The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab has just released an open source application which allows users from countries where there is Internet censorship to utilize anonymous servers located worldwide. The system is a far improvement from the over burdened anonymity software called TOR.
When I was in Manila for the Free Expression in Asia Cyberspace meeting back in April Nart Villeneuve, had conducted a technical workshop where he shed light on the latest developments in this regard where at that time it was in alpha stage of development, psiphon went into beta release in July and finally on December 1st entered its public release after aggressive testing throughout the world.
psiphon acts as a “web proxy” for authenticated users, retrieving requested web pages and displaying them in a user’s browser. using a secure, encrypted connection to receive web requests from the main servers (psiphonode) down to the end-user (psiphonite). There is no connection between the user and the requested website, as psiphon transparently proxies the request through the psiphonode’s computer allowing the psiphonite to browse blocked websites seamlessly This ensures anonymity and also a great tool to circumvent censored websites.
The end-user simply has to apply on the psiphon forum for a URL and password provided by one of the administrators of a psiphonode (server) once you go to the URL and log-on you can browse the web freely without any restrictions of censorship which makes this system great tool for users in Pakistan you can use it to circumvent the censorship enforced by the Govt of Pakistan.
Reporters Without Borders have started its online protest. The Internet is increasingly falling prey to censorship round the world. The 13 “Enemies of the Internet” are blocking access to news which displeases them and imprisoning bloggers who express themselves too freely. Join the campaign now to defend the right of all of us to freedom of expression.
There are three ways to participate in this 24 hour campaign
- Vote against the Enemies of Internet by clicking on the Internet Black Holes
- Record your message for Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang to protest Yahoo!’s collaboration with the Chinese Govt
- Join the RSF Blog to fight for freedom of expression on the Internet
Reporters without Borders is organizing a 24-hour Online Protest between 11 a.m. on 7 November and 11 a.m. on 8 November. This protest is to raise our voice against the 13 Governments that are being labelled as ‘Internet Enemies’. We as Pakistanis and activists of the Don’t Block the Blog where we condemn the Censorship of the Internet in Pakistan, would like to join this Online Protest alongside RSF to condemn all countries which are actively blocking the use of the Internet in their own countries
The protest start at precisely at 11 a.m. on 7 November to the next day ending at 11 a.m. on 8 November. Reporters Without Borders have outlined a few things which people can do to show their support. (read the entire list here)
Cyber Demo
Go to www.rsf.org during this 24-hour period, find the list of 13 countries that are Internet enemies and click on an inter-active map of the world to help make the Internet black holes disappear. Every click will help Reporters Without Borders to speak with more force when it condemns the behaviour of those regimes that censor.
Record a message for the founder of Yahoo!
Internet users from all over the world will have the chance to record a message for Yahoo!’s founder from their personal computers. Reporters Without Borders will make sure the messages get to him. Why Yahoo? Because this was the first company to censor its own search engine to curry favour with the Chinese authorities. And it has been collaborating with the Chinese police, leading to the arrest and conviction of freelance journalists.
Pakistanis In Support
Pakistanis fully support RSF in this Online Protest condemning Internet Censorship and strongly stress that the world community should also look at the horrible situation here in Pakistan where the Freedom of Expression remains at the mercy of the Government of Pakistan.
Spread the Word & Make a Blog Post on Nov 7th/8th to Show Your Support
In a very interesting turn of events, the administrator of a Greek RSS aggregating service blogme.gr got sued, arrested and jailed by the Greek cybercrime division for hosting a link to a blog with offending content, after having been served with a libel lawsuit without prior notice, because a public figure was offended by a satirical blog that was linked to by his site. The Greek blogging community has come out in force to condemn this recent development.
It appears that a Greek public/political figure, whose name has not been disclosed as yet, used his political connection to prosecute the search engine for what he/she regarded as slander in one of its listed blogs.
We in Pakistan, especially Omer Alvie and myself who are the administrators of the Pakistani Blog Aggregator Bloggers.pk have to wonder what could happen if the Pakistani Government starts to find offensive sites listed on our aggregator to which we have no control as the content is produced and published by independent Pakistani bloggers and not by our aggregator, if confronted with such a question, my response would be honestly shrug it off as I truly believe in standing up for free speech regardless of any consequences which may lie afoot.
We as Pakistani Bloggers join arms united with all Greek bloggers in protesting against this arrest, join the cause and spread the word on your blog as well
Pakistanis don’t need to be told how much it can hurt to be at the receiving end of a censorship on their own blog, we sadly have had a massive blockade on the entire Blogspot.com cordoning off more then 10 million blogs for over 11 months and counting. Its sad to note that a few days back Mahmood.tv a very brilliant and outspoken blogger from Bahrain has been blocked by his own government accsuing him of “defamation of the person of the king and royal family members.” (press law no. 47, passed in 2002)
Mahmood suggests that all the sites blocked are ones that published information on “the Jamal Dawood scandal”. Dawood is the head of Press and Publication for the Bahrani government and has been involved with part plans to order all Bahrani bloggers to register their online presences. He’s evidently implicated in “Bandargate“, a scandal named after Salah al-Bandar, the Sudanese/British author of a report that documents attempts to rig parliamentary elections in favor of the Sunni minority.
Personally I think this is just the starting tip of the ice berg when Governments will slowly exercise force to clamp and shut down irritating journalist landing them with one excuse or another. A number of poeple have joined hands to condemn this censorship and I plead you to sign this petition to protest this ban
On behalf of all Pakistani bloggers we would like to join hands with Mahmood Al-Yousif and protest against the censorship of his blog. I also feel that it is all the more reason when events like this in Bahrain or in Greece where I then feel the urge to step up my efforts to take Don’t Block the Blog from a Pakistan centric organisation to become a more global platform, condemning all forms of censorship anywhere in the world (am seriously looking for volunteers who would be willing to help jointly develop such a platform)
In response to our call for observing a Blog Day to commeorate the Earthquake which struck Pakistan a year back, the blogging community came out in full force here is an ongoing list of post a tribute to the fallen and may it serve to rekindle the hope of the suffering
Pakistan Earthquake Blog Day 2006
Blog Posts of Mention
This is an ongoing list, if your blog has not been entered into the list please comment below and we shall update it as soon as possible.
If you would like to support these bloggers for their noble effort then please use this Blogrolling code on your own blog
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October 8th 2005, changed Pakistan forever, at precisely 08:50:38 a massive earthquake struck the northern areas of Pakistan which devastated the entire country over 80,000 lives perished in a blink of an eye, thousands were displaced resulting in millions of dollars in damage. The entire country joined hands in unison to help the suffering, but even more needs to be done.
In an effort to raise awareness for the victims of the Earthquake in Pakistan we propose to launch a Blog Day, requesting all bloggers to make a post about the earthquake which struck our country one year back by actually asking yourself
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN?
When making that specific post we ask you to do is provide a track-back to this post on the Help-Pakistan.com website using this specific URL this will allow us to keep track of everyone who has NOT forgotten.the Earthquake in Pakistan
If you don’t have a blog then share your experience with the world on this blog by writing a story or a life changing experince about the earthquake in Pakistan
On Saturday 30th of September the Pakistani blogging community suddenly woke up to see that both proxy servers Pkblogs and Inblogs were out of commission and displayed a server error on their page.
When the Don’t Block the Blog team immediately contacted the owners of domains (Yasir and Naveed Memon) and were told that it was a server error as their previous host suddenly pulled the plug on them, Naveed assured us that the sites will be back online soon as they had already initiated DNS changes which do take a may take a few hours to propagate through the Internet
As we write this this report the Sunday 1st October 11:00 pm (PST) the servers are still down and will post any progress as it develops.
UPDATE: Pkblogs and Inblogs have returned back online Oct 2nd 1:00pm (PST) - Blog Away
Sept 2nd 2006, The Government of Pakistan has dealt yet another severe blow to the Internet community in Pakistan, as it has now created a body constituted by the Ministry of Information Technology which would examine contents of websites reported or found to be offensive or containing anti-state material and block them off in Pakistan.
It is sad that instead of helping promote the progressive growth of the Internet in Pakistan, the government is choosing to go the opposite direction and slowly creating hurdles upon hurdles in the progressive path of Pakistan. With such a worsening situation of blocking easy access to information technology how can we as a nation compete against the Internet giants around the world.
We at Don’t Block the Blog feel that censorship alone can not and will not stop the problem, its the wrong method to solve the problem. Let the people decide what content they would like to see, a strict control only promotes a negative culture does not stop it
Body set up to block websites - DAWN 3rd Sept 2006
Press Release
Society Against Censorship in Pakistan - Press Release 4th Sept
After exactly 18 days of true Internet freedom, Pakistan is yet again subjected to a total blackout of the entire Blogspot domain, at precisely 3:00pm (PST) reports have continued to pour in that Blogspot has become inaccessible to the users in Pakistan, although now official statement has been issue d in the regard but a general consensus is that this recent resumption of censorship could primarily be to control the aftereffects of the assassination of Nawab Bugti a tribal leader of Baluchistan on 26th August 2006.
