YUSUF MAITAMA SULE UNIVERSITY, KANO

ITC2212 - COMPUTER SCIENTIST AND SOCIETY

TOPIC:

INTERNET ACCESS PROVIDERS SHOULD CENSORED CONTENT

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December, 2022

Internet Access Providers Should Censored Content

Introduction
Internet censorship, like all censorship, can take multiple forms, from filtering and blocking content to
monitoring and penalizing users who access certain content. Governments may both define what to
block and implement the technological process of blocking, or they may create legislation, extra-legal
incentives, or policy to compel “autonomous” technological firms to carry out the blocking and
surveillance for them. Often the most simple strategy is to demand the removal of websites with illegal
content.

Even within the technical domain, Internet censorship refers to a plethora of tools and strategies to
prevent information from reaching users. So it is important to remember that when we refer to
“internet censorship” we are not referring to one thing, one software, one point of blockage. Censorship
can occur at one point on the internet circuit, can manifest as a blanket filter for all connections in a
given country or can be micro-focused on individual sites, machines, and even words.

Who are the Internet Service providers

An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or
participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-
owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned.

Examples of Internet access providers are:-

1. Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN)

2. Etisalat (9mobile)

3. Airtel

4. Globacom

The following is a list of the most common internet censorship technologies:

DNS Tampering

In countries where authorities have control over domain name servers, officials can “deregister” a
domain that is hosting nefarious content. As explained last week, this makes the website invisible to the
browsers of users seeking to access the site because it prevents the translation of domain names to site
IP addresses. This is similar to receiving the wrong phone number of the person you wish to call.

IP Blocking

Governments with control over internet service providers can blacklist certain IP addresses of websites
they do not like. When you request access to a site, your request is monitored by surveillance
computers, which check your request against a list of blacklisted IP addresses. If you are trying to reach
one of these forbidden sites, the internet service provider will drop the connection, causing it to fail. For
instance, in China, where international-gateway servers control the flow of internet information in and
out of the entire country, requests to banned sites are intercepted by these mega-servers, which then
interrupt the transmission by sending a “reset” request to both your machine and the one you wish to
reach. This causes the connection to hang up, preventing access to the information you want. If the
target Web site is hosted on a shared hosting server, all sites existing on the same server will be blocked
as well, even if they are not targeted for filtering themselves.

Keyword filtering

IP address filtering only blocks websites that are explicitly blacklisted (or those that share the same
server). But if you’re a government wanting to block all information on subject X, this can be a problem.
Not only are there billions of websites, but new ones are created all the time, making it nearly
impossible to create a fully updated list of sites of forbidden content.

For a more powerful censoring technique, governments may use URL filtering. This mechanism scans the
requested Uniform Resource Locator (URL) string (e.g. www.website.com/how-to-overthrow-Iranian-
regime/) for target words. If the URL includes forbidden terms, the connection will be reset.

Packet filtering

An even more fine-grained strategy is also one of the newest and most sophisticated internet censoring
technologies: packet filtering, or scanning the actual contents of each page. When data is sent over the
internet, it is grouped in small units called packets. Think of a packet as a letter in an envelope: it
contains both the contents of your letter as well as instructions of where the letter is suppose to go (i.e.
sender and receiver addresses.) Packets are relayed from computer to computer using routers, which
are like the Internet’s postal service.

IP address filtering can only block communication on the basis of where packets are going to or coming
from – that is, their address – not the actual material of their contents. The process of deep packet
inspection examines packet contents for banned keywords. Communication identified as containing
forbidden content can be disrupted by dropping the connection. Users may receive one of a number of
error message on their browsers, none indicating explicitly that they are being censored.

Less Common Strategies

These strategies—DNS tampering, IP blocking, and keyword filtering—are the most common methods
used to implement wide-ranging internet censorship. But other techniques may be used. For instance,
traffic shaping can be used by governments or corporations to delay accessto some sites, giving the
misleading impression that sites are slow or unreliable. This technique is sometimes used by ISPs to
discourage peer-to-peer file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent.

Individual port numbers can also be blacklisted, restricting access to services such as Web or email. This
is often done by corporations who wish to restrict certain behaviors by their employers while on work
machines—instant messaging, for example.

Some countries even require individual personal computers to include software that filters internet
content. In China, for instance, all PCs must be sold with software that would allow the government to
regularly update computers with an ever-changing list of banned sites. This technique is commonly used
in the United States as well to set up filtration systems in libraries, schools, and public internet cafes.

