Dear Sam,

thank you for those interesting remarks. Indeed, the increased use of VPNs, as well as encryption, says something about the growing awareness of Internet users about data theft, online crime, privacy made insecure.

Some years ago, there was a sense that mass surveillance and censorship, rife in dictatorships, was not a problem in long-standing democracies. More recently, the social and political organization of a country is no longer an absolute guarantee of protection for its Internet users. There is now a "sad convergence" between countries we (rightly) have been criticizing, and democracies where human and civic rights are being curtailed in the name of some higher purpose, be that the "war on terror" or the consolidation of corporate interests. Two years ago I wrote a piece in CircleID, "Global surveillance: towards convergence?", http://www.circleid.com/posts/20130826_global_surveillance_towards_convergence/ 

Best regards,
Jean-Jacques.






 

----- Mail original -----
De: "Sam Lanfranco" <[log in to unmask]>
À: [log in to unmask]
Envoyé: Samedi 15 Août 2015 14:22:41
Objet: Re: [Policy] IANA transition and ICANN accountability proposal : NCSG comments


Increasingly here are a number of easier and easier to use work arounds being propagated to deal with virtually all forms of DNS blocking. At the moment I and a colleague at psiphon.ca are writing short article on censorship and the use of VPN apps (open source) and other tools that circumvent blocking. 

When a country like Turkey initiates some blocking the dowloads of the VPN cell phone apps in that country soar into the 10's and 100's of thousands. It is of course a cat and mouse game where the next work arounds are greeted by newer approaches to blocking, but at some point the "cat" will get tired...or nasty, but hopefully open internet democratic forces will prevail first. 

Sam L. 

On 15/08/2015 5:25 AM, James Gannon wrote: 


... I wonder has anyone studied how much innovation has came out of Chinas great firewall implementation with regards to avoidance and privacy enhancing technologies to protect and enable the Chinese population to access an unfiltered internet.

-James