FOE is the Latest Tool in the Fight Against Internet Censorship
By Sam PascuaThey say that laws are made to be broken, and that’s definitely true when talking about internet censorship. As governments in China, Iran, and other countries – including Australia – continue to try to censor the web, individuals and companies react by trying to create new ways to access information despite the efforts of the internet censors. Now the U.S. government has jumped on board, developing new systems that aim to meddle with the censorship attempts by foreign governments.
The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is the U.S. government agency that is responsible for all the country’s non-military international broadcasting, such as Voice of America. Recently the agency has begun testing systems to evade web censorship by foreign governments that want to restrict their citizens’ access to news-related websites.
The BBG is currently testing the FOE system, which stands for “Feed Over Email.” Although foreign governments may be able to censor and block certain web pages, the FOE system allows data, podcasts, and news to be sent via regular email accounts, including Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail. The information flows freely, undetected by the censorship protocols.
The FOE system is only in a preliminary testing stage, but it shows great potential. BBG reports that individuals are currently testing the performance of FOE in Iran and China. The agency will not provide technical details due to security concerns. However, it appears that FOE could be adapted for mobile devices, potentially allowing individuals in countries with heavy web censorship to access the news via email, and even Twitter updates.
Considering the growing use of Twitter and other social networking sites to disseminate information and rally individuals in national disasters and uprisings, a successful FOE system could have significant implications that give the citizens of restrictive regimes access to far more than merely news sites. Enthusiastic FOE proponents anticipate that the new system could become a tool for grassroots organising and the worldwide spread of democracy in countries where such concepts are almost unheard of.
Unfortunately, even the FOE system cannot escape the influence of web censorship. Ken Berman, head of IT for BBG, states that FOE will include some pornography filters. But it remains to be seen how long those filters will operate before someone else finds a workaround. And so the battle continues between censorship and free speech….
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