Traces of US Influences
over Taiwan's Internet Censorship Attempts

Speaker: Chao-Kuei Hung
http://user.frdm.info/ckhung/
http://ckhung0.blogspot.tw/
Affiliation:

Censorship Attempt
in the Name of Intellectual Properties

Intellectual Property Office (under the Ministry of Economy) proposed to regulate the Internet in late May:

  1. Enlist ISP's to blacklist "obviously infringing (foreign) sites" using DNS seizure or IP blocking
  2. Megaupload was cited as an example; Tudou was explicitly excluded since it "does not count as an obviously infringing site"
  3. Internet protocols including bittorrent, ftp, and foxy would be examined for infringing contents

Netizen Objections

  1. "Who are the mysterious 'copyright holder groups'?"
  2. "It becomes easier for foreign sites to infringe local artists' works"
  3. "Are there any economical, legal, and IT experts backing this proposal?"
  4. "Secret blacklist in the hands of the government?"
  5. "Will bypassing technologies such as VPN, ssh, and TOR also be banned?"
  6. GVO reports, Western media notices, IPO backs down a little bit
  7. IPO still seeks judicial (instead of executive) approaches of blocking
  8. Who is behind this fiasco? Approach more like SOPA than GFW.

a graphical summary

Censorship Attempt
in the Name of National Security

Executive Yuan proposed amendment of the National Security Act:

  1. to include the Internet in the protection of national security
  2. with emphasis on "terrorism" and "hackers on the Internet"
  3. by building a more pronounced system for "safeguarding national secrets"
  4. reaching private sectors through related gov offices
  5. targeting people who "intend to endanger national security or social order"

Bad Excuses Refuted

  1. True causes of hacking threat: IE-only legacy, e.g. banking websites and the Citizen Digital Certificates (自然人憑證).
  2. Leaking info to enemy != leaking info to press
    "confusing leakers with spies"
    "Snowden Warns Of 'Surveillance Gone Too Far'"
    Why would a spy leak the info to the Internet when it could be sold?
  3. Why would "hackers" or "terrorists" physically come to Taiwan to be arrested and punished?
  4. Lousy excuses and strange wordings reminiscent of US attack on wikileaks

Censorship Attempt
through Telecom Laws

National Communications Commission's revision of Article 9 of the Telecom Act:

"Upon being notified by authorized government units about cases of distributing unlawful contents to the public via telecom networks, an ISP should, when technically possible, disconnect the service, remove the contents, or take other appropriate measures."

"An ISP may, when technically possible, disconnect the service, remove the contents, or take other appropriate measures in response to cases of distributing, via telecom networks to the public, contents that cause public disorder or go against decent culture."

Concerns

NCC: not about deciding the legality; up to the IPO or the judiciary processes to determine copyright infringement

  1. Blogger: no existing law determines in advance what contents are legal
  2. Possible executive abuses thru the hook to allow "authorized government units" to send disconnection notices
  3. Interaction with N. S. Act places the Ministry of Justice at the crown
  4. Reminiscent of US DOJ, notorious for cases such as Swartz suicide, AP surveillance, wikileaks prosecution, Bradley Manning torture, ...

Earlier Attempts to Restrict Information Flow

  1. "Graduated response measures" in 2009, contemporary with France and Korea; New Zealand's version is "pushed, bought and paid for by the US"
  2. Posters of mysterious origin appear in univ. campuses starting 2009, claiming P2P as illegal
  3. Self-contradictory "English cartoon contest" campaigning for IP protection, contemporary with NYC "create the next spot contest" anti-piracy campaign
  4. Now.in raid, contemporary with Megaupload raid
  5. Anti-piracy propaganda in univ. campuses from MOE and MOJ

Conclusions

  1. Too many circumstantial evidences -- maybe not enough to convict, but more than enough to be alerted
  2. NSA PRISM and other espionage scandals
  3. Political censorship, copyright enforcement, national security protection, child protection from porn, ...: different excuses requiring the same technical approach
As we saw in the copyright wars, all attempts at controlling PCs will converge on rootkits; all attempts at controlling the Internet will converge on surveillance and censorship. -- Cory Doctorow