Internet content blocking: the situation on the world stage
Access to Internet content is blocked in many countries - in different volumes, using various technologies. In this series of articles we will look at how things are going in the most “closed” states and by what means access to Internet services is limited.
/ Flickr / Tim Collins / CC
In today's world, billions of people are confronted with some form of blocking while surfing the Internet. Access to Internet content in countries is blocked by the equipment of Internet providers. Some countries resort to technical limitation of access, as a rule, for reasons of national security and in order to comply with specific laws.
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The five least free from the point of view of the Internet user countries are China, Syria, Iran, Ethiopia and Uzbekistan. A case in point of total blocking is the Great Chinese Firewall. All the time that the Internet exists in the country, China has not ceased to control its use by citizens. The firewall responds to a multitude of keywords and blocks many sites, while tens of thousands of regulator employees check various resources. According to data for 2015, the Chinese government blocked about 3 thousand resources (an incomplete list of them can be found at the link ).
Another Asian country known for its secrecy is North Korea. One can only guess how the bulk of the North Korean Internet looks like. However, in 2016, due to an error in the configuration of the top-level name server, several domains “ leaked ” to the network, which can be accessed. A list of 28 sites in North Korea published user Reddit.
According to the BBC, access to the “big network” is limited here, and only North Koreans who deal with monitoring issues are granted permissions. Content on the internal network is tightly regulated .
Along with Asia, the “policy of prohibitions” is popular in Middle Eastern countries. For example, there are 20 million Internet users in Iran. They do not have access to almost half of the 500 most popular sites on the Internet. And in Saudi Arabia, any content that is contrary to Islamic law is subject to censorship.
The public organization Internet Society provides several ways to block access to the Internet, including: blocking by IP, blocking a site by URL, blocking using the DPI system, blocking within specific platforms (especially search engines) and blocking by DNS.
IP blocking tools are network barriers, such as firewalls, which restrict all traffic to specific IP addresses. Blocks are also implemented using the TCP / IP port number. These methods are the simplest approaches to restricting access to content.
With a URL blocking, the filter intercepts the stream of web traffic and checks URLs against a local database. If matches were found, it blocks the connection to the requested web server.
DNS filtering is inherently close. When a user's computer tries to access a resource, the DNS resolver checks the requested name against the list of blocked sites. If there is a match, the server restricts access and may even report that such a name does not exist. As for content filtering using DPI, such systems limit traffic based on certain patterns.
Blocking content on a particular platform, such as Google Play or Yahoo, filters only the links to the content, not the content itself, which complicates access to it. Many governments require large search engines to apply filters in accordance with national laws and regulations, such as those related to copyright infringement.
Google notes that in the period from July to December 2016, we received 16 thousand requests to delete search results. And the so-called right to oblivion was used more than a million times only in 2014.
People also act as a “tool” for locks in some countries. For example, in the network already mentioned in China, the monitoring of the network employs millions of employees. But in the bureau of Saudi Arabia’s locks there are much fewer of them. Users themselves help them in their work - more than a thousand calls a day.
/ Flickr / włodi / CC
It should be noted that in some countries, the government has the right to completely or partially “disable” the Internet and mobile communications throughout the state or in certain regions. So, this year in India a law was passed , which spelled out this procedure. One of the main legislative reasons for turning off the Internet is a possible threat to national security. In some states, there was already a situation when the population lost 2G-, 3G-, 4G-, CDMA- and GPRS-connection for several days.
They resort to similar measures in Ethiopia and Iraq , so that students are less distracted during the examination period and do not cheat when preparing. In some African countries, the Internet is “ turned off ” during elections to reduce the likelihood of protests. And ethnic unrest in western China forced the government to completely turn off the Internet in the Xinjiang region for 10 months.
In other countries not mentioned above, control is also exercised over the Internet space. It may be less pronounced, but the infrastructure and legislative framework, which allows for partial restriction of access to content, is almost everywhere.
However, with the growth of data in the network, tracking all content becomes problematic. By 2020, about 80% of all materials on the Internet will be unknowable using existing methods. For example, this year a number of brands turned their backs on YouTube when it turned out that their ads are being shown on commercials that use inappropriate speech. In Google, they note that such situations occur, because computer algorithms follow everything, but they are not perfect yet.
Therefore, IT giants today are engaged in the development of intelligent content recognition services. They are based on the technology of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Google already has an API that identifies key objects in the video, and Facebook teaches the AI ​​to recognize fake news.
In the next article we will take a closer look at high-profile cases of prohibitions on the Internet, namely, blocking social networks and instant messengers.
