• Ways to elude state-sanctioned Internet censorship shown – INQ7.net
  Nice review of Nart and my talk. danah’s been looking for an “-ist” to call herself – guess I’m now a hacktivist
  (tags: mine globalvoices)
• International News Article | Reuters.com
  Useful brain drain/africa article
  (tags: africa economics)
• Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Darfur relief operation weeks away from collapse, warns UN
  Darfur is so insecure that aid workers can’t leave their camps to work with most effected people. And it sounds like Egeland is fighting an uphill battle to get people to pay attention to Darfur again…
  (tags: darfur sudan africa)
• Oil wealth and corruption at play in Chad’s rebellion | csmonitor.com
  Abe’s take on Chad’s instability – this situation isn’t over, not by a long shot…
  (tags: chad sudan africa oil)
• Finland Squirms as Its Latest Export Steps Into Spotlight – New York Times
  “In Finland, we have no Eiffel Tower, few real famous artists, it is freezing cold and we suffer from low self-esteem,” said Mr. Putaansuu, who, as Lordi, has horns protruding from his forehead and sports long black fingernails. Finland’s shock-metal entr
  (tags: music finland globalism culture)
• 美国在胡总欢迎会上的不和谐音（美国的表现，太没出息）
  How not to make yourself popular in China: a photographic primer by George W. Bush
  (tags: china uspolitics)
• RConversation: Hu’s Heckler: Online fallout
  Excellent post from Rebecca – Chinese bloggers are really pissed by Bush’s protocol gaffes, especially the moment where he tugs on Hu’s sleeve… and just how did Hu’s heckler manage to get so much stage time anyway?
  (tags: china blogs globalvoices)
• Imagethief : Q: What do my Chinese colleagues think of Bush Hu?
  Interesting take on Chinese anger about Hu’s visit… and their politeness about displaying this anger to an American colleague…
  (tags: china culture politics globalvoices blogs)

If only they sold the Sunday New York Times in the Manila airport. It really would have made the 20 hours of flights home go faster. (For those of you keeping score, an update: the Pacific? Still really big.) There were two articles in the Week in Review – the only section I read every word of every week – that caught my eye as I read them on the T today. (I’ll post about them in separate entries, one today, one tomorrow.)

One is on everyone’s favorite hot topic – $75 a barrel oil. Jad Mouawad notes that the tightness of oil supply gives political influence to nations that are otherwise highly marginal. The graphic associated with the piece mentions five African nations, four of which we basically never hear about: Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Mauritania and the Congo Republic. I’m embarrased to admit that I had no idea that Republic of Congo (the little one, not the one that used to be Zaire) exports more oil than Chad. The risks associated with the oil supply from Congo? “Unchecked corruption.”

Actually, Republic of Congo does pretty well, according to the 2005 TI corruption perception index – 2.3, which ties it for 130th with Venezuela, as well as other well-governed states like Cambodia and Burundi. (For the sarcasm-impaired, that was a joke. 130th = really, really bad.) But Sudan, Angola, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Chad all score worse. (Chad scores dead last, tied with Bangladesh.) Mauritania isn’t listed on the index, but it’s not exactly Iceland as far as corruption is concerned.

It’s possible to have natural resources and not have rampant corruption – Botswana is blessed with an abundance of diamonds and outranks many European nations on the TI index – but the nations who pull it off are the exception, not the rule. It’s a reminder that mineral wealth is a curse as much as a blessing – there are very, very few nations that go the path of Norway, rather than the path of Nigeria.

But before we bash Congo for “unchecked corruption”, it’s worth asking the question, “Just who are the folks paying these bribes?” Someone’s buying that Congolese oil and shipping it to the US.. and they’re probably paying the government both under and over the table to do so. Is Congo so corrupt because it’s yet another African basket case… or is Congo a corrupt African basket case because multinational oil companies are willing to make under the table payments to do business there. (If you chose “C – both”, award yourself two points.) (To fend off any libel and defamation suits – I have no information that suggests that any of the oil companies linked above have knowingly paid bribes while doing business in Congo. I mention them because they’re some of the companies with oil interests in the nation. )

Revealing these sorts of payments is the purpose of the Publish What You Pay initative. Founded by a core team of anti-corruption NGOs, including Transparency International and Global Witness, the initiative is doing a great deal of work behind the scenes to ensure that global energy dealings are more transparent, making it harder for these deals to take place under the table. (Disclosure: PWYP is funded in no small part by Open Society Institute, who I consult for.)

Congo-Brazzaville was briefly held up as an international model of transparency in oil accounting, praised by the International Monetary Fund for their public disclosures. That was before audits by Publish What You Pay and others revealed roughly $300 million in oil profits that somehow failed to make it into the government’s coffers – that’s an enormous amount of money, especially in the context of Congo’s official oil revenues of $974 million.

Needless to say, when you reveal corruption on this scale, your life and liberty are in danger. You’ll be shocked to hear that two of the leaders of PWYP in Congo – Brice Mackosso and Christian Mounzeo – were detained earlier this month on (trumped up) charges of misappropriating NGO funds. (There’s been basically no coverage of these ongoing detentions in media outside Africa, with the notable exception of the Boston Globe, which ran an excellent series on oil and corruption in Africa last year.)

$75 a barrel oil means more money lining the pockets of corrupt politicians and oilmen. It also means more guns for Sudan, Chad and their proxies. But it also means overnight debt repayment for Nigeria under a new deal with the Paris Club of creditors… which is either good economic news for the country, or a scandal, depending on who you ask.

Personally, I think anti-debt campaigners are missing the point. Yes, there’s something pretty absurd about Nigeria making a payment to wealthy nations that dwarfs the annual aid provided by the G-8 to the whole continent. But Nigeria’s about to become a very, very wealthy nation if oil stays north of $60 a barrel. The question isn’t whether Nigeria pays its debts or educates its youth with this particular pot of money – the question is what it does with oil profits going forwards. The prognosis – as reflected by the pitiful state of development in the Niger Delta – isn’t good. If the wealth generated by oil in states like Nigeria and Angola isn’t well spent, it’s nearly as great a tragedy as if it simply lines the pockets of dictators and cronies.

OPEC nations changed the international political landscape in the 1970s by demonstrating they could cause the US a great deal of pain by turning off their pumps. Middle East oil politics displaced Cold War domino theories as the central narrative of geopolitics. Will the new political power nations like Chad, Congo and Nigeria exercise in a world of $75 oil put them on the front page for a change? And will this because they’re paying their debts and educating their populations? Or because this wealth is ripping the nations apart as the world watches?

Damned if I know. But it’s certainly been novel to see “N’Djamena” in headlines, and it would be roughly as novel to see “Brazzaville” sometime soon as well.

• Angelina Jolie buying own country
  If only this were a joke… TOTH to Meskel Square for the link
  (tags: ethiopia humor africa)

Our talk, at the Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace conference in Manila, yesterday seemed to go very well. It’s not easy to keep the attention of a room for five and a half hours while talking about highly technical topics, but I think we managed to keep the majority of the crowd with us. This is the second time Nart and I have given this workshop – last time was for an audience that included a good chunk of Tunisia’s police and security forces… this audience was a good deal less threatening and more responsive. (Actually, given how many friends we have in the audience, through Global Voices and other partnerships, it’s hard to think of a friendlier crowd.)

It’s hugely useful to have the chance to talk about security and censorship circumvention with people who’ve got a real need for the information we’re sharing. It’s one thing to sit at a desk in Massachusetts and theorize about the best ways to blog without revealing your identity – it’s something else entirely to talk with friends from Vietnam, Burma and China and realize that you’d better be damned well certain that the advice you’re giving is correct.

We’ve released the vast slide deck we put together under Creative Commons 2.5 – Attribution and it’s already available on the web. There’s also three (long!) audio files of our talk, which allowed friends like Janet to participate vicariously in the conference without coming to Manila. We’ll be revising and re-releasing the slides in a few weeks (I hope to work on some revisions on the flight home) and writing a few short, practical articles on some aspects of the talk: basic steps towards securing email, an easy (easier?) guide to anonymous blogging, basic circumvention strategies, quick and dirty VPNs through ssh… The fact that some of the conference attendees have offered to translate these pieces into Thai, Vietnamese and other languages is a huge incentive to get the work done.

Many thanks to Roby Alampay and the wonderful folks at SEAPA and PCIJ for their hard work putting the conference together. It’s always great to have an excuse to see friends like Jeff Ooi, Isaac Mao and Enda Natsution and meet dozens of new friends. I now have a pile of invitations to give similar talks throughout Asia, which is a pleasure, and a little bit of a challenge. And now I’m off to walk around Manila, my reward for putting this talk together. Not a bad deal, as far as I’m concerned…

• The Chinese Detention Weight Loss Plan
  Feng 37′s photo of Hu Jia after a month in detention… and thoughts on political dissidence and weight loss…
  (tags: china haowu humanrights humor)

Rebecca’s got a great editorial today in the Washington Post about Hao Wu and the uneasy state of human rights in China. Building on Hao Wu’s detention and Nina’s experience advocating for her brother’s release, she talks about the fragility of middle-class existence in China:

Problem is, the Chinese Dream can be shattered quickly if you step over a line that is not clearly drawn — a line that is kept deliberately vague and that shifts frequently with the political tides. Those who were told by the Chinese media that they have constitutional and legal rights are painfully disabused of such fantasies when they seek to shed light on social and religious issues the state prefers to keep in the dark.

