Tor’s Usability for Censorship Circumvention

, Nathan Malkin , Ganesh Iyer , Serge Egelman , and David Wagner Tor ’ s Usability for Censorship Circumvention

Tor has grown beyond its original purpose as an anonymity tool and has become a widely-used cen­ sorship circumvention tool. This is the first study to ex­ amine Tor’s usability in this role. We evaluate, design, and test the Tor configuration interface by placing users in simulated censorship environments, instructing them to use Tor to circumvent censorship, and measuring their interactions w...

Measuring and circumventing Internet censorship

An ever increasing amount of governments, organisations, and companies employ Internet censorship in order to filter the free flow of information. These efforts are supported by an equally increasing number of companies focusing on the development of filtering equipment. Only what these entities consider right can pass the filters. This practice constitutes a violation of the Universal Declarat...

Al-Saqaf, W. (2016) Internet Censorship Circumvention Tools: Escaping the Control of the Syrian Regime

Leveraging Internet Services to Evade Censorship

Free and uncensored access to the Internet is an important right nowadays. Repressive regimes, however, prevent their citizens from freely using the Internet and utilize censorship to suppress unwanted content. To overcome such filtering, researchers introduced circumvention systems that avoid censorship by cloaking and redirecting the censored traffic through a legitimate channel. Sadly, this ...

Internet censorship circumvention technology use in human rights organizations: an exploratory analysis

Using an organizational informatics approach, this study explores the implications of human rights organizations’ use of censorship circumvention technologies. Through qualitative analyses of data collected through in-depth interviews, the research examines the factors influencing the use of circumvention technologies and the organizational effects of their use. The outcomes include a revised m...