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Internet censorship circumvention technology use in human rights organizations: an exploratory analysis

  • Research Article
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Journal of Information Technology

Abstract

Using an organizational informatics approach, this study explores the implications of human rights organizations’ use of censorship circumvention technologies. Through qualitative analyses of data collected through in-depth interviews, the research examines the factors influencing the use of circumvention technologies and the organizational effects of their use. The outcomes include a revised model of censorship circumvention technology use as well as a new model situating human rights organizations and their audiences in bidirectional information flows. The research provides recommendations for practice as well as insight for organizational informatics and information systems security research in the areas of protective technologies, awareness, detection, and physical security.

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Notes

  1. See http://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en for an overview of various types of Tor users.

  2. For example, Callanan et al. (2011), of Freedom House, analyze various censorship circumvention tools and provide a comparative review of those utilized in Azerbaijan, Burma, China, and Iran. Guides include: ‘Leaping Over the Firewall: A review of censorship circumvention tools’ (Freedom House), ‘Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber Dissidents’ (Reporters Without Borders), the ‘Everyone′s Guide to By-Passing Internet Censorship’ (CitizenLab, University of Toronto), and the ‘Security in-a-Box’ toolkit (Tactical Technology Collective and Front Line).

  3. Organizations originally selected were those that had a name that included (1) keywords like torture, death, justice, accountability, action, and genocide that suggest an actionable and controversial organizational mission likely to incite censorship, (2) geographic descriptors like Arab, Albanian, East Timor, and Asian that suggest operation in countries that either have a history of controversial human rights activities or Internet/other media censorship, or (3) words like freedom, expression, journalists, protection, witness, advocates, and cyber rights that suggested an organizational mission involving activities directly involving freedom of speech and censorship.

  4. As shown in Table A1, interview length ranged from 13 min to over 85 min, with an average interview length of approximately 30 min. Data from interviews were supplemented with contextual information drawn from organizational websites. Some interviews included multiple informants at the same organization. Interviews followed a conversational, semi-structured format with at least one of the authors conducting the interview via standard telephone or VOIP (Skype). Table A2 lists the full set of questions utilized in the interviews, which include overlapping question modules that correspond directly to the specifications of the interaction model and research questions presented above. Some variation in question wording and order was utilized to maintain a conversational tone. In most cases, not all questions were asked, but every effort was made to cover questions across all modules within the time constraints of each informant.

  5. Separate tables foster the required anonymity for informants.

  6. For example, Dinev and Hu (2007) consider only awareness of the potential effects of spyware and the extent which users are aware of whether or not their computers are infected with spyware.

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Correspondence to Carleen F Maitland.

Appendix

Appendix

Table A1

Table A1 Interview date and length

Table A2

Table A2 Semi-structured interview questions

Table A3

Table A3 Deductive analytic coding scheme

Table A4

Table A4 Inductive analytic coding scheme

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Maitland, C., Thomas, H. & Tchouakeu, LM. Internet censorship circumvention technology use in human rights organizations: an exploratory analysis. J Inf Technol 27, 285–300 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2012.20

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