Leanpub: Publish Early, Publish Often

Censorship

The original internet was planned with lots of resilience. Even if parts of the internet have issues, the rest will route around it.

Centralisation has added dependencies on a few companies. This results in accidental outages or planned censorship.

Both are totally contrary to the spirit of the internet. By engineering resilience into the software you can protect from outages.

If you are not building a system but administrating one, there are several tools that add redundancy to your current tool set. Especially by disconnecting from centralized services.

The tricky thing: You have to install those programs before the internet fails. And regularly use them to be sure they are operational in case of an emergency.

The programs you currently use will not have to be replaced. Just have those additional programs installed as well.

Mapping censorship

There are several projects mapping internet failures. This can be censorship (Turkey) or power outages causing internet downtime (Venezuela).

OONI by the Tor project

Oooni has globally distributed sensors measuring the reach ability of services. Data can be accessed on a map, by a list of “best of censorship” events and by an API.

The project is Open Source and there is a description how to set up a sensor on a Raspberry Pi.

The whole project is part of the Tor project.

Netblocks

Netblocks is run by a civil society group. Focus is more on written reports based on special internet outage events.

Blocked.org.uk

Censored pages in UK. UK has a voluntary filter for <18 content. This is over-blocking.

This site tests and monitors specific sites.

Censorship countermeasures

Basic countermeasures are based on “have a plan B”. Redundancy.

Messenger

Jabber + OMEMO

Jabber is a chat software. Jabber (aka XMPP) is like E-Mail: You can have an address at any Jabber server, use any kind of Jabber client to access it and contact everyone with a Jabber account.

OMEMO is the encryption technology for Jabber. Just activate it in your client and done.

There a different Jabber clients for example:

Conversations for Android
Gajim for Linux and Windows

Jabber is de-centralized and this makes it very resilient.

There is also no central directory of user names. Pro: No one is tracking you or your network. Con: You have to give your friends your Jabber address.

Signal

Signal is a free client for mobile phones with a very good encryption. The Con: There is a central directory. Pro: As soon as you register on Signal, all your address book contacts that also use Signal will be in your Signal-connections-list.

Similar to WhatsApp. But without Facebook.

Threema

Threema is a mobile phone communication app. It is cheap but not free. Also: It is closed source - but is getting security reviews. The encryption and the feature set are good and it is a very good messenger and simple to use. I especially like the (optional) key verification that forces people to meet in person and confirm their identity by scanning a QR code. Intuitive and secure.

I am not using Telegram. It has several security issues. But on the other hand: Many people are already using it and it “survived” several censorship attempts already.

Use it but be aware: It is less secure to spying attempts than the other messengers listed here. But the widespread adoption has its own benefits.

Browser replacement

Tor browser

The Tor browser is hiding your tracks on the internet. Just install it. It will look like a Firefox browser with a few extra options. You can ignore them - the defaults are OK.

The Tor trick: Your data is sent encrypted over three “Tor nodes” to hide you from the internet.

Some very restrictive states limit the Tor browser. For those there are extra modes to exit their internet.

The Tor browser can access special “.onion” URLs. That is the Dark part of the web.

This may sound spooky. But even Facebook has a an entry door on the Dark side of the web. Facebook on Tor It is is not as big a thing as you may think.

Install the Tor browser and give it a try. You may not need it now. But maybe later.

Network infrastructure

In some regions the web coverage is under-developed. For some political reasons that is quite common in Germany. The Freifunk project is offering free WiFi under the SSID “Freifunk”. Just connect and use the internet.

This project is a good alternative to company owned infrastructure and adds resilience.

If you are responsible for an area where people gather (restaurant, library, …) think about contacting this project and running an own Freifunk router. Which is basically an AP with special configuration.

DNS

Domain Name System is the phone book of the internet. It converts URLs into server IP numbers (IPv4 or IPv6). Ripping entries out of the DNS pre-configured by your ISP is a simple way to censor specific services.

If it looks like that happened to you:

DNS settings are in your Operating System. Some big companies run their own DNS. Try changing the old DNS entries for one of those:

Google: 8.8.8.8
Cloudflare: 1.1.1.1
Quad9: 9.9.9.9

(Yes, all of them were able to get iconic IPv4 addresses).

Blocking on DNS level happened at the “Censorship in Turkey” event.

Using OnionShare it is possible to share files. Just drag some files into the box, click the “start sharing” button and send the generated URL to your communication partner. As long as the server is running the partner can download it by simply using the Tor browser.