In this report, we confirm the use of the services of Canadian company Netsweeper, Inc. to censor access to the Internet in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

In this report, we document the results of network measurement tests we ran to determine how the Internet is being filtered in Iraq in reaction to ongoing insurgency in the country. The results identify 20 unique URLs that are blocked on three Iraq-based Internet Service Providers. Notably, none of the 7 websites we tested that are affiliated with, or supportive, of the jihadist insurgent group the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) were found to be blocked.

A new Citizen Lab report has found that Canada-based Netsweeper filtering products have been identified on three ISPs in Somalia.

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).

On October 22-25, 2013, Indonesia will host the eighth annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a multi-stakeholder dialogue on the issues and policies of Internet governance. The main theme of this year’s IGF is “Building Bridges: Enhancing Multi-stakeholder Cooperation for Growth and Sustainable Development.”

This post is the first in a series that will explore online freedom of expression and the state of information controls in Indonesia in the context of their role as host of the IGF.

An Indonesian translation of this post is available here.

Terjemahan dalam bahasa Indonesia dari halaman ini tersedia disini.

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

This report details Iran’s increasing Internet controls since 2009, when protests against the victory of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad rocked the country. The election protest campaign–dubbed the “Green Movement”–was marked for the high use of social media and other information and communication technologies (ICT) to organize protests and disseminate information.

Blue Coat Devices capable of filtering, censorship, and surveillance are being used around the world. 61 of these Blue Coat appliances are on public or government networks in countries with a history of concerns over human rights, surveillance, and censorship. Our findings support the need for national and international scrutiny of Blue Coat implementations in the countries we have identified, and a closer look at the global proliferation of “dual-use” information and communication technologies.

This appendix contains countries of interest in which Blue Coat devices were located.

This is an update to our November 2011 report titledThe Canadian Connection: An investigation of Syrian government and Hezbullah web hosting in Canada, which examined the use of web servers based in Canada, the U.S., and European countries to host Syrian government websites and websites of the Lebanese political party Hezbullah. Our findings indicate that, while many of the websites we examined in 2011 have changed hosting providers, a number of Syrian government and Hezbullah websites still maintain an online presence through the services of North American and European web hosts.