Is Remote Sensing a Better Measure of Internet Censorship than Expert Analysis? Analyzing Tradeoffs for International Donors and Advocacy Organizations

Autor: Fletcher, Terry, Hayes-Birchler, Andria
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
ISSN: 1463-1369
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6738224
Popis: Donor organizations and multilaterals require ways to measure progress towards the goals of creating an open internet, and condition assistance on recipient governments maintaining access to information online. Because the internet increasingly becomes a leading tool for exchanging information, authoritarian governments around the world often seek methods to restrict citizens’ access. Two of the most common methods for restricting the internet are shutting down internet access entirely and filtering specific content. We condusct a systemic literature review of articles on the measurment of internet censorship and find that little work has been done comparing the tradeoffs of using different methods to measure censorship on a global scale. We compare the tradeoffs for donor organizations that want to incentivize and measure good internet governance between measuring these phenomena using expert analysis (as measured by Freedom House and V-Dem) and remote measurement with manual oversight (as measured by Access Now and the OpenNet Initiative (ONI)). We find that remote measurement with manual oversight is less likely to include false positives, and therefore may be more preferable for donor organizations that value verifiaility. We also find that expert analysis is less likely to include false negatives, particularly for very repressive regimes in the Middle East and Central Asia and therefore these data may be preferable for advocacy organizations that want to ensure very repressive regimes are not able to avoid accountability, or organizaitons working primarily in these areas.
{"references":["Access Now (2017). Shutdown Tracker Optimization Project. https://www.accessnow.org/cms/assets/uploads/2017/09/How-to-view-the-Access-Now-Internet-Shutdown-Tracker-2017.pdf","AFP (2017). Diplomats concerned over Rwanda social media controls. Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-4556156/Diplomats-concerned-Rwanda-social-media-controls.html","Al-Saqaf, W. (2015). Internet Censorship Circumvention Tools: Escaping the Control of the Syrian Regime. Media and Communication. 4(1), 39-50.","Amnesty International (2017). Cuba's Internet paradox: How controlled and censored internet risks Cuba's achievements in education. Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/08/cubas-internet-paradox-how-controlled-and-censored-internet-risks-cubas-achievements-in-education/","Anonymous (2021). You shall sing and dance: contested 'safeguarding' of Uyghur Intangible Cultural Heritage, Asian Ethnicity, 22:1, 121-139, DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2020.1822733","Anthonio, F. (2020). A Shutdown taints Togo's 2020 presidential election: what happened and what's next. Access Now. https://www.accessnow.org/a-shutdown-taints-togos-2020-presidential-elections-what-happened-and-whats-next/","Ballaran, J. (2018). Group criticizes gov't move shutting down cellphone signals during events. Inquirer.net. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/963786/group-criticizes-govt-move-shutting-down-cellphone-signals-during-events-signal-jamming-cell-sites-fma-media-group-shutdown","Berg, A. (2021). Problems of digital control. The digital repression, religious persecution and genocide of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang by the Communist Republic China.","Bischoff, P. (2020). Internet Censorship 2020: A Global Map of Internet Restrictions. Comparitech. https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/internet-censorship-map/","Bontridder, N., & Poullet, Y. (2021). The role of artificial intelligence in disinformation. Data & Policy, 3, E32. doi:10.1017/dap.2021.20","Carsten, P. (2014). Google's Gmail blocked in China. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-china/googles-gmail-blocked-in-china-idUSKBN0K70BD20141229","Censored Planet (2020). Censored Planet Raw Data. https://censoredplanet.org/data/raw","Chattopadhyay, S. (2016) What gets measured, gets managed Challenges ahead for UN's data-driven development agenda. Overseas Development Institute. https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/11230.pdf","Chun-Chih, C. & Thung-Hong, L. (2020). Autocracy login: internet censorship and civil society in the digital age, Democratization, 27:5, 874-895, DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2020.1747051","CIPESA (2019). State of Internet Freedom in Africa 2019. Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa. https://cipesa.org/?wpfb_dl=307","Clark, J., Faris, R. Jones, R.H., (2017a). Analyzing Accessibility of Wikipedia Projects Around the World. Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society Research Publication.","Clark, J., Faris, R., Morrison-Westphal, R., Noman H., Tilton, C., & Zittrain, J. (2017b). The Shifting Landscape of Global Internet Censorship. Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society Research Publication.","Cohen-Almagor, R. (2013). Internet History. In Luppicini, R. (Eds.), Moral, Ethical, and Social Dilemmas in the Age of Technology: Theories and Practice (pp. 19-39). IGI Global. http://doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-2931-8.ch002","Cook, S. (2022). Countering Beijing's Media Manipulation. Journal of Democracy 33(1), 116-130. doi:10.1353/jod.2022.0008.","Coppedge, M., Gerring, J., Knutsen, C. H., Lindberg S. I., Teorell, J., Altman, D., Bernhard, M., Fish, M. S., Glynn, A., Hicken, A., Luhrmann, A., Marquardt, K. L., McMann, K., Paxton, P., Pemstein, D., Seim, B., Sigman, R., Skaaning, S., Staton, J., Wilson, S., Cornell, A., Alizada, N., Gastaldi, L., Gjerløw, H., Hindle, G., Ilchenko, N., Maxwell, L., Mechkova, V., Medzihorsky, J., von Römer, J. Sundström, A., Tzelgov, E., Wang, Y., Wig, T., & Ziblatt, D. (2020). V-Dem Dataset v10. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds20.","Corduneanu-Huci, C., & Hamilton, A. (2018). Selective Control: The Political Economy of Censorship. World Bank Group.","Crandall, J. R., Crete-Nishihata, & M., Knockel, J. (2015). Forgive Us our SYNs: Technical and Ethical Considerations for Measuring Internet Filtering. NS Ethics '15: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Ethics in Networked Systems Research.","Dahan, N. (2019). Internet, interrupted: How network cuts are used to quell dissent in the Middle East. Middle East Eye. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/internet-interrupted-how-middle-east-countries-use-network-restrictions-clamp-down-dissent","Dalek, J., Deibert, R., McKune, S., Gill, P., Senft, A., & Noor, N. (2015). Information Controls during Military Operations The case of Yemen during the 2015 political and armed conflict. University of Toronto. https://citizenlab.ca/2015/10/information-controls-military-operations-yemen/","Engagemedia & Sinar Project (2018). Internet Censorship Monitoring: Duterte's Drug War. https://sinarproject.org/digital-rights/updates/internet-censorship-monitoring-dutertes-drug-war","Faris, R. & Villeneuve, N. (2008). Measuring Global Internet Filtering in R. Deibert, J. Palfrey, R. Rohozinski, & J. Zittrain, (Eds.), Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, Cambridge: MIT Press. http://opennet.net/sites/opennet.net/files/Deibert_02_Ch01_005-028.pdf","Farivar, C., & Blankstein, A. (2019). Feds take down the 'world's largest dark web child porn marketplace.' NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/feds-take-down-world-s-largest-dark-web-child-porn-n1066511","Farrell, H. (2012). The Consequences of the Internet for Politics. Annual Review of Political Science, 15, 35-52.","Feldstein, S. (2021). The Rise of Digital Repression: How Technology is Reshaping Power, Politics, and Resistance. Oxford University Press.","Fletcher, T. (2021). Strengthening Financial Inclusion on MCC's Scorecard. Millennium Challenge Corporation. https://www.mcc.gov/blog/entry/blog-101921-financial-inclusion","Fletcher, T., & Hayes-Birchler, A. (2020). Comparing Measures of Internet Censorship: Analyzing the Tradeoffs between Expert Analysis and Remote Measurement. Data for Policy 2020. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3967398","Frantz, E., Kendall-Taylor, A., & Wright, J. (2020). Digital Repression in Autocracies. The Varieties of Democracy Institute. https://web.archive.org/web/20210316005530/https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/18/d8/18d8fc9b-3ff3-44d6-a328-799dc0132043/digital-repression17mar.pdf","Freedom House (2019). Freedom on the Net Research Methodology. https://freedomhouse.org/reports/freedom-net/freedom-net-research-methodology","Freedom House (2017). Freedom on the Net 2017: Malaysia. Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/country/malaysia/freedom-net/2017","Freyburg, T. & Garbe, L. (2018). Blocking the Bottleneck: Internet Shutdowns and Ownership at Election Times in Sub-Saharan Africa. International Journal of Communication, 12(2018), 3896-3916.","Gambanga, N. (2016). Zambian government suspected of causing internet shutdown following outage in opposition strongholds. MTN Zambia. https://www.techzim.co.zw/2016/08/zambian-government-suspected-causing-internet-slowdown-shutdown-following-outage-opposition-strongholds/","Gold, H. (2019). Information war escalates as Venezuela tries to contain uprising. CNN Business. https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/01/media/media-venezuela-information-war/index.html","Gopaldas, R. (2019). Digital Dictatorship versus Digital Democracy in Africa. SAIIA Policy Insights 75.","Gueorguiev, D., Shao, L., & Crabtree, C. (2017). Blurring the Lines: Rethinking Censorship Under Autocracy. 10.13140/RG.2.2.29037.08160.","Hall, R. (2019). Lebanon blocks Grindr in latest attack on LGBT+ community. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/grindr-lebanon-ban-lgbt-rights-dating-app-gay-a8933556.html","Hoang, P. N., Doreen, S., Polychronakis, M., (2019). Measuring I2P Censorship at a Global Scale. In Proceedings of the 9th USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet.","Howard, P., Agarwal, S.D., & Hussain, M. M. (2011). When Do States Disconnect Their Digital Networks? Regime Responses to the Political Uses of Social Media. The Communication Review, 14, 216-232.","Honig, D. (2019). When Reporting Undermines Performance: The Costs of Politically Constrained Organizational Autonomy in Foreign Aid Implementation. International Organization, 73(1), 171-201. doi:10.1017/S002081831800036X","Human Rights Watch (2020). Shutting Down the Internet to Shut Up Critics. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/global-5#","Immigration and Customs Enforcement (2018). Over a million websites seized in global operation. ICE Newsroom. https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/over-million-websites-seized-global-operation","International Telecommunication Union (2020). Measuring Digital Development: Facts and Figures. ITU Publications. https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/FactsFigures2020.pdf","Joshi, N. (2021). Internet shutdowns during protests: A practice in digital authoritarianism. International Master's in Security, Intelligence and Strategic Studies","Karatnycky, A., Piano, A., & Puddington, A. (2003). Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights & Civil Liberties. Freedom House.","Kawerau, L. (2021). Governments and the Net: Defense, Control, and Trust in the Fifth Domain [Dissertation]. Konstanz: University of Konstanz http://kops.uni-konstanz.de/handle/123456789/55972","Kravets, D. (2012). Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com It's .Seizable. Wired.com. https://www.wired.com/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-sites/","Lakshmana, K.V. (2018). A Coward's Political Weapon: Troll armies go on settling scores. Common Cause, 37(4), 27-29.","Leberknight, C.S., Chiang, M., Poor, H. V., & Wong, F. (2012). A Taxonomy of Internet Censorship and Anti-Censorship.","Marczak, B. (2016). Leading Bahraini ISPs are Blocking Telegram Traffic. Bahrain Watch. https://web.archive.org/web/20200320193229/https://bahrainwatch.org/blog/2016/06/28/leading-bahraini-isps-are-blocking-telegram-traffic/","Maréchal, N. (2017). Networked Authoritarianism and the Geopolitics of Information: Understanding Russian Internet Policy. Media and Communication, 5(1), 29-41.","McColm, R.B., Finn, J., Payne, D.W., Ryan, J.E., Sussman, L.R., & Zarycky, G. (1991). Freedom in the World Political Rights & Civil Liberties. Freedom House.","McDevitt, D. (2017). Rwanda censors critical, independent media in targeted fashion. Open Technology Fund. https://www.opentech.fund/news/new-report-investigates-internet-censorship-during-rwandas-2017-presidential-election/","Mechkova, V., Daniel P., Brigitte S., & Steven W. (2020). Digital Society Project Dataset v2. