Governments Changing Censorship Tactics as More Websites Adopt HTTPS

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Governments Changing Censorship Tactics as More Websites Adopt HTTPS

By CircleID Reporter
June 30, 2017, 3:39 pm PDT Views: 10,561 Add Comment

With websites and social media platforms moving from HTTP to secure HTTPs connections in recent years, a new degree of complication is affecting Internet censorship efforts around the world. A new study conducted by the Internet Monitor project at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society finds that the move to HTTPS is preventing censors “in the middle” from seeing exactly which pages a user visits. This, in turn, has made blocking specific pages on a domain impossible using standard filtering techniques. From the study: “These trends have created additional challenges for government censors. Now more than ever, governments have an all-or-nothing choice when it comes to censorship. Instead of targeting individual webpages or social media accounts, government censors must choose between allowing all content on a social media platform or a messaging app and blocking all content to conceal the information they deem detrimental. It is unclear whether this development will over time result in lesser or greater access to information.”

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By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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