Just as in the old days of USENET, the net still interprets censorship and damage and routes around:

Psiphon works through social networks. A net user in an uncensored country can download the program to their computer, which transforms it into an access point.

They can then give contacts in censored countries a unique web address, login and password, which enables the restricted users to freely browse the web through an encrypted connection to the proxy server.

Web censorship ‘bypass’ unveiled BBC, 27 Nov 2006

So even though Ahmedinejad or Castro may jail bloggers, people in Iran or Cuba could still see foreign bloggers.

The article cites a report by Reporters without Borders (RSF) that names 13 countries as enemies of the Internet: Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Three of the former usual suspects, Libya, Maldives, and Nepal, were removed from this year’s list.

The software sounds pretty good:

The Citizen Lab said the system provides strong protection against “electronic eavesdropping” because censors or ISPs can only see that end users are connected to another computer and not view the sites that are being visited.

It added that using small trusted networks as a delivery mechanism made it more difficult for censors to find and shut down psiphon.

However, it also warned potential users that bypassing censorship could violate laws, and urge them to consider potential consequences of doing so.

Of course, Psiphon could also be used for hiding comment spamming, but everything comes with its upsides and its downsides. And doubtless there will be those who will oppose software like this on the grounds that it will help terrorists. Yet we can probably safely assume that competent real terrorists are already using encryption and redirection to hide their tracks.

Maybe RSF will have another candidate nation for its list soon, at least if the U.S. follows Newt Gingrich’s recommendations:

“I want to suggest to you right now that we should empanelling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it were not for the scale of this threat. This is a serious long term war and it will lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, it will lead to us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous.”

…

“And, my prediction to you is that ether before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology that we can find to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.”

What did Newt really say about free speech and terrorism? From a speech to the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications, Newt Gingrich, Gingrich Communications, November 27 2006

There’s just something about letting governments decide what people can say, and who “they” are that can’t say it, that doesn’t sit well with me. Not to mention that if we shoot our own free speech in the foot, what do we need terrorists for, anyway?

Sure, we need to fight terrorism, and I dislike spam (mail or comment) as much as anybody, but I think increasing legitimate communication is a legitimate goal, and one that will even contribute to fighting terrorism. It’s harder to hate people you actually communicate with, as contrasted with hearing about via propaganda.

Meanwhile, see for yourself: psiphon is being released today.

-jsq