Guide aims to help bloggers beat censors
Thursday, September 22, 2005 Posted: 1457 GMT (2257 HKT)
PARIS, France (AP) -- A Paris-based media watchdog has released an
ABC guide of tips for bloggers and dissidents to sneak past
Internet censors in countries from China to Iran.
Reporters Without Borders' "Handbook for Blogger and
Cyber-Dissidents" is partly financed by the French government and
includes technical advice on how to remain anonymous online. It was
launched at the Apple Expo computer show in Paris on Thursday and
can also be downloaded from RSF's Web site in Chinese, Arabic,
Persian, English and French.
"Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where
the mainstream media is censored or under pressure," Julien Pain,
head of the watchdog's Internet Freedom desk, writes in the
introduction.
In a bid to inspire budding Web diarists around the world, the
87-page booklet gives advice on setting up and running blogs, and
on using pseudonyms and anonymous proxies, which can be used to
replace easily traceable home computer addresses.
"With a bit of common sense, perseverance and especially by picking
the right tools, any blogger should be able to overcome
censorship," writes Pain.
The advice varies depending on the user's level of paranoia -- from
changing cyber cafes to sending cryptographically signed messages
via specially formatted e-mail.
The guide explains circumvention technologies that can break
through government filters but warns bloggers to check how severe
the penalty will be if they are caught using them.
The freely available handbook advises bloggers to be ethical and
warns that the tips are not intended for terrorists, racketeers or
pedophiles who use the Internet to commit crimes.
The advice is for "a government whistleblower in a country with a
less-than-transparent government," Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at the
Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School,
writes in the section on "How to Blog Anonymously."
In a series of personal accounts, bloggers explain how they tried
to beat censorship in countries such as Iran, China and
Nepal.
"We can write freely in blogs," writes Arash Sigarchi, an Iranian
journalist who was nonetheless sentenced to 14 years in prison for
posting several messages online that criticized the Iranian
regime.
RSF, an outspoken critic of media and online censorship, said the
French Foreign Ministry helped pay for the booklet's printing
costs.
The handbook ends with a "championship" of top Internet censors,
starting with China and its "clever mix of investment, technology
and diplomacy."
"A call for free elections ... has a maximum online life of about
half an hour," Pain writes of censorship in China.
Over the past two years, blogs have become an increasingly popular
vehicle for sharing opinions and information.
No one knows for certain just how big the so-called "blogosphere"
has become. Technorati, the niche's top search engine so far, says
it indexes 17.1 million sites spanning about 1.5 billion links.