Jeff Ooi used part of his speech today at the Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace conference to call attention to Hao Wu’s case and the petition we’ve been running to try to put pressure on Hu Jintao. I realized – looking at the gawdawful URL on the screen during Jeff’s presentation – that I needed a better URL for the petition – you should now be able to access the petition at http://freehaopetition.com. I’m hopeful that the Post editorial will push more people towards the petition and that we’ll start generating more signatures.

Attending conferences like FEAC is always a useful reminder of how challenging and threatening free speech can be to authoritarian regimes. While China and Vietnam are detaining and arresting cyberdissidents, James Gomez from Singapore reminds us that dissident voices in his country face crippling libel and defamation suits, as well as a morass of laws designed to prevent them from using blogs and independent media to advocate for political ends. A speaker from Committee to Protect Journalists just reminded us that Nepal has detained 200 journalists since the beginning of the month for participating in, or covering, pro-democracy rallies.

In other words, Hao Wu’s situation is far from unique. But China’s technique of detaining individuals without charge, without information to the detainee’s families, without opportunity to challenge their detention is especially offensive and troubling. Will detentions of people like Hao Wu be on the table during discussions between President Bush and Hu Jintao? I don’t know, but I can hope.

Other posts from FEAC 2006: feac2006

• Article 19: Global Campaign for Free Expression
  Amazing resource on laws and regulations threatning to restrict speech online and offline
  (tags: censorship media press globalvoices)

Isaac Mao leads off the morning’s session, comparing Internet filtering strategies throughout Asia. He refers to the situation in China as “the great firewall versus the great tunnel”.

In past talks on net filtering, I’ve heard Isaac refer to the idea that “freedom of thought” is a precursor to “freedom of speech” – he’s got a more developed version of this meme now, and refers to the firewall as the conjunction of three walls – barriers to free access, free speech and free thinking. Isaac notes that China has “brainwashed” its population through the educational system. He remembers, “in childhood, my parents would say, ‘Don’t say that, it’s dangerous.’ Later in University, people would say ‘Don’t say democracy in a public space, it’s dangerous.’”

The Chinese firewall barriers to access involve four different strategies – URL hijacking, Keyword screening, IP blocking and “brain shrinking”. The first three are pretty self explanatory – URLs can be redirected to other sites, pages that contain particular keywords can be blocked and whole IP addresses can be made inaccessible. “Brain shrinking” refers to the compromises companies like Google have made in coming to China – they offer restricted versions of their indexes, shrinking the sorts of options available to Chinese users.

While proxies are an option for Chinese users, as are systems like Tor, and agents like “hidemyass” and “nyud“, they’re hard to use – the overwhelming message they send Chinese users is “give up”.

Isaac offers some thoughts on the future of tunnels through the great firewall. He’s interested in “social relaying” – using individual relationships in a peer to peer model to tunnel through the firewall without relying on a central server. (This sounds a bit like what Citizen Lab is trying to do with Psiphon.) He speculates that there’s a strategy of offering internet access via Skype, taking advantage of the fact that Skype’s traffic is encrypted.

Isaac’s done a great job documenting what sites are blocked by the firewall – he and others are using the GFW tag in del.icio.us to show sites that are blocked by the firewall. And he points out that creative Chinese users are finding ways to share information even through photo sharing sites like flickr – he points to a doctored photo of Einstein showing anti-China critique.

Dr. Awab Alvi from Pakistan is one of the leaders of the Don’t Block the Blog project. He’s advocating that Pakistan stop blocking Blogspot.com, which they’ve blocked in the past month.

In Pakistan, there was some violent protest in reaction to the Danish cartoons parodying the Prophet Mohammed. A Pakistani blogger posted a blog – Draw Mohammed Week – which generated a great deal of ire in Pakistan. Under Pakistani law (article 249-C) it’s certainly arguable that this blog is prohibited under Pakistani law.

But Pakistan may have overreacted, blocking all Blogspot blogs for over a month. Awab believes that this is made easier by the fact that all Pakistani internet traffic is routed through the Pakistan internet exchange. He and his colleague Omer Alvie have started a campaign to call attention to this overblocking, and to protest other blocking actions. When Pakistan blocked all of Wikipedia – because one page contained the banned cartoons – they helped organize major online protests, and the block was ended within seven hours.

Nart Villeneuve offers a short version of his default Open Net Initiative talk, which I’ve blogged before here. He makes two interesting points I hadn’t heard before:

- ONI is now especially interested in short-term blocking, especially blocking of opposition websites around elections. He’s recently worked on studies in Kyrgyzstan and Belarus, and in the Kyrgyz elections, found some evidence of denial of service attacks around the election.

- BBC is blocked far more often than comparable news sites like Fox or CNN. Why? Because they create local language content which is considered more dangerous that English language content.

Other posts from FEAC 2006: feac2006

Manolo Quezon III, a Filipino journalist and blogger, gives us an overview of blogger’s role in the Gloria Arroyo vote-buying scandal in a talk called “Tag-Teaming Against the President”.

He begins with an overview of the “Hello Garci” scandal, showing off the Hello Garci scandal Wikipedia timeline on the subject. Audiotapes were released implicating President Gloria Arroyo in a vote-fixing scandal. The Arroyo government responded by offering alternative, less damning versions of the tapes, but the damaging versions circulated, both in the media and on blogs. They led to an unsuccesful attempt to impeach the president.

The scandal was a turning point for the Filipino blogosphere – as mainstream news outlets assisted the government by circulating “official” versions of the recordings, bloggers organized mirrors and bit torrents to distribute the unedited versions. When legal authorities started to warn that anyone playing the tapes or circulating transcripts could be persecuted under national anti-wiretapping laws, mainstream publications bowed out and bloggers stepped up. This required bloggers to get smart about all sorts of unfamiliar technologies – releasing three hours of unedited audio for people on a narrowband connection isn’t an especially useful technique. So bloggers edited audio into more accessible chunks – and converted it into Hello Garci scandal“>highly popular ringtones for mobile phones.

Manolo speculates that the Philippines is “a nation of lawyers”, which helps explain why people were receptive to the call to “use your constitutional rights and spread the tapes.”

Other posts from FEAC 2006: feac2006

So check this out: http://ice.citizenlab.org/ethanz/

Nart Villeneuve and I are preparing for a talk on Friday in Manila on freedom of expression in Asian cyberspace – it includes the talks he and I often give on secure publishing, secure email, anonymity, encryption and so on. While working on the outline for the talk, we got to talking about the idea of pre-emptively planning for your blog to be blocked by Internet censors – if you knew that your blog was likely to be blocked, what could you do to make it as easy as possible for your regular readers and for casual users to find mirror sites for your content?

One thing you can do is make the investment of time – and a little money – to run your blog on a standalone blogging server that stores your content in a SQL database. (Both Moveable Type and WordPress fit the bill – both he and I run WordPress, so that’s what we experimented with.)

If I managed to truly piss off the Chinese authorities, it’s possible that ethanzuckerman.com would be blocked within the Chinese firewall. (While I’ve gotten a lot of reports that freehaowu.org is blocked with China, I don’t think this is actually intentional, despite my earlier post – I think it’s an artifact of how I’m redirecting that domain name… the site itself is not blocked, just four domain names I’m pointing to it.) There are two ways the firewall would likely do this: it could block either the IP address that ethanzuckerman.com lives on, or it could block the domain name, refusing to associate an IP address with ethanzuckerman.com.

In the first case, an IP block, I need to move my content to another server on another IP address to make it accesible to people in China. (In the second case, I need to register a new domain name and encourage people to access the blog through that… or tell them to access it directly through the IP.) While WordPress makes migrating content relatively easy through a database dump, there’s a much easier way to move – keep the database, move the front end.

On an unblocked IP, install a copy of WordPress. Rather than setting up a new database, change the configuration file to point to your existing WordPress database, using the IP address of the server the datbase is located on, rather than “localhost”. The new blog will have the default WordPress appearance, but all the posts and comments of your existing blog – like the blog Nart and I just set up on his server in under 90 seconds. If only the IP is being blocked, you could then make a change to your DNS record and point the site to the new address, and your users would have access within a day or two, as the new DNS settings propogate. If both name and IP are blocked, you need to circulate the new name and IP.

While WordPress handles this configuration relatively well, allowing comments on either blog, it’s not flawless – set up this way, my real blog seems to keep reverting to WordPress’s default stylesheet. But it’s certainly a workable solution in case of an emergency. You can continue posting to the same site, your users can keep commenting, and you can configure a theoretically limitless set of mirrors if you’re afraid your new site will be blocked as well.

At dinner tonight, Isaac Mao - a man who’s no stranger to being blocked by the Chinese firewall – mentioned that he’s getting fed up with how often his site is inaccessible and is thinking about moving to a server outside of China. In discussing how this setup might work for Isaac, the obvious question arises – how do you get people to know where your new blog is if you’re being blocked by name and by IP.

Isaac has one very clever solution – a Skype robot which tells people whether his site is up or down, where they can find a mirror, whether he’s in detention. Nart came up with another clever option – run Google Ads on your own name. If isaacmao.com is blocked, a Google search for “isaac mao” could turn up an ad for “Read Isaac Mao at newissacmao.com”.

I think there’s something vaguely charming about using Google to subvert Chinese internet censorship, don’t you?