Practices of the Syrian regime against the freedom of the Internet

Dlshad Othman

THE INTERNET WITH SYRIAN FLAVOR!

Public internet access was introduced in Syria in 2000. Since then, the Syrian government has continuously tried to control its access. Article 38 of the Syrian Constitution states that "every citizen has the right to express his opinion freely and openly in speech, writing, and through all other means of expression and to participate in supervision and constructive criticism to ensure the safety of domestic and nationalist structure and strengthens the socialist system and the state guarantees the freedom of the

press, printing and publication according to law ".

Introduction

Syrian opposition and civil society organizations use Internet-based communication systems as their main way to communicate, which can compromise their ability to effectively communicate between parties. In fact, recently government authorities presented copies of personal emails to detained protesters, suggesting that such surveillance is widespread. In addition, there are reports that the Syrian government has recently attempted to procure high-end filtering and surveillance systems such as Bluecoat and NetAPP.

Using the internet for Human Rights activities

Practices – Suspends the internet service1- Dara’a City for more than 40 days – March , April 2011.2- Homs City , for more than 25 days in one time .3- Doma City , 29-1-2012 to 24-3-20123- Every Thursday and Friday in these areas ,Damascus countryside , Homs , Hama , Aleppo countryside , and Kamishli4- All of Syria become without internet over 3G for 1 week , June 20125- Many reports for Cases of certain cities

Image from Google Transparency Report

Practices – SURVEILLANCE1- To have an Internet subscription in Syria ( 3G – ADSL) you need to sign a contract and providing a copy from your ID and your fingerprint.2- intelligence have a powers to enter and decision-making in the ISPs3- BlueCoat SG90004- Utimaco5- Area Spa 6- Ericsson 7- December 2011 , Sophos said the deal with Syria had been terminated8- February 2012 leaked document from the Syrian Department of Communications , talking about Terminate the contract with Italian company Area SPA 9- Twitter Hashtag (#Syria) flooding months of Revolution

1- Syrian Electronic Army2- DDOS Attacks www.vdc-sy.org3- Syrian Trojans 4- Facebook flood 5- Internet Cafes Activities6- DNS forwarding 7- Fake SSL certificate, At 1 May 2011 , May 2012 for Facebook..etc8- Confiscation of equipment – SCM team9- Blocking Tor 10- DPI: At 14 April 2012 , over all the Syrian ISPs , VPN L2TP Stopped working , According to bloomberg , Utimaco AG and Qosmos SA supplied a deep-packet inspection technology.11- Blcok SSL – 443 for more than 4 hours

Practices – Attacks

The Syrian government has expanded the blocking of website widely since 2007, with most all online social networks and blogging sites blocked from 2007 until the end of 2011. According to Taming the Internet, a report released by SCM, blocked websites presently include:35 Kurdish sites 28 opposition political sites25 Lebanese sites 21 media sites13 Islamic sites9 proxy server sites9 cultural sites7 press-related sites6 online social networking sites5 human rights organizations sites3 blogging sites

CENSORSHIP

- The Arabic Wikipedia was blocked from 30 April 2008 until 12 February 2009.And it has been blocked again after a while.- February 2011 Syria removed the block over YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.- May 2011 Syria Blocked Flash video Streaming to disable youtube network.- Beginning in 2011, the government start blocking VPN connections (like OpenVPN or other PPTP services), which were frequently used by parties under surveillance to evade detection. In response, many Syrians have begun using customized software proxy services like L2TP, VPN over SSH, and TOR.- Keywords

CENSORSHIP

Several Syrian bloggers and writers were arrested because of what they published on the web pages like :• Osama Mousa an Assyrian - Syrian blogger and human rights

activist , he had been arrested at 27/2/2008 because of his Articles on his blog.

• Tal Dosr al-Mallohi is a Syrian blogger from Homs, Tal was taken from her home by officers of one of the security offices in Syria because she has written poems about Palestine and social commentaries on her blog.

• Karim Arbaji a blogger arrested at 2007 by the Syrian Secret Police who was sentenced to three years in prison for publishing information against the national morale.

• Razan Ghazzawi Syrian Bloggers she had been arrested for 2 times.

• Husain Garrier Syrian Bloggers he had been arrested for 2 times and he still in the jail

Bloggers

Links

Links

Blocking, T. R. (2008, September 15). AHEWAR. Retrieved from http://www.ahewar.org/debat/show.art.asp?aid=147154Electronic Frontier Foundation. (2012, February 21). Retrieved from Spy Tech Companies & Their Authoritarian Customers, Part II: Trovicor and Area SpA: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/spy-tech-companies-their-authoritarian-customers-part-ii-trovicor-and-area-spaSyria News/Hacktivist. (n.d.). Law and Combating Cybercrime. Retrieved from Syria News/Hacktivist: https://syria.hacktivist.me/?p=52Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression. (2008, May 05). Taming the Internet Report. Retrieved from SCM: http://scm.bz/?page=category&category_id=36&lang=arStatement about Osama Mousa http://www.zahrira.net/?p=3901Hacking the website of Harvard university

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh-POU60WzY Internet censorship in Syria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_SyriaBritish surveillance software linked to Syrian regimehttp://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/12/01/british-software-helped-syrian-regime-crush-dissidents/Facebook users in Syria targeted by cyber attack http://www.ameinfo.com/264319.htmlThe Internet In the Arab World A New Space of Repression?

http://www.anhri.net/en/reports/net2004/syria.shtmlH-P Computers Underpin Syria Surveillance

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-18/hewlett-packard-computers-underpin-syria-electonic-surveillance-project.htmlSyria expands "iron censorship" over Internethttp://uk.reuters.com/article/2008/03/13/oukin-uk-syria-internet-idUKL138353620080313?sp=true

Links

Thank you