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Citizen Lab reports and research briefs

Blue Coat Errors: Sites Miscategorized as “Pornography”

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.

Hacking Team’s US Nexus

This report outlines an extensive US nexus for a network of servers forming part of the collection infrastructure of Hacking Team’s Remote Control System. The network, which includes data centers across the US, is used to obscure government clients of Hacking Team. It is used by at least 10 countries ranging from Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan to Korea, Poland and Ethiopia. In addition we highlight an intriguing US-only Hacking Team circuit.

Hacking Team and the Targeting of Ethiopian Journalists

In this report, we identified three instances where Ethiopian journalist group ESAT was targeted with spyware in the space of two hours by a single attacker. In each case the spyware appeared to be RCS (Remote Control System), programmed and sold exclusively to governments by Milan-based Hacking Team.

Pemantauan IGF 2013 di Indonesia

Mereka yang bertanya-tanya tentang masa depan Internet perlu tidak melihat lebih jauh lagi dari Indonesia. Seperti banyak negara di Selatan Dunia, Indonesia telah dengan cepat masuk ke dalam alam komunikasi digital global. Ibukota negara, Jakarta, disebut sebagai kota Twitter paling aktif di dunia, dan Indonesia kini memiliki jumlah keempat terbesar pengguna Facebook. Dari jumlah yang… Read more »

IGF 2013: Islands of Control, Islands of Resistance: Monitoring the 2013 Indonesian IGF (Foreword)

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).

Smartfilter: Miscategorization and Filtering in Saudi Arabia and UAE

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