TORONTO — All you can see on the video clip is a laptop computer and a man's hands. He goes to Google and enters a search: "women's issues." When he clicks on the resulting links, though, every site is blocked. He is in Iran, one of more than 40 countries that filter the Internet in some way, and one of 12 that have a pervasive filtration system that blocks content.
Now he logs onto a program labelled Psiphon and tries the Google search again. This time the results are in the tens of thousands.
"Thank you, guys," he says.
The 25-second clip plays on the laptop of Ronald Deibert, director of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, the birthplace of Psiphon, which officially launches tomorrow.
The Citizen Lab team, Michael Hull, Psiphon Development Lead, Nart Villneuve, Director of Technology Research, Programer Eugene Fryntov, Ron Delbert Director of Citizen Lab, Programer Anton Fillipenko and Jane Gowan, Chief Designer poses for at photo in the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. The team is taking part in Protect the Net, featuring the worldwide public release of the program they developed, Psiphon. (Deborah Baic /The Globe and Mail)
Combining a passion for human rights and technology, Prof. Deibert and Citizen Lab members have spent more than two years developing a program to help tunnel through walls of Internet censorship.
Looking over Prof. Deibert's shoulder is lead software developer Michael Hull. "The best thing," he says, "is hearing that guy say thank you."
Psiphon started as a small side project for Prof. Deibert, who teaches political science at U of T, several years ago and blossomed into a full-time job when the lab was granted $3-million (U.S.) from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation last January.
With this financial boost, the team, tucked away in a small basement lab, dedicated itself to perfecting Psiphon.
The software is downloaded onto a computer in an uncensored country; this becomes the host computer. The host owner then gives the login and password to a trusted friend, family member, or colleague in a censored country. This individual can then use the host computer as a proxy to search the net, censor-free.
"You are essentially loaning someone your computer," Prof. Deibert said.
The most important detail is that codes are encrypted and enter users' machines via a port otherwise used for the transfer of financial data -- port 443.
"It looks for all intents and purposes like a financial transaction," Prof. Deibert said.
With his team of three programmers, a graphic designer and a research technician, he has spent the past four months testing the software for glitches.
"We've been addressing some of the issues of usability," Prof. Deibert said. "People now are not only able to access information but will be able to post comments, like on blogs."
The Citizen Lab, along with partners at Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard universities, is part of the OpenNet Initiative, which documents Internet censorship.
Psiphon is by no means the first effort to evade censorship online. One widely used system is called Tor, which uses host computers that can be accessed on the Web.
Tor's flaw is that it is easy to block, says Andrew Lih, a former Hong Kong University professor who specializes in issues of censorship and new-media technology in China. But so far China has decided not to do so.
Psiphon is hard to block because it piggybacks on existing streams of financial data, but Mr. Lih is not completely convinced.
"Citizen Lab folks are smart, so they may have found some nice ways to make it more seamless, but nonetheless, it is still a challenge to find folks you trust to host it," he said.
There are an estimated 110 million Internet users in China.
That exceedingly large base prompted the popular search engine Google to agree this past January to self-censor its operation in that country.
