In reporting news from the world’s most troubled nations, journalists have made a seismic shift this year in their reliance on the Internet and other digital tools. Blogging, video sharing, text messaging, and live-streaming from cellphones brought images of popular unrest from the central square of Cairo and the main boulevard of Tunis to the rest of the world.
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Offenders and Tactics
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More on This Issue
• CPJ Internet Channel:
Danny O'Brien's blog
• Blogging in Egypt:
Virtual network,
virtual oppression
• Burmese exile news
site endures hacking,
DDoS attacks
Yet the technology used to report the news has been matched in many ways by the tools used to suppress information. Many of the oppressors’ tactics show an increasing sophistication, from the state-supported email in China designed to take over journalists’ personal computers, to the carefully timed cyber-attacks on news websites in Belarus. Still other tools in the oppressor’s kit are as old as the press itself, including imprisonment of online writers in Syria, and the use of violence against bloggers in Russia.
To mark World Press Freedom Day, May 3, the Committee to Protect Journalists is examining the 10 prevailing tactics of online oppression worldwide and the countries that have taken the lead in their use. What is most surprising about these Online Oppressors is not who they are—they are all nations with long records of repression—but how swiftly they adapted old strategies to the online world.
In two nations we cite, Egypt and Tunisia, the regimes have changed, but their successors have not categorically broken with past repressive practices. The tactics of other nations—such as Iran, which employs sophisticated tools to destroy anti-censorship technology, and Ethiopia, which exerts monopolistic control over the Internet—are being watched, and emulated, by repressive regimes worldwide.
Here are the 10 prevalent tools for online oppression.
WEB BLOCKING
Key country: Iran
Many countries censor online news sources, using domestic
Internet service providers and international Internet gateways to enforce
website blacklists and to block citizens from using certain keywords. Since the
disputed 2009 presidential election, however, Iran
has dramatically increased the sophistication of its Web blocking, as well as
its efforts to destroy tools that allow journalists to access or host online
content. In January 2011, the designers of Tor, a privacy and censorship
circumvention tool, detected that the country’s censors were using new, highly
advanced techniques to identify and disable anti-censorship software. In
October, blogger Hossein Ronaghi Maleki was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment
for allegedly developing such anti-filtering software and hosting other Iranian
bloggers. The government’s treatment of reporters has been among the worst in
the world; Iran and China topped CPJ’s 2010 list of worst jailers of the press,
with 34 imprisoned apiece. But by investing in new technology to block the Net
and actively persecuting those who circumvent such restrictions, Iran has
raised the bar worldwide.
Tactics in practice:
> An array
of repressive tactics
> World’s
worst jailer
PRECISION CENSORSHIP
Key country: Belarus
Permanent filtering of popular websites often encourages
users to find ways around the censor. As a result, many repressive regimes
attack websites only at strategically vital moments. In Belarus,
the online opposition outlet Charter 97 predicted that its
site would be disabled during the December presidential election. Indeed it
was: On Election Day, the site was taken down by a denial-of-service, or DOS,
attack. A DOS attack prevents a website from functioning normally by
overloading its host server with external communications requests. According to
local reports, users of the Belarusian national ISP attempting to visit Charter 97 were separately
redirected to a fake site created by an unknown party. The election, conducted
without the scrutiny of critical outlets like Charter
97, was marred by secretive vote-counting practices, international
observers said. Technological measures were not the only attacks on Charter 97: The
site’s offices were raided on the eve of the election, and editors were beaten,
arrested, and threatened. In September 2010, the site’s founder, Aleh Byabenin,
was found hanged under suspicious circumstances.
Tactics in practice:
> Blocking
sites for an election
> Web
journalists targeted
DENIAL OF ACCESS
Key country: Cuba
High-tech attacks against Internet journalists aren’t needed
if access barely exists. In Cuba,
government policies have left domestic Internet infrastructure severely
restricted. Only a small fraction of the population is permitted to use the
Internet at home, with the vast majority required to use state-controlled
access points with identity checks, heavy surveillance, and restrictions on
access to non-Cuban sites. To post or read independent news, online journalists
go to cybercafes and use official Internet accounts that are traded on the
black market. Those who do get around the many obstacles face other problems.
Prominent bloggers such as Yoani
Sánchez have been smeared in a medium accessible by all Cubans: state-run
television. Cuba and Venezuela recently announced the start of a new fiber-optic
cable connection between the two countries that promises to increase Cuba’s
international connectivity. But it’s unclear whether the general public will
benefit from connectivity improvements any time soon.
Tactics in practice
> Bloggers
face huge obstacles
> Sánchez
called a “cybermercenary”
INFRASTRUCTURE CONTROL
Key country: Ethiopia
Telecommunications systems in many countries are closely
tied to the government, providing a powerful way to control new media. In Ethiopia,
a state-owned telecommunications company has monopoly control over Internet
access and fixed and mobile phone lines. Despite a management and rebranding
deal with France Telecom in 2010, the government still owns and directs Ethio
Telecom, allowing it to censor when and where it sees fit. OpenNet Initiative, a global academic project
that monitors filtering and surveillance, says Ethiopia conducts “substantial”
filtering of political news. This matches Ethiopia’s continuing crackdown on
offline journalists, four of whom are imprisoned for their work, according to
CPJ records. Ethiopian government control does not simply extend to phone lines
and Internet access. The country has also invested in extensive
satellite-jamming technology to prevent citizens from receiving news from
foreign sources such as the Amharic-language services of the U.S.
government-funded Voice of America and the German public broadcaster Deutsche
Welle.
