Once a unfettered forum for global communications, the Internet is today under siege.
Upwards of forty countries now censor Internet traffic. Most of this censorship takes place in secret, without any public accountability or civilian oversight. An arms race in cyberspace has been unleashed, as governments use the Internet as a new frontier for geopolitical struggle. The Internet is being carved up, colonized, and militarized.
Protect the Net is a worldwide campaign to help restore the hope and promise that the original notion of the Internet once held out as a frontier-less forum of free expression, democratic communications, and access to information. It is about preserving and enlarging the global commons of information, shedding light on unlawful censorship and surveillance practices where they exist, and holding states and corporations accountable for the limitations they impose on free speech and access to information online.
Protect the Net —Toronto is the first stop in the Protect the Net worldwide campaign. The Toronto Protect the Net event will be highlighted by presentations by experts and academics on Internet censorship, surveillance and infowar, as well as the worldwide public release and demonstration of the psiphon censorship circumvention tool.
psiphon is a human rights software project developed by the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies that allows citizens in uncensored countries to provide unfettered access to the Net through their home computers to friends and family members who live behind firewalls of states that censor.
Protect the Net will educate and empower citizens worldwide about the perilous state of human rights online and what they can do to help rescue and restore those rights.
psiphon to be released December 1st 2006
More information and Download psiphon.
Source: University of Toronto