Because blocking is often disguised as a technical error or connection problem, it is difficult to determine
whether you are experiencing internet censorship, which technique is being used, or who is doing the
blocking. This also makes it difficult to circumvent censorship. While some devices such as proxy servers
or virtual private networks (VPN) are widely used to get around filters, they may not work in all cases.

Owning the Internet

Now that we know how internet censorship is actually done, we are much better equipped to engage in
a rich and nuanced discussion about accountability. For instance, most of us already knew that
governments are involved in wide-spread internet censorship. But it is also important to understand the
role of internet service providers, software corporations, and internet companies.

For instance, take ISPs. Sometimes a government directly owns or manages the ISPs. In other cases,
Internet service providers and hosting companies are privately owned but often abide by government
censoring demands in order to continue doing business in a particular country. The number, autonomy,
and distribution of ISP in a particular country can have a profound influence on the effectiveness of
internet censorship.

Or take software-makers. Governments often rely on private corporations to provide the technology and
expertise to implement censorship. Oftentimes these corporations are multinational. The danger is most
pronounced when these corporations work in partnership with undemocratic regimes in order to set up
nationwide censorship regimes.

Seemingly "anti-censorship" internet companies such as Google are guilty, at times, of cooperating (and
thus accused of condoning) with such effects by filtering their search results in particular countries and
handing over their data on users’ search records.

Even "off-line" construction and infrastructure firms have a role to play. As we have seen, some
governments design their national telecommunicaitons systems to have single “choke points” whereby
they can control their whole country’s access to certain sites or services.
Addressing internet censorship will require a sustained conversation between software engineers, web
developers, policy makers, area experts and humanists. This post was designed to get humanists up to
speed on the technology of the problem. Now its time for humanists to teach engineers and policy
analysts what censorship does to our communication, our creativity, and our humanity.

Content to be censored on the Internet

Governments and private organizations may engage in censorship. Other groups or institutions may
propose and petition for censorship. When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in
censorship of his or her own works or speech, it is referred to as self-censorship. General censorship
occurs in a variety of different media, including speech, books, music, films, and other arts, the press,
radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of claimed reasons including national security, to control
obscenity, pornography, and hate speech, to protect children or other vulnerable groups, to promote or
restrict political or religious views, and to prevent slander and libel.

Reasons why Internet access providers should censored content

1. Governments block internet content for three main reasons: to maintain political stability,
protect national security, and impose traditional social values. The reasons vary from country to
country. In fact, states with the most severe online censorship rely on all three motives at once.
2. According to research provided by the #KeepItOn campaign, there were 196 internet shutdowns
across the world in 2018. 134 of them were in India, and the rest occurred in a wide range of
Asian, African, and Middle Eastern countries.
3. The report states that official and actual causes of the internet shutdowns were different. In
most cases (91), the blackouts were justified as a way to maintain public safety. Other reasons
include national security protection (40), sabotage (2), stopping fake news and hate speech (33),
and school exams (11). Six internet shutdowns happened for no reason, while the motives
remained unknown in 13 cases.

Pros of Internet censorship

It’s important to keep in mind that Internet censorship has its advantages when used with the best of
intentions.

Create common-sense limits:

Let’s be honest, there’s a ton of content on the Internet that no one should ever see (re: Momo
Challenge), and the concept of Internet censorship can start a constructive conversation about it.

Stop fake news:

If more content was closely monitored, it could cut down on the mass amounts of fraudulent
information including false advertising.

Curb access to harmful activities:

The dark web is unchartered territory to the majority of Internet users, but there are sites that are
shockingly easy to find that are dedicated to illegal acts like sex trafficking, child pornography, illicit
drugs, and more.

Less identity theft:

If there is less content on the Internet that requires identity information, in theory, there would be less
identity theft.

Cons of Internet censorship

There are some big disadvantages to Internet censorship that affect the way people access information.

It restricts too much information:

It’s entirely possible that real information is blocked along with fake information, which opens up a
large debate about what you should and shouldn’t restrict/access.

Who’s in charge? How are rules defined? Are there checks and balances? Internet censorship could
quickly turn into a matter of opinion on what is acceptable and what isn’t.

Censors free speech:

Internet censorship not only limits the content you can access but potentially the content you post as
well.

Cost: This kind of goes without saying but the workforce required, and associated cost, to control and
survey Internet users would be astronomical - most likely coming at the expense of taxpayers.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Internet censorship is a touchy subject, but it’s important to underline the facts and lay out both sides of
the argument. It’s typically handled at the government level, and there are a lot of factors in play with
different laws and societal norms at the center.

References:

1. https://www.g2.com/articles/internet-censorship
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_service_provider
3. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/isp.asp