PS Here are some more articles from our corporate blog:
/ Flickr / Tim Collins / CC
Most "closed" countries
In today's world, billions of people are confronted with some form of blocking while surfing the Internet. Access to Internet content in countries is blocked by the equipment of Internet providers. Some countries resort to technical limitation of access, as a rule, for reasons of national security and in order to comply with specific laws.
')
The five least free from the point of view of the Internet user countries are China, Syria, Iran, Ethiopia and Uzbekistan. A case in point of total blocking is the Great Chinese Firewall. All the time that the Internet exists in the country, China has not ceased to control its use by citizens. The firewall responds to a multitude of keywords and blocks many sites, while tens of thousands of regulator employees check various resources. According to data for 2015, the Chinese government blocked about 3 thousand resources (an incomplete list of them can be found at the link ).
Another Asian country known for its secrecy is North Korea. One can only guess how the bulk of the North Korean Internet looks like. However, in 2016, due to an error in the configuration of the top-level name server, several domains “ leaked ” to the network, which can be accessed. A list of 28 sites in North Korea published user Reddit.
According to the BBC, access to the “big network” is limited here, and only North Koreans who deal with monitoring issues are granted permissions. Content on the internal network is tightly regulated .
Along with Asia, the “policy of prohibitions” is popular in Middle Eastern countries. For example, there are 20 million Internet users in Iran. They do not have access to almost half of the 500 most popular sites on the Internet. And in Saudi Arabia, any content that is contrary to Islamic law is subject to censorship.
How to implement lock
The public organization Internet Society provides several ways to block access to the Internet, including: blocking by IP, blocking a site by URL, blocking using the DPI system, blocking within specific platforms (especially search engines) and blocking by DNS.
IP blocking tools are network barriers, such as firewalls, which restrict all traffic to specific IP addresses. Blocks are also implemented using the TCP / IP port number. These methods are the simplest approaches to restricting access to content.
With a URL blocking, the filter intercepts the stream of web traffic and checks URLs against a local database. If matches were found, it blocks the connection to the requested web server.
DNS filtering is inherently close. When a user's computer tries to access a resource, the DNS resolver checks the requested name against the list of blocked sites. If there is a match, the server restricts access and may even report that such a name does not exist. As for content filtering using DPI, such systems limit traffic based on certain patterns.
Blocking content on a particular platform, such as Google Play or Yahoo, filters only the links to the content, not the content itself, which complicates access to it. Many governments require large search engines to apply filters in accordance with national laws and regulations, such as those related to copyright infringement.
Google notes that in the period from July to December 2016, we received 16 thousand requests to delete search results. And the so-called right to oblivion was used more than a million times only in 2014.
People also act as a “tool” for locks in some countries. For example, in the network already mentioned in China, the monitoring of the network employs millions of employees. But in the bureau of Saudi Arabia’s locks there are much fewer of them. Users themselves help them in their work - more than a thousand calls a day.
/ Flickr / włodi / CC
It should be noted that in some countries, the government has the right to completely or partially “disable” the Internet and mobile communications throughout the state or in certain regions. So, this year in India a law was passed , which spelled out this procedure. One of the main legislative reasons for turning off the Internet is a possible threat to national security. In some states, there was already a situation when the population lost 2G-, 3G-, 4G-, CDMA- and GPRS-connection for several days.
They resort to similar measures in Ethiopia and Iraq , so that students are less distracted during the examination period and do not cheat when preparing. In some African countries, the Internet is “ turned off ” during elections to reduce the likelihood of protests. And ethnic unrest in western China forced the government to completely turn off the Internet in the Xinjiang region for 10 months.
In other countries not mentioned above, control is also exercised over the Internet space. It may be less pronounced, but the infrastructure and legislative framework, which allows for partial restriction of access to content, is almost everywhere.
However, with the growth of data in the network, tracking all content becomes problematic. By 2020, about 80% of all materials on the Internet will be unknowable using existing methods. For example, this year a number of brands turned their backs on YouTube when it turned out that their ads are being shown on commercials that use inappropriate speech. In Google, they note that such situations occur, because computer algorithms follow everything, but they are not perfect yet.
Therefore, IT giants today are engaged in the development of intelligent content recognition services. They are based on the technology of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Google already has an API that identifies key objects in the video, and Facebook teaches the AI ​​to recognize fake news.
In the next article we will take a closer look at high-profile cases of prohibitions on the Internet, namely, blocking social networks and instant messengers.
PS Here are some more articles from our corporate blog:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/340850/
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