornographic site without being blocked or identified.

That the technology created by UltraReach and an affiliated company called Freegate works is not a matter of debate. Its success has been recognized from the State Department to the Chinese government, which has devoted enormous resources to trying to defeat it, so far unsuccessfully. The question is what is to be done. The companies’ volunteer founders and operators say that if they could get $30 million in funding they could ramp up their server networks to accommodate millions more users — and effectively destroy the Internet controls of Iran and most other dictatorships.

Since 2007, a few in Congress have been trying to get that funding by putting earmarks into the State Department budget — a total of $50 million so far. Yet the firewall-busting firms, which have formed an entity called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, have yet to receive a dime. In fact, $35 million of the funds has yet to be spent, even though it was included in State’s budgets for 2009 and 2010.

You’d think State would be eager to act. After all, Hillary Clinton gave a major speech last January saying that the promotion of Internet freedom would be a top priority. Her senior aide for human rights and democracy, Assistant Secretary Michael Posner, says that defeating Internet censorship could be “a game-changer” in countries like Iran.

So why has nothing happened? The answer appears to be a mix of bureaucratic slowness, confusion over policy and — just possibly — a desire to avoid offending the Chinese government, which has denounced the Internet coalition as “anti-China forces engaged in anti-China activities.”

In fact, the founders of UltraReach are members of the Falun Gong movement, which has been banned and heavily persecuted by Beijing. Its chief technologist, who met with me last week, left China for Silicon Valley after the 1989 Tiananmen square massacre. This man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he has relatives in China, said that the circumvention program was written in 2001-02 to help Chinese get around the regime’s powerful firewall. But the software, which can be carried on a thumb drive, quickly spread. How much so became clear in June 2009, when Iranians erupted in protest over a stolen presidential election. More than 1 million Iranians tried to use UltraReach’s system, causing its servers to crash. Since then about half of the system’s users have been Iranian.

The Bush administration received the first $15 million put in State’s budget for this technology through the efforts of Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), among others. It gave most of the money to a company that specializes in training journalists. The next appropriation, of $5 million, was inherited by the Obama administration; it took more than 18 months to dispose of it. Of that funding, $1.5 million was given in August to the Broadcasting Board of Governors for distribution to the Global Internet Freedom Consortium. But the BBG has yet to turn over the funds. Meanwhile, State has not even begun the process of distributing the $30 million in its budget for fiscal 2010, which ended three weeks ago.

Posner says that’s because State has been busy developing a detailed strategy for implementing Clinton’s Internet freedom goals. It will, he said, be aimed not just at busting Internet firewalls but also at heading off governments’ moves to regulate the Internet. So while funding for circumvention “will be an important piece” of the program, so will research into technologies and training, including of State’s own personnel. Posner told me, “the money should follow the strategy.”

That sounds reasonable. Yet while State is polishing its policy and preparing yet more training programs, Iranians and people from dozens of other countries are trying to get free access to the Internet. The technology exists to give it to them. State has the money in hand to pay for it. Yet after years of delay, the agency still hesitates to act. Posner says this has nothing to do with fear of offending China; but last year The Post quoted an unidentified State Department official saying the opposite. Either way, it’s a poor record.

US gives Iran more net freedom – but what about Syria?

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Turkletom

By Jillian C York | The Guardian | June 16, 2010

Iranian web users recently received some good news: following the media frenzy over last year’s elections, the US has chosen to relax export controls related to technology, giving users access to previously unavailable communications tools. The changes will affect not only Iran, but Sudan and Cuba as well, countries where free internet use has long been stifled by US restrictions.

In March the treasury department’s office of foreign assets control (OFAC) announced the amendments to current controls to “ensure that individuals in these countries can exercise their universal right to free speech and information to the greatest extent possible”. The amendments will allow those netizens to download software related to communications, such as instant messaging and chat clients, and tools related to social networking, and also permit the export of the same types of software to Iran and Sudan.

This news comes at a time when dialogue surrounding freedom of expression online is at a fever pitch in the United States. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in her celebrated January speech on internet freedom, stated that American companies need to take a principled stand against censorship, and that it should be part of the country’s “national brand”. In that vein, the amendments to the current export controls are a welcome gesture, both to American companies and to the netizens who benefit from their products.

Iran, of course, is an obvious target for these amendments, with nearly 30 million internet users and significant media attention in recent months. But what about Syria? Although there are no OFAC restrictions placed on Syria, the US department of commerce’s 2004 Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act prohibits the export of most goods containing more than 10% US-manufactured component parts to the country. The act also includes a provision on items deemed imports, including technology or source code controlled on the Commerce Control List, though licences are available for software providers through the bureau of industry and security.

Syrian netizens have long been aware of the effects of export controls on their lives. They are prevented from downloading popular software such as Java and Adobe Acrobat, and browsers such as Google’s Chrome. Microsoft products are available, but in pirated form, or smuggled in illegally. What is surprising to many, however, is when a new ban suddenly emerges; each year, a number of software providers seemingly crack down on Syrian users, often blocking access to entire websites for fear of non-compliance with the act.

For example, in early 2009, Syrian visitors to the professional networking site LinkedIn were surprised to be met with a blockpage. Though the full-on block was quickly removed, to this day users are barred from accessing the site’s proprietary software. Similarly, in January 2010, open-source code repository SourceForge began blocking the IP addresses of users in Iran, Sudan, Cuba, North Korea and Syria, much to the dismay of open-source enthusiasts. Though in the end, SourceForge removed the blanket block – placing responsibility on project managers to choose their level of restriction – the fact remains that a large swath of open-source projects are still off limits to users from restricted countries.

But in Syria, just as in Iran, the internet serves as an important communications and organising tool for dissidents and average users alike. And when you consider the fact that the Syrian government filters the internet internally as well (blocking sites such as Facebook and Blogspot, among many others), you realise that users are left with very little wiggle room.

If Hillary Clinton is serious about promoting internet freedom to all, she would be wise to consider the effects of the Syrian accountability act on the average Syrian netizen and what that means for the United States’ “brand” of internet freedom.