Increasing global demand for an uncensored Internet - how the U.S. can help defeat online censorship by facilitating private action

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Jan, 2008 by Andrew W. Lloyd

B. Technologies Used to Circumvent Censorship

The U.S. has directly funded some anti-jamming technology, but the funding has been limited and targeted specifically at China. (46) According to the text of the Global Internet Freedom Act:

   The United States has thus far commenced only modest steps to fund
   and deploy technologies to defeat Internet jamming. To date, for
   example, the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia have committed a
   total of $3,000,000 for technology to counter Internet jamming of
   their websites by the People's Republic of China. This technology
   has been relied upon by Voice of America and Radio Free Asia to
   ensure access to their programming, and it has successfully
   permitted 100,000 electronic hits per day from users in China. (47)

For the most part, non-governmental organizations and individuals--many of them Chinese dissidents--have been responsible for the creation and costs of anti-jamming software. (48) The techniques have included various technological approaches, including use of proxy servers, intermediaries, mirrored sites, and encryption. (49) A proxy server is a computer that allows indirect connections to other sites by taking the request, accessing the file from the actual location, and then returning it to the user. (50) A mirror site is a website that hosts content that is identical to that at another location; it allows pages to be viewed without ever requesting data from the original server. (51)

1. Examples of Anti-Jamming Software

"Triangle Boy," an anti-jamming technology developed by SafeWeb that allowed Internet access through an encrypted channel, was receiving millions of hits per month from China and Saudi Arabia before closing due to lack of funding. (52) SafeWeb operated public proxy servers that allowed users behind firewalls to access blocked sites. (53) Triangle Boy was a separate software that "spoofed" Internet protocol (IP) addresses and helped users connect to SafeWeb who were unable to access the SafeWeb servers directly (such as users in China). (54) Triangle Boy was a peer-to-peer network by which a user behind a firewall would send a request to a second user, who in turn would connect directly with the SafeWeb server and return the information to the original requester. (55) A peer-to-peer arrangement means that the more "installations" or hosts there are taking requests, the harder it is for a business or country running a firewall to block requests simply by IP address. (56)

"Peekabooty" is a program employing a different approach to defeat Internet jamming. (57) Peekabooty is essentially a peer-to-peer network. When a user wants to access a blocked website, the program uses another computer on the Peekabooty network to access the website and return an encrypted version to the initial requestor. (58) There are also more typical peer-to-peer networks for downloading uncensored content in China, such as Freenet-China. (59) Many variations of the peer-to-peer structure have emerged recently, such as Psiphon and Tor. (60) The technological differences between such offerings aren't particularly relevant to this Note, but the growing array of anti-jamming options is.