If you find yourself in China or some other country that puts up firewalls blocking access to web sites that offer views which governments don't want you to know then check out which tools a recent Harvard study found are the best to use to get around internet censorship attempts.
Ten tools--some commercial products and some open-source, nonprofit efforts--were tested for the new study, which was conducted partly in a lab setting at Harvard and partly in cybercafes in Beijing, Shanghai, Hanoi, and Seoul. Hal Roberts, a senior researcher at Berkman, visited the cafes and ran the circumvention tools through their paces. The best tools overall were found to be Ultrareach, Psiphon, and Tor, while Dynaweb and Anonymizer also scored well. Others suffered greater problems with usability or security.
Load up your laptop before international travel so you can get thru to your favorite sites from cyber cafes.
An aritcle in BusinessWeek describes some of the proposals being put forth by the Internet Architecture Board to stop spam, worms, viruses, and other problems that are plaguing the internet.
The steps her group is advocating range from legislation that would let customers sue software companies over security loopholes in their products (by law, the industry is now largely exempt from such claims), to building new tracking systems that would make it impossible for even hackers to use the Internet without leaving a clear trail, to forcing everyone on the Net to put security protection on their PCs.
Every remedy has a downside -- usually, it boosts costs or reduces privacy -- and each will be hard to implement without somehow damaging the Net as it has been so far. And yet, it seems clear that the Internet has grown so far beyond its geek roots that it has "truly come to resemble society with both the good and the bad," Farber says. And a realization is growing that it may need to be managed with that foremost in mind.
The internet is suffering from "Tragedy Of The Commons" type problems. If people can use a resource and mess it up and remain anonymous then there will be far more abuse of the resource than if people can not remain anonymous. Also, if all the individual nodes have no legal responsiblity to guarantee the careful and prudent management of their access to common resources then there will similarly be more abuse. The problems of the internet can not be fixed by just making a few large vendors liable for security holes. Responsibility must be widely shared or individuals will act irresponsibly.
So must the means to make oneself anonymous be rolled back in order to make everyone accountable and responsible?