March 12: World Day Against Cyber Censorship

Edward Johnson, hi-tech and engineering expert, March 12, 2025

Origin of World Day Against Cyber Censorship

World Day Against Cyber Censorship, created March 12, 2008 by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), condemns the restrictions imposed by certain governments and supports a free Internet.

Tools to Bypass Online Censorship

Virtual private networks (VPNs) encrypt Internet traffic and mask users' IP addresses, allowing people in China to access Google and Facebook despite the "Great Firewall." Tor (The Onion Router) anonymizes browsing by routing connections through several encrypted nodes, while web proxies, simpler but less secure, allow access to blocked sites by redirecting traffic through servers in uncensored countries. Alternative DNS services, such as Cloudflare's (1.1.1.1) or Google's (8.8.8.8), help bypass the DNS filtering used in Turkey and Iran. Encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Briar are used by activists in Iran and Belarus to organize protests without risk of interception. Mirror sites, exact copies of a site hosted on other servers, are regularly set up by Reporters Without Borders to keep access open to blocked outlets such as Meduza in Russia. Finally, steganography tools like "Snowflake" hide censored connections within legitimate traffic, letting users bypass restrictions without raising suspicion.

Technologies Used to Block Access to Information

DNS filtering is widely used in China to block access to sites like Google and Facebook by redirecting requests to blank or state-controlled pages. Deep packet inspection (DPI) lets Russian and Iranian authorities analyze Internet traffic in real time and block specific content, as with Telegram in Iran in 2018. "Throttling," or deliberately slowing connection speeds, was used in Sudan and Uganda during elections to prevent the spread of critical information. National firewalls, like China's "Great Firewall," combine several techniques, including IP address blocking and keyword censorship on local search engines like Baidu. In Turkey and Egypt