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Anti-censorship system could make it difficult to block individual sites
ANI | Aug 13, 2011, 11.44AM IST

Anti-censorship system could make it difficult to block individual sites.
WASHINGTON: A group of computer science researchers have devised a new system that would turn the Internet into a proxy server thus making it impossible to block individual websites.

Computer science researchers of University of Michigan and the University of Waterloo will present the new system, Telex, at the USENIX Security Symposium in San Francisco on August 12.

"This has the potential to shift the arms race regarding censorship to be in favour of free and open communication," University of Michigan's Assistant Professor J. Alex Halderman said.

"The Internet has the ability to catalyze change by empowering people through information and communication services. Repressive governments have responded by aggressively filtering it. If we can find ways to keep those channels open, we can give more people the ability to take part in free speech and access to information", he added.

A typical anticensorship scheme allows users to overcome blocking by routing them through a proxy server. But the censor can monitor the content of traffic on the whole network, and eventually finds and blocks the proxy too.

"It creates a kind of cat and mouse game. It would likely require support from nations that are friendly to the cause of a free and open Internet", Halderman said.

"The problem with any one company doing this, for example, is they become a target. It's a collective action problem. You want to do it on a wide scale that makes connecting to the Internet almost an all or nothing proposition for the repressive state", he added.

The researchers are at the proof-of-concept stage in unveiling Telex.

They have been using Telex for daily web browsing for the past four months and tested it with a Beijing client who was able to access YouTube, which is blocked in China.