US Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors

[Ian]

U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors

The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.

The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”

Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.

The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.

Some projects involve technology that the United States is developing; others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers in a so-called liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe.

The State Department, for example, is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, according to participants in the projects.

In one of the most ambitious efforts, United States officials say, the State Department and Pentagon have spent at least $50 million to create an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan using towers on protected military bases inside the country. It is intended to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services, seemingly at will.

The effort has picked up momentum since the government of President Hosni Mubarak shut down the Egyptian Internet in the last days of his rule. In recent days, the Syrian government also temporarily disabled much of that country’s Internet, which had helped protesters mobilize.

The Obama administration’s initiative is in one sense a new front in a longstanding diplomatic push to defend free speech and nurture democracy. For decades, the United States has sent radio broadcasts into autocratic countries through Voice of America and other means. More recently, Washington has supported the development of software that preserves the anonymity of users in places like China, and training for citizens who want to pass information along the government-owned Internet without getting caught.

But the latest initiative depends on creating entirely separate pathways for communication. It has brought together an improbable alliance of diplomats and military engineers, young programmers and dissidents from at least a dozen countries, many of whom variously describe the new approach as more audacious and clever and, yes, cooler.

Sometimes the State Department is simply taking advantage of enterprising dissidents who have found ways to get around government censorship. American diplomats are meeting with operatives who have been burying Chinese cellphones in the hills near the border with North Korea, where they can be dug up and used to make furtive calls, according to interviews and the diplomatic cables.

The new initiatives have found a champion in Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose department is spearheading the American effort. “We see more and more people around the globe using the Internet, mobile phones and other technologies to make their voices heard as they protest against injustice and seek to realize their aspirations,” Mrs. Clinton said in an e-mail response to a query on the topic. “There is a historic opportunity to effect positive change, change America supports,” she said. “So we’re focused on helping them do that, on helping them talk to each other, to their communities, to their governments and to the world.”
...

Full article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/world ... =4&_r=2&hp

[Ronja]

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Thanks for posting this, Ian - food for thought for sure!

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I think it's a positive piece of foreign policy (if it pans out as that article says) - I'll bet Gawd and Sandi will find the holes in it quick enough though!

[Feck]

Oooh do you mean free uncensored internet access for police states ...the UK should have some of that .

[Ian]

I think it's a positive piece of foreign policy (if it pans out as that article says) - I'll bet Gawd and Sandi will find the holes in it quick enough though!

They can take it however they like. I didn't really post this to make a point, just to give (as Ronja pointed out) some "food for thought". I thought it was an interesting article.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I think it's a positive piece of foreign policy (if it pans out as that article says) - I'll bet Gawd and Sandi will find the holes in it quick enough though!

If they can't find any they'll make some up!

[King David]

Obama doing something proactive to promote democracy and human rights? That's a new one. This is good news but it doesn't negate the fact that he has just renewed the Patriot Act, which has done more to erode our civil liberties and human rights than just about any other legislation enacted in this century.

[Ian]

Obama doing something proactive to promote democracy and human rights? That's a new one. This is good news but it doesn't negate the fact that he has just renewed the Patriot Act, which has done more to erode our civil liberties and human rights than just about any other legislation enacted in this century.

He renewed sections of the watered-down 2005 Patriot Act. The original 2001 act is long gone.

[King David]

Obama doing something proactive to promote democracy and human rights? That's a new one. This is good news but it doesn't negate the fact that he has just renewed the Patriot Act, which has done more to erode our civil liberties and human rights than just about any other legislation enacted in this century.

He renewed sections of the watered-down 2005 Patriot Act. The original 2001 act is long gone.

The roving wiretaps are still in there, as well as "sneak and peek" searches where the searchee does not have to be notified until 30 days after the search occurred and the courts are not notified until ten days after the search. That is all I need to know.

[pErvinalia]

It was a bit tl;dr. But I wonder if this subversive technology will be available to American citizens to wishing to avoid the clamp down on civil rights that has occured in the US since 2001?

[pErvinalia]

Obama doing something proactive to promote democracy and human rights? That's a new one. This is good news but it doesn't negate the fact that he has just renewed the Patriot Act, which has done more to erode our civil liberties and human rights than just about any other legislation enacted in this century.

And these jabs at Sandi and Gawd are sad. Anyone who thinks that Obama/US gives one fuck about democracy and human rights outside the US (let alone inside it) is living under a rock and needs to get out more.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Obama doing something proactive to promote democracy and human rights? That's a new one. This is good news but it doesn't negate the fact that he has just renewed the Patriot Act, which has done more to erode our civil liberties and human rights than just about any other legislation enacted in this century.

And these jabs at Sandi and Gawd are sad. Anyone who thinks that Obama/US gives one fuck about democracy and human rights outside the US (let alone inside it) is living under a rock and needs to get out more.

Two separate issues. Our resident chewchewers are just entertainment.

[pErvinalia]

Fair enough.

Haven't seen Gawd around much lately.

[Azathoth]

Rather hypocritical that they are helping citizens of other countries evade internet censorship while pushing for more and more censorship at home.

[JimC]

It will be a bit rich if it is trumpeted as striking a blow for freedom and democracy when in reality it is a strategic move in the game of realpolitik...

(not that I oppose it, simply that one should be clear on motives...)