Introduction
The global landscape for internet censorship is evolving; countries are increasingly regulating and monitoring online traffic that traverses networks located within their borders. Mainstream social media platforms and big news outlets are beginning to launch their own Tor websites to circumvent governments around the world that use technical and legal strategies to regulate online content. Tor is an anonymity network that hides your identity as you browse the web, share content, and engage online. So far, the BBC, ProPublica, Facebook, the Guardian, and the New Yorker have all launched sites to protect users’ privacy while seeking to read the news or report information. These sites are hosted on a separate server from the main surface website, and take measures including not tracking cookies, taking no logs, and being available to anyone that wishes to use the site. However, the move is aimed at making the news available to audiences who live in countries where media is blocked or restricted – such as China, Iran, and Vietnam, where the BBC is restricted.
What is internet censorship?
Internet censorship is the control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the internet. Regulators may engage in Internet censorship—or individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship due to moral reasons, religion, business purposes, societal norms, intimidation, or fear of legal or other consequences.
The extent of internet censorship varies on a country-to-country basis. While most democratic countries have moderate internet censorship, other countries go as far as to limit the access of information such as news and suppress discussion among citizens. Internet censorship also occurs in response to or in anticipation of events such as elections, protests, and riots. An example is the increased censorship due to the events of the Arab Spring—a series of anti-government protests that spread across much of the Islamic world in the early 2010s with the goal to increase democracy and cultural freedom. During this period, advocates used social media platforms to mobilize as a means for collective activism. In some Islamic states, internet connections were severed completely, while others tampered with domain name servers (DNS) to block political content. Other types of censorship include the use of copyrights, defamation, harassment, and obscene material claims to suppress content. Government agencies have various tools to implement restrictions, but supporters of Internet freedom are trying to overcome such barriers and filters. While many governments point to the reinforcement of social and cultural norms as a basis for conducting filtering, political opposition to the ruling government is the more palpable motive.
Still, where governments face all-or-nothing filtering decisions because service providers do not cooperate with the requests from the government to block certain IP addresses, the stakes are now higher and are potentially driving the major surface web platforms to set up shop on the dark web to spread information to those that have been denied it the most.
What is the dark web?
The dark web is a small, hard-to-access portion of the deep web. The only way to access the dark web is by using special browsers like Tor and, often, a password. The dark web is generally anonymous, which makes it a shelter for cybercriminals and political protestors. It has remained largely unregulated by the government, and the first step in better monitoring and policing the dark web is better understanding it. The dark web, or darknet, is very often confused with the deep web, but the distinction between the two is very important. The dark web is a specific portion of the deep web and there are a few distinguishing characteristics that a site must meet to be considered a dark website.
There are important uses for hidden services, like Tor, such as when human rights activists use them to access Facebook or to blog anonymously. However, Tor is a tool that can also be used anonymously for criminal purposes. While it is essential to acknowledge the important role that anonymity plays in protecting human rights activists from oppressive regimes, it is also important to consider the challenges that anonymity poses to the law enforcement community.
Indeed, most Tor users are just seeking privacy and may be using Tor for legitimate reasons, like conducting web searches. Only 1.5% of Tor users are accessing the dark web, although they generate about 200Gbit/s of traffic on average. The trouble is that Tor and the dark web are virtually inseparable. It is impossible to make a tool that keeps users anonymous while also tracking their activity to make sure that they are not accessing illegal websites.
Conclusion
A conjunction of technological and social forces has shepherded in a new reality in which the playing field has profoundly changed. Some nation-states, such as Turkey, Egypt, and Iran filter some online accounts and webpages due to social and political content that are critical of the government. The default encrypted connections used by some major social media and content hosting platforms has effectively downgraded the filtering tools used by nation-states, that traditionally relied on URL analysis to intercept unwanted connections. In these cases, nation-state authorities can no longer selectively block individual accounts, web pages, and stories. Governments are interested in blocking individual users perceived to be “problematic.” However, their ability to selectively block users is impeded when major platforms implement formal procedures for content removal. For example, governments can generally no longer selectively block a specific article on the New York Times or Wikipedia, or a particular account on Twitter or Facebook, without blocking those sites and services in their entirety.
The 2017 blocking of Wikipedia in Turkey is one example in which the Turkish Information and Communications Technologies Authority explicitly mentions the use of Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) as the basis for the blocking decision. HTTP is the underlying protocol that defines how messages are formatted and transmitted; HTTPS allows for secure communication over a computer network. Many websites and social media platforms have moved from HTTP to HTTPS, which prevents centralized censors from identifying which pages users visit. Some countries have also sought to encourage the adoption of homegrown platforms who would be more willing to participate in user monitoring and censorship. Russia has taken a different approach to censorship, insisting upon data and service localization by foreign platforms to counteract malign foreign influence. China has been particularly successful in restricting content to homegrown platforms.
Political disputes and conflict are more frequently triggering an increase in state-to-state censorship. Several journalists and editors have found themselves detained, imprisoned, or deported because of the information they shared online. Many regimes use content removal to create a structure of internet censorship, forcing people to comply or face jail time or worse if they refuse to do so. Governments often use censorship for political purposes—if there is a lack of information sharing in society, then it is easier to manipulate outcomes. In order to circumvent these barriers, journalists and news outlets have begun to normalize the use of the dark web to reach populations traditionally barred from knowing the truth. This solidifies the idea that the dark web is indeed going commercial.
In the United States, the First Amendment protects the freedom of expression online in ways that many other countries do not. In some countries, governments wish to have complete control of the traffic on the internet. They see freedom of speech as a threat to their power and the dark web as a tool that enables dissidents to speak freely. Most countries try to take a common-sense approach to the idea of censorship. Protecting a person’s identity when needed, stopping exploitation, and preventing people from coming to harm are the top priorities. Online anonymity is a double-edged sword that must be treated carefully. As policymakers move ahead, they must monitor vigilantly the evolution of the dark web and ensure that enforcement agencies have the resources and legal support to police successfully. Dark web policy must be nuanced and thorough in order to strike the balance between the needs of privacy-minded users and the government’s obligation to stop illegal activity.
Photo by Emil on Flickr.
