http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120208/01453517694/riaa-totally-out-touch-lashes-out-google-wikipedia-everyone-who-protested-sopapipa.shtml

I have been doing a regular, but casual study of how censorship and control has affected both mine and your online activities.  It is widely known that various countries censor the web (i.e. China, North Korea…) what is worse is when you are being censored and don’t even know it.  Many people live in the ‘I can get to Google so what?’ yet did you know that the search results from even Google are ‘controlled’ in a fashion. (Damn, can’t find the article right now….).  The general idea is that your search results are based on your history with Google (across their multiple products) and thereby cutting out results that are not related to your ‘documented interests’.  That sucks to know that I may be missing out on information that I might actually like to see as opposed to be continually bombarded by results that inbred to my history alone.

Last August I posted about a website that was censored by the South Korean Government.  Why were they censored?  Because they offered trips to North Korea.  To be clear, NO company within South Korea is allowed to do this.  The site offering the tours operated outside of South Korea in every way possible (i.e. no South Korean citizens/companies were involved).  Kinda pathetic to block a company that isn’t even within your realm of operation but only because you don’t like what they have to say/offer.

Well, the reason I bring this up is because I just checked and I could get to the site without having to resort to using Tor.  While it may seem that South Korea has realized the error of their ways, this is not the case.  In fact, that idea that I can get there without circumvention concerns me even more, I’ll tell you why.

[here comes the geek-speak]

DNS.  You have probably heard the term, or maybe not.  It is an integral part of the internet and you use it all the time.  Domain Name System.  See the Internet doesn’t understand letters or names.  Its basic underlying form would stare at you blankly if you said ‘go to google.com’. If you said “go to 74.125.235.80′, the core of the internet would jump right on that and WHAM, you’d be there.  Now, because humans remember names/words easier than numbers, a system was created to translate names to numbers.  The Domain Name System was created and all internet users(couple hundred) rejoiced and were able to relax their brains or save countless DOZENS of dollars on notepaper to write down all the numbers for sites to visit.

What does this have to do with censorship?  Glad you asked.  Right now control over the internet is being exerted though this DNS setup. Have you never asked ‘how do they know what site I am going to and get a blocked message from the Government?’  DNS monitoring/control.

So, now the South Korean Government is allowing their citizens to visit sites that offer tours to North Korea.  Big deal you say.  Yes, in fact it is.  They haven’t abolished their censorship of the web but you can be damned sure they are monitoring it and THAT little fact is what concerns me.  Given the fact that they will lock up anyone who sends out a sarcastic twitter message, what else will they do because they don’t get this silly little notion called freedom.

So, let’s bring this story full cycle.

My study into censorship brought me to a blog post on how you can tell if your DNS is being hijacked (either by government or by bad guys).  I followed their steps and got some confusing results.  So I sent those results off to the owner of the site and he said:

“ That looks like 100% diversion — you’re not even reaching the server here.”

They have started an investigation into this and the final analysis should prove interesting.

One might think that living in Canada or the US you have the ‘ultimate freedom of expression’. It is true that ‘westerners’ have much more liberty at their fingertips that much of the rest of the world. The problem is the censorship that does happen is simply in the form that you are not aware of. It happens quietly, sneakiliy (hey, that’s my own word, dictionary be damned!) and it is pretty scary once you realize it. For the moment, I won’t be dwelling on it. Here in South Korea, such banning is rather blatant.

There is still a great fear in the upper echelon of Korean Society that they believe there is information out there that will harm their society. Eventually they will realize that people can make up their own minds but that is probably a loooooong way off. Tradition is hard to kill and the Koreans have been around for a very long time.

Want to know what site was banned? A travel site. What? Yeah a British travel site that provides tours to North Korea. Here’s part of the article explaining.

A British-run travel agency which specialises in tours to North Korea disclosed Monday that South Korea was blocking its website because of alleged pro-Pyongyang material.

AFP article via Google

There are actually two sites and they are www.koryogroup.com and www.koryotours.com.  Now, anyone outside of Korea should be able to view them without any hindrance.  I, however, using my regular channel get the above screenshot unless I do some techno-wizardry.

If you want to learn how to get around such bans and censorship, I would highly recommend you learn about Tor from EFF.  Read and become illuminated.