As a follow-up to our post about the number of sites miscategorized by SmartFilter, our tests with Blue Coat show that miscategorization is not a problem limited to a single product. We should be skeptical of any company’s claims that they are able to categorize much of the web accurately, or that their rate of “collateral damage” is very low.

This report, Islands of Control, Islands of Resistance: Monitoring the 2013 Indonesian IGF, is the first in a series of Citizen Lab reports that apply a mixture of methods, from technical interrogation to field research and social and legal analyses, to study information controls in and around particular events. This report focuses on information controls in and around Indonesia’s hosting of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

What do the Trinity Davison Lutheran Church, the Filipino American Women’s Network, the Tucson Jazz Institute, the Sacramento Police Activities League, the Pan Iranist Party of Iran, and the Salvation Army of Houston, Texas have in common?

Their websites are all blocked for Internet users in Saudi Arabia, and for most Internet users in the United Arab Emirates

The paper presents an initial methodology for identifying and confirming the use of URL filtering products around the world.