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project","Millennium Challenge Corporation (2020). Guide to the MCC Indicators for Fiscal Year 2021. Millennium Challenge Corporation. https://www.mcc.gov/resources/doc/guide-to-the-indicators-fy-2021","Millennium Challenge Corporation (2019). Guide to the MCC Indicators for Fiscal Year 2020. Millennium Challenge Corporation. https://www.mcc.gov/resources/doc/guide-to-the-indicators-fy-2020","Mwango, C. (2020). Southern Province In Internet Network Shut Down. Zambian Observer. https://zambianobserver.com/southern-province-in-internet-network-shut-down/","Narayanan A, & Zevenbergen B. (2015). No Encore for Encore? Ethical questions for web-based censorship measurement. Technology Science. http://techscience.org/a/2015121501.","Netblocks (2022). The Internet Observatory. https://netblocks.org/projects/observatory","NetBlocks (2020). Internet cut in Ethiopia amid unrest following killing of singer. NetBlocks Mapping Net Freedom. https://netblocks.org/reports/internet-cut-in-ethiopia-amid-unrest-following-killing-of-singer-pA25Z28b","Niaki, A.A., Cho, S., Weinberg Z., Hoang, N.P., Razaghpanah, A., Christin, N., & Gill, P. (2020). ICLab: A Global, Longitudinal Internet Censorship Measurement Platform. Proceedings of the 41st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.","OONI (2020). OONI Data Explorer. https://explorer.ooni.org/","Parks, L. & Thompson R. (2020). The Slow Shutdown: Information and Internet Regulation in Tanzania From 2010 to 2018 and Impacts on Online Content Creators. International Journal of Communication, 14(2020), 1-21.","Pearce, P., Ensafi, R., Li, F., Feamster, N. & Paxson, V. (2018). \"Toward Continual Measurement of Global Network-Level Censorship. IEEE Security & Privacy, 16(1), 24-33, 10.1109/MSP.2018.1331018.","Pemstein, D., Marquardt, K. L., Tzelgov, E., Wang, Y., Medzihorsky, J., Krusell, J., Miri, F., & von Römer, J. (2020). The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data. V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 5th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.","Puyosa, I. & Chaguaceda, A (2017). Cinco regímenes políticos en Latinoamérica, libertad de internet y mecanismos de control. RETOS, 7(14), 11-37.","Rahimi, N. & Gupta, B. (2020). A Study of the Landscape of Internet Censorship and Anti-Censorship in Middle East. EPiC Series in Computing: Proceeding of the 35th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications. 69, 60-68.","Raman, R. S., Stoll, A., Dalek, J., Sarabi, A., Ramesh, R. Scott, W., & Ensafi, R. (2020). Measuring the Deployment of Network Censorship Filters at Global Scale. Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2020.","Ramos, D. (2020). Philippines Government Orders Shutdown Of Country's Leading Broadcast Network ABS-CBN. Deadline. https://deadline.com/2020/05/philippines-abs-cbn-shutdown-rodrigo-duterte-1202927654/","Raveendran, N., & Leberknight, C.S. (2018). Internet Censorship and Economic Impacts: A Case Study of Internet Outages in India. Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth Americas Conference on Information Systems.","Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521, U.S. 811 (1997).","Reporters Without Borders (2020). World Press Freedom Index. https://rsf.org/en/ranking","Roberts, H., Zuckerman, E., & Palfrey, J. (2011). 2011 Circumvention Tool Evaluation. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society Research Publication Series.","Rydzak, J.A. (2018). A Total Eclipse of the Net: The Dynamics of Network Shutdowns and Collective Action Responses. University of Arizona.","Rydzak, J. (2019). Of Blackouts and Bandhs: The Strategy and Structure of Disconnected Protest in India. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3330413","Sagir, M. & Varlioglu, S. (2020). Explaining the Relationship between Internet and Democracy in Partly Free Countries Using Machine Learning Models. IT Research Symposium 2020.","Sayadi, E. & Taye, B. (2020). #KeepItOn: As Yemen's war goes online, internet shutdowns and censorship are hurting Yemenis. https://www.accessnow.org/keepiton-as-yemens-war-goes-online-internet-shutdowns-and-censorship-are-hurting-yemenis/","Selva, M. (2019). Reaching for the off switch: Internet shutdowns are growing as nations seek to control public access to information. Index on Censorship, 48(3), 19-22.","Shahbaz, A. & Funk, A. (2020). Freedom on the Net 2019: The Crisis of Social Media. Freedom House.","Shen, X., & Truex, R. (2021). In Search of Self-Censorship. British Journal of Political Science, 51(4), 1672-1684. doi:10.1017/S0007123419000735","Sisario, B (2010). U.S. Shuts Down Web Sites in Piracy Crackdown. New York Times.","SK, C. (2020). Those Unspoken Thoughts A study of censorship and median freedom in Manipur, India. Open Observatory of Network Interference.","Sfakianakis, A., Athanasopoulos, E., & Ioannidis, S. (2011). CensMon: A Web Censorship Monitor. In Proceedings of USENIX FOCI 2011.","Smith, A. (2015). Democracy is not a Mystifying Western Plot – it is a Universal Value. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jul/03/democracy-not-mystifying-western-plot-universal-value-sustainable-development-goals","Smith, J. & Gladstein, A. (2018). How the UN's Sustainable Development Goals undermine democracy. Quartz Africa. https://qz.com/africa/1299149/how-the-uns-sustainable-development-goals-undermine-democracy/","Subramanian, R. (2012). The Growth of Global Internet Censorship and Circumvention: A Survey. Communication of the International Information Management Association.","Sutterlin, E. (2020). Flipping the Kill-Switch: Why Governments Shut Down the Internet. Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 1493.","Stepanova, E. (2011). The Role of Information Communication Technologies the \"Arab Spring.\" PONARS Eurasia.","Taye, B. (2020). Targeted, Cut Off, and Left in the Dark The #KeepItOn Report on internet shutdowns in 2019. Access Now. https://www.accessnow.org/keepiton/","Turak, N. (2020). UAE loosens some VoIP restrictions as residents in lockdown call for end to WhatsApp and Skype ban. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/26/coronavirus-lockdown-uae-residents-call-for-end-to-whatsapp-skype-ban.html","UN General Assembly (2015). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, A/RES/70/1. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf","UN General Assembly (2021). Global indicator framework for the Sustainable Development Goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A/RES/71/313, E/CN.3/2018/2, E/CN.3/2019/2, E/CN.3/2020/2, & E/CN.3/2021/2. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/Global%20Indicator%20Framework%20after%202021%20refinement_Eng.pdf","USAID (2019). FY 2020 USAID Journey to Self-Reliance Country Roadmap Methodology Guide. https://selfreliance.usaid.gov/","USAID (2020). Digital Strategy 2020-2024. United States Agency for International Development. https://www.usaid.gov/usaid-digital-strategy","VanderSloot, B., McDonald, A., Scott, W., Halderman, J.A., & Ensafi, R. (2018). Quack: Scalable Remote Measurement of Application-Layer Censorship. In Proceedings of the 27th USENIX Security Symposium.","Wagner, B., Gollatz, K., Calderaro, A. (2013). Common Narrative – Divergent Agendas: The Internet and Human Rights in Foreign Policy. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Internet Science.","Weaver, N., Sommer, R., & Paxson, V. (2009) Detecting Forged TCP Reset Packets. International Computer Science Institute.","Weinberg, Z. (2018). Toward Automated Worldwide Monitoring of Network-level Censorship. Carnegie Mellon University.","West, D.M. (2016). Internet Shutdowns cost countries $2.4 billion last year. Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings.","Woodhams, S. & Migliano, S. (2020). The Global Cost of Internet Shutdowns in 2019. Top10VPN.com.","Yadav, T. K., & Chakravarty, S. (2018). Trends and patterns of internet censorship in India. Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi.","Zeleke, T. A. (2019). The Quandary of Cyber Governance in Ethiopia. Journal of Public Policy and Administration, 3(1), 1-7.","Zuckerman, E. (2010). Intermediary Censorship. https://tavaana.org/sites/default/files/intermediary_censorship_.pdf"]}
Databáze: OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz: