Human Rights Hacktivists Scale Firewalls

Computer-hacking activists have teamed up with the University of Toronto to develop software that will allow residents in web-restrictive countries to anonymously access censored sites.

by Helen Leggatt

The tool, called Psiphon, will be released this Friday, 1 December. It will enable those living in countries where web content is censored - such as China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - to access the internet via a host computer located in a non-censored country. For instance, a user in the U.S., a “psiphonode”, can set up a user account for someone in, say, China who then becomes a “psiphonite”.

"The communities that we're helping to connect to each other have a legitimate right to exercise their human rights within this governance regime," said Ron Deibert, director of the University of Toronto's electronic human right think-tank, Citizen Lab.

The designers of the open source software program claim there is no way to trace the restricted user’s tracks from their computer, only the host computer will know which sites have been accessed. That does mean, however, that it would be possible for authorities in restricted countries to set up psiphonodes outside the country, in an attempt to catch out those trying to bypass government filters.

The Psiphon website does warn that bypassing censorship may violate a nation’s laws, which could leave to severe repercussions in some countries.