Psiphon
= anti-censorship tool
URL = http://psiphon.civisec.org/
Description
"The original version, launched in December 2006, calls for people in uncensored countries to host proxy servers for people in censored countries. Because the censored user's personal safety may be on the line, Deibert says, the researchers suggest that she connect only with people she knows and trusts. By downloading open-source Psiphon software, the uncensored user sets up a node that the censored user can access. Psiphon is designed to resemble the use pattern of a standard banking transaction, says Michael Hull, Psiphon's lead software engineer. As long as the user accesses Psiphon sparingly, and when she really needs it, this should not create any unusual patterns that censors might notice. Because each of the Psiphon nodes is a small, private network that is disconnected from the others, they're hard for censors to find and block. In addition, if censors block one node, that has no effect on the others.
The problem, says Hull, is that "there's still that Achilles' heel of someone living in a censored regime needing to know someone who lives in [a place like] Boston." To solve this, the Citizen Lab group is building the Psiphon Web service, which allows users in censored countries to host Psiphon nodes without having to download software. (A downloaded program could put these people at risk by providing evidence of censorship circumvention on their hard drives.) "We want to empower people who live in censored countries to host their own servers," Hull says. " (http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19963/?a=f)