University Researchers Join to Expose and Map Net Censorship, Surveillance

Cambridge, U.K.; Cambridge, Mass.; Toronto, Ontario (4/23/04).  An
international team of academics from the University of Cambridge,
Harvard Law School, and the University of Toronto has begun formally
monitoring worldwide Internet censorship and surveillance.

"The Open Net Initiative represents a new approach to university-based
research," says Cambridge University's Rafal Rohozinski. "We fuse
cutting-edge intelligence-derived techniques with a networked model of
analysis that includes some of the brightest minds in this field - we
are striving to become the eyes and ears on digital censorship worldwide."

The Open Net Initiative (ONI) was formed in 2004 with support from the
Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute and represents a partnership
among groups at three leading global universities: Cambridge, Harvard,
and Toronto. As Harvard's Jonathan Zittrain explains, "The aim of the
ONI is to excavate, analyze, and report censorship and surveillance
practices in a rigorous, ongoing fashion. In order to fully understand
the Internet's evolution, we must be able to map it empirically."

The ONI employs a unique interdisciplinary methodology that combines
information derived from a global network of local researchers with
advanced technical network probes to create a detailed picture of what
goes on beneath the surface of the Internet.

As University of Toronto's Ronald Deibert explains, some techniques of
interrogation have been deliberately borrowed from the world of
intelligence. "The tools we employ to probe the subterranean layers of
the Internet are not necessarily new," says Deibert.  "The combination
of electronic surveillance and human-based information gathering has
long been the hallmark of state intelligence practices. What we are
doing with the ONI is taking these tools and turning them inside-out, so
to speak, focusing them back on the 'watchers' to measure their
practices against general principles of human rights, and open the lid
on the World Wide Web."

ONI researchers in the UK, Canada and United States lead discrete
aspects of the research, and jointly analyze the resulting data.
Technical research is centered on University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, legal
and statistical analysis is led by Harvard University's Berkman Center for
Internet & Society, while managing human-based information gathering
activities is the responsibility of the Advanced Network Research Group at
Cambridge University.

Additional research and writing work conducted by the Berkman Center in this
field is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation and other sources, while the work of the Citizen Lab and Advanced
Network Research Group is supported by the Ford Foundation.

ONI research reports, bulletins, and advisories will be released periodically
and can be found on the ONI website: <http://www.opennetinitiative.net/>.

Contact:

Ron Deibert, Director, Citizen Lab, Munk Centre for International
Studies, University of Toronto, [log in to unmask]

Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey, Berkman Center for Internet and
Society, Harvard Law School, Harvard University,
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]

Rafal Rohozinski, Director, Advanced Network Research Group, Cambridge
Security Programme, University of Cambridge, [log in to unmask]