In this collaborative study between the Citizen Lab and Department of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico we examine the implementation of censorship and surveillance in two IM clients maintained by two different Chinese companies. For a period of more than a year and a half, we downloaded and decrypted the censorship and surveillance keyword lists used by the client software of two IM programs used in China: TOM-Skype and Sina UC.

A new Citizen Lab report, entitled O Pakistan, We Stand on Guard for Thee: An Analysis of Canada-based Netsweeper’s Role in Pakistan’s Censorship Regime, has found that Canada-based Netsweeper filtering products have been installed in Pakistan, and are being used for filtering political and social web content.

As citizens in China commemorate the twenty-fourth anniversary of June 4th today, we identified 71 keywords that are currently blocked from searching on Sina Weibo.

Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert and Senior Researcher Sarah McKune wrote an op-ed on the digital arms trade in the 13 March edition of the Ottawa Citizen.

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.

On Tuesday, January 15 at 12:30pm ET, Citizen Lab Research Fellow Jon Penney will speak at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Government officials’ responses to the blocking and the subsequent resumption of access to Google services give evidence that perhaps the Islamic Republic of Iran will remain receptive to popular demands and respect the boundaries of censorship.

2012 Google Policy Fellow Kieran Bergmann wrote an article titled Outsourcing Censorship for the Canadian International Council on how governments in Asia are increasing their efforts to control online content.

Research Fellow Jon Penney wrote a paper titled Communications Disruption & Censorship under International Law: History Lesson, which was presented at this year’s Second USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI).