CAREER: Illuminating the Impacts of Internet Censorship with Principled Network Measurements

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The Internet was not designed with information controls, such as censorship or surveillance, in mind. However, its importance has led many nations to repurpose Internet protocols (e.g., the Domain Name System (DNS) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)), and network management products (e.g., Web proxies, traffic shapers) for information control. This unintended use of networking technologies can lead to unintended international impact of censorship, and raises many ethical issues when network management products are exported to countries that use them to violate human rights. To address these challenges, this project: (1) develops a platform which enables repeatable measurements of Internet censorship while mitigating risks to individuals performing the measurements, (2) designs techniques to analyze data from the platform to detect different types of censorship and even specific network management products used for censorship, and (3) uses the platform to quantify instances of national censorship which have unintended international impact on the Internet. The use of technology to restrict freedom of speech and persecute dissidents around the globe is a human rights concern. This project provides high fidelity technical data to inform policy discussions. Further, the technical analysis provides insights into the global impacts of national censorship on the Internet, and how proposed improvements to existing protocols (e.g., DNSSEC, BGPSEC) can mitigate these issues.