Archive for April, 2009
Medium-level filter bypass: The Onion Router (tor) for Windows
Posted by Aaron in Filter Circumvention, Internet censorship on 30 April, 2009
The Onion Router, or tor, is a tool specifically designed to enable secure access to Internet content blocked in oppressive regimes. Earlier versions were somewhat difficult to set up, requiring you to edit config files. However, newer versions make the set up process absurdly simple.
There is an excellent how-to on the tor project site, however, I will explain how to set it up here too.
This guide is for Windows users only. I advise users of MacOS to go to https://www.torproject.org/documentation.html.en and follow the excellent guide there.
- Visit http://www.torproject.org/
- Click “Download Tor”
- Click on the “Installation Bundle for Windows”
- Once the file has downloaded, run it to begin the install process.
At the first page click Next
On the second page, I recommend you leave the options set to their defaults, ie. Full install. If you don’t have Firefox installed, untick Torbutton. Click Next.
Click Install to begin the installation.
The install is now complete. Click Next.
If you installed Torbutton, Firefox will ask you to confirm its installation. Click Install Now.
Click Finish to quit the installer and start the newly installed tools. - You should now see a window like this
After a short time it should display that it is connected to the Tor network:
- If this is displayed, skip to step 10. If it is not, your ISP is likely blocking connections to the Tor network. Fortunately, Tor has a few tricks to get around these restrictions.
- On the Vidalia Control Panel, click the Settings button
Next, click the Network tab at the top of the new window
If your ISP has a HTTP proxy (if it doesn’t, leave the box unchecked), click “I use a proxy to access the Internet” and enter its details. Then click the “My ISP blocks connections to the Tor Network” checkbox.
Leave this window open, we will need it again soon - Open your web browser and head to https://bridges.torproject.org you should see a page like this:
For each of the 3 lines on this page starting with “bridge” select and copy each into the box labelled “Add a Bridge:” in the Settings window. You should end up with something like this:
Click OK. - In the main Vidalia Control Panel window click “Start Tor” (you may need to click “Stop Tor” first). If all goes well, Tor should now connect successfully.
- The last step is different for each web browser. I will show you how to do it in Internet Explorer and Firefox.
- Firefox: If you have torbutton installed, you simply click the new tor button in firefox to enable tor. If you didn’t install torbutton (like me) you’ll need to do it manually:
In Firefox, click Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network -> Settings…
Enter these settings and click OK and OK again.
You are now browsing anonymously using the Tor network. - Internet Explorer:
- Open the Windows Control Panel
- Open Internet Options
- Click the “Connections” tab
- Click LAN settings
- Set the options to this:
- Click OK and OK again.
You are now browsing anonymously using the Tor network.
- Firefox: If you have torbutton installed, you simply click the new tor button in firefox to enable tor. If you didn’t install torbutton (like me) you’ll need to do it manually:
Easy-level filter bypass: Web Proxies
Posted by Aaron in Filter Circumvention, Internet censorship on 29 April, 2009
This is by far the easiest way to bypass any filter, though many filters at workplaces, schools, etc. will attempt to block them. The Australian government’s filter, at the present time, will not attempt to block any circumvention techniques.
To do this, all you need is a web-browser such as Internet Explorer (this I do not recommend), Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, or Safari
- Head to http://www.google.com
- Type in “Web Proxy”
- Click on one of the links, such as http://anonymouse.org/anonwww.html
- If the site is blocked, return to the Google search and try another link
- Enter the URL of any blocked site (into the “website address” box, obviously) and hit Enter
- Browse unfiltered
ALL ISP-level filtering is opt out. Methods to follow
Posted by Aaron in Filter Circumvention, Internet censorship on 29 April, 2009
The Australian government’s plan to censor the internet is now opt-out. That’s right. Well, it’s still mandatory for ISPs to implement for all customers (as far as I know. Conroy might change his mind. Again) but since bypassing it will be trivial, as I will discuss in future posts, it is effectively opt-out for anyone who doesn’t want it.
I will rank the difficulty of these bypass methods as easy, moderate, or technical. Easy methods will be easy for even an Internet newbie who doesn’t know a URL from a URI. Moderate should be able to be done with anyone who knows how to install software on their PC. Technical-level methods will require knowledge of unix and windows command lines and remote access to a server in a non-filtered country.
