Forced Internet Filtering Thomas Mahoney

Internet Filtering ► Techniques  Technical blocking  Search result removal  Take-Down  Self-Censorship ► Types of filtering  Political  Social  Conflict/ Security  Internet Tools

Filtering in the US ► The United States filters illegal material or anything potentially harmful to children  Child Pornography  Sites that sell illegal drugs  Sites that infringe copyright law ► ISP Comcast  Has attempted to limit access to bit torrent from clients that use an extreme amount of bandwidth

Attempts at Laws ► Communications Decency Act (CDA)‏  Over turned before it went into effect ► Child Online Protection Act (COPA)‏  Over turned due to first amendment ► The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA)‏  Still in effect, forces libraries funded by the state to use an internet filter on all computers

How the US Filters ► Obviously, there is no automated system ► ISP are not forced to regulate any sites on their own, but they can if they choose ► A judge has to sign off on it, and then the ISP is noticed when there is an issue  They have to get it removed, and may notify the offender  They may be forced to give personal information of the offender

China’s Attempt ► China has successfully created an internet filter for their country.  Golden Shield  Great Firewall of China ► China was the first dictatorship to realize they could not do without the internet ► The next question was how could they regulate it

Olympics in Beijing ► The Chinese crackdowns in Tibet have sparked bitter protests around the world  Information about these events in China have been filtered to only show Pro-China stories  This worked in China’s favor, as there was millions of Chinese citizens who used MSN to show their support against Pro-Tibet Protesters  Bloggers rallying protest against Pro-Tibet Protesters (Germany)‏ ► China refuses to open the internet during the Olympic games.

China leads in Internet Filtering ► China’s Internet population has grown past the US’s ► China uses between 30,000 and 40,000

How China’s GFC works ► Automated Filter  Targets pages rather then IP addresses  Filters any page with objectionable words, such as Falun Gong, Tibet, Taiwan ► Team of Censors  Unblock and Block pages as required ► Self-Censorship  Fear of punishment  Patriotism

War vs Internet Filtering ► Google  Fought to not bend to Chinas needs in removing its features, such as cache that could bypass the GFC  China removed Google from its network  Google made a special search engine as an extension of the one in America especially for China. ► Yahoo  Was forced by China to give the information of a Chinese citizen

The Future of Filtering ► With China as a role model of how internet Filtering should work, it is hard to see how this will not be adapted into other parts of the world ► Companies will have to bend to China’s demands when it comes to enforcing filtering, there is just too much money as China now leads the world in internet population ► The US has been upping its own Internet Filtering practices, so there may be more of a filtering effort in the US to block illegal content

The End Questions?