Tactics in practice:
> Suppressing
news of Middle East unrest
> Controls
over all media
ATTACKS ON EXILE-RUN SITES
Key country: Burma
For journalists who have been run out of their own country,
the Internet is a lifeline that enables them to continue reporting news and
commentary about their homeland. But exile-run news sites still face censorship
and obstruction, much of it perpetrated by home governments or their
surrogates. Exile-run sites that cover news in Burma face regular denial-of-service attacks. The Thailand-based news outlet Irrawaddy, the India-based Mizzima news agency, and Norway’s Democratic Voice of Burma have all experienced
attacks that disabled or slowed their websites. The attacks are often timed around
sensitive political milestones such as the anniversary of the Saffron
Revolution, a 2007 monk-led, anti-government protest that was violently
suppressed. Burmese authorities have coupled these technical attacks with
brute-force repression. Exile-run news sites depend on undercover, in-country
journalists, who surreptitiously file their reports. This undercover work comes
with extreme risk: At least five journalists for Democratic Voice of Burma were
serving lengthy prison terms for their work when CPJ conducted its annual
worldwide survey in December 2010.
Tactics in practice:
> Cyber-attacks
hit exile sites
> Repression
precedes election
MALWARE ATTACKS
Key country: China
Harmful software can be concealed in apparently legitimate
emails and sent to a journalist’s private account with a convincing but fake
cover message. If opened by the reporter, the software will install itself on a
personal computer and be used remotely to spy on the reporter’s other
communications, steal his or her confidential documents, and even commandeer
the computer for online attacks on other targets. Journalists reporting in and
about China
have been victims of these attacks, known as “spear-phishing,” in a pattern
that strongly indicates the targets were chosen for their work. Attacks
coincided with the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize award to imprisoned writer and human
rights defender Liu Xiaobo, and official suppression of news reports describing
unrest in the Middle East. Computer security experts such as those at Metalab Asia and SecDev have found such software is aimed
specifically at reporters, dissidents, and non-governmental organizations.
Tactics in practice:
> A
Nobel invitation that wasn’t
> Taking
over an email account
STATE CYBERCRIME
Key country: Tunisia under Ben Ali
Censorship of email and social networking sites was
pervasive in Tunisia
under Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, as it has been in many repressive states.
But in 2010, the Tunisian Internet Agency took the effort one step further,
redirecting Tunisian users to fake, government-created log-in pages for Google,
Yahoo, and Facebook. From these pages, authorities stole usernames and
passwords. When Tunisian online journalists began filing reports on the
uprising, the state used their login data to delete the material. A common
tactic of criminal hackers, the use of fake Web pages to steal passwords is
being adopted by agents and supporters of repressive regimes. While cybercrime
tactics appear to have been abandoned with the collapse of Ben Ali’s government
in January, the new government has not relinquished control of the Internet
entirely. Within weeks, the administration announced it would continue to block
websites that are "against decency, contain violent elements, or incite to
hate."
Tactics in practice:
> Invading
Facebook
> Will
the revolution endure?
INTERNET KILL SWITCHES
Key country: Egypt under Mubarak
Desperately clinging to power, President Hosni Mubarak shut
down the Internet in Egypt in January
2011, preventing online journalists from reporting to the world, and Egyptian
viewers from accessing online news sources. Egypt was not the first to sever
its link to the Internet to restrict news coverage: Internet access in Burma
was shut down during a revolt in 2007, and the Xinjiang region of China had
either limited or no access during ethnic unrest in 2010. Mubarak’s crumbling
government could not sustain its ban for long; online access returned about a
week later. But the tactic of slowing or disrupting Net access has been
emulated since that time by governments in Libya and Bahrain, which have also
faced popular revolt. Despite the fall of the Mubarak regime, the transitional
military government has shown its own repressive tendencies. In April, a
political blogger was sentenced to three years in prison for insulting
authorities.
Tactics in practice:
> Egypt
vanishes from the Net
> Online,
an enormous loss
DETENTION OF BLOGGERS
Key country: Syria
Despite the spread of high-tech attacks on online
journalism, arbitrary detention remains the easiest way to disrupt new media.
Bloggers and online reporters made up nearly half of CPJ’s 2010 tally of
imprisoned journalists. Syria remains one
of the world's most dangerous places to blog due to repeated cases of
short- and long-term detention. Ruling behind closed doors in February, a
Syrian court sentenced blogger Tal al-Mallohi to five years of imprisonment.
She was 19 when first arrested in 2009. Al-Mallohi’s blog discussed Palestinian
rights, the frustrations of Arab citizens with their governments, and what she
perceived to be the stagnation of the Arab world. In March, online journalist
Khaled Elekhetyar was detained for a week, while veteran blogger Ahmad Abu
al-Khair was detained for the second time in two months.
Tactics in practice:
> A
blogger becomes a “spy”
> Detention
among many tools
VIOLENCE AGAINST ONLINE JOURNALISTS
Key country: Russia
In countries with high rates of anti-press violence, online
journalists have become the latest targets. In Russia,
a brutal November 2010 attack left the prominent business reporter and blogger
Oleg Kashin so badly injured he was placed in an induced coma for a time. No
arrests have been made in the Moscow attack, which is reflective of Russia’s
poor overall record in solving anti-press assaults. The attack on Kashin was
the most recent in a string of assaults against Web journalists that include a
2009 attack on Mikhail Afanasyev, editor of an online magazine in Siberia, and
a 2008 murder of website publisher Magomed Yevloyev in Ingushetia.
Tactics in practice:
> On
RuNet, old-school repression meets new
> No
justice in website editor’s murder
Danny O’Brien, CPJ's San Francisco-based CPJ Internet advocacy coordinator, has worked globally as a journalist and activist covering technology and digital rights. He blogs at cpj.org/internet/. Follow him on Twitter @danny_at_cpj.