Now I know that a mandatory blacklist is pointless
Posted by Aaron in Internet censorship, Ranting, at stupidity, at the Australian Government on 14 April, 2009
- The blacklist will contain “almost exclusively RC material”.
- RC material (excluding “child abuse material”) is legal to possess and view within Australia, in addition anything classified is definitely legal to view and possess.
- Child pornography websites rarely exist for more than a couple of weeks.
- The filter is/will be trivial to bypass.
- Bypassing the filter will not be illegal.
These are all facts. Given that adding sites to the blacklist can take months, it will be ineffective at stopping access to the illegal content (child abuse material). In addition, access to any other blacklisted content is not illegal and can be done easily.
The government knows all this, but is pressing ahead nevertheless. I must wonder: Is there something else that the government wishes to do with this filter?
The only thing I can conclude is that the government actually wants scope creep to occur, but won’t say so in public. It wants to silence its political opponents. It wants to stop access to all pornography. It wants to stop so-called “copyright theft” (even though internet filters cannot hope to achieve this). If it didn’t want to do this, it would have no reason to keep the blacklist secret. The blacklist contains “the worst of the worst” no sane person would want to access stuff on it if the blacklist was only CP.
Above all the government wants to be seen to be “doing something” for all the lobby groups screaming out pleas like “won’t somebody think of the children?”
What can we do about mandatory Internet filtering?
Posted by Aaron in Internet censorship on 11 April, 2009
This blog post raises a valid point: “if we don’t start offering an alternative workable solution as part of our strategy, we will ultimately fail.”
So what is a workable solution? Education isn’t a solution in itself. The problem is that no good technological solution exists. Accessing the kind of material that is supposed to be on the mandatory blacklist is illegal anyway, so there are disincentives there already.
As Mark Newton stated on Insight: “Remove the mandatory, and we can all go home”. It’s not the idea of ISP-level filtering we’re against, it’s the mandatory part.
Reasons we’re against it include:
- The power it places in the hands of an unaccountable, secret organisation to choose what is and what isn’t apropriate for all Australians to view.
- The mandatory blacklist will be ineffective at achieving its stated goals (ie. blocking access to RC and above content)
- A static blacklist cannot hope to address the dynamic nature of the world wide web.
- The people who are pushing the filter don’t fully understand the possible implications of what they are asking for (Censorship has no friends)
- The technical ability of censorware will always lag behind internet technology by a significant margin, and the margin will grow as the Internet moves towards new technologies.
These are all arguments against mandatory filtering, but what solution can we offer in its place? Not a technological one, we know there’s no technological solution. More funding to the AFP would be nice, but that wouldn’t have a very obivous or immediate affect and the Government wants to be seen to be doing something. So the question is: Does a workable solution to the “problem” exist?
Why the iiNet case scares me and why movie and music publishers need to evolve to survive
Posted by Aaron in Random ramblings on 9 April, 2009
It scares me because iiNet have done nothing wrong, despite claims by the AFACT that they “allowed distribution of copyrighted material”. iiNet cannot, by law, monitor what it’s users do with their connections without a court order. The AFACT seem to be assuming that because they believe a user is downloading movies or music via bittorrent, iiNet should know too. After all, they are the ones providing the internet connection. However, conclusive proof needs to be given, and unless iiNet monitors its user’s connections, it cannot confirm or deny any claims by AFACT. So iiNet rightly forwarded the allegations to the police. The AFACT, however, do not like this. They want iiNet to disconnect infringing users. But iiNet does not want to lose customers on a baseless accusation, and they cannot comfirm the AFACT’s claims without breaking the law. How can anyone expect them to act any differently?
The number one reason it scares me, however, is if iiNet loses the case it could mean that ISPs will be forced to disconnect users if they are accused of downloading copyrighted material, regardless of whether they have or not. I don’t want my internet disconnected just because I connected to a torrent tracker to download perfectly legal data, for example: linux distributions, movies for which copyright has expired, etc.
The AFACT shows just how ignorant they are about how the internet works. If they block one medium of distribution, many more will arise from the ashes; look what happened with Napster: it was taken down, but the came Kazaa, and Limewire and the gnutella network, and bittorrent, and so on. The industry needs to adapt to the Internet age if it is to maintain the profits it has supposedly been losing to piracy. It is its unwillingness to let go of past business models that has got it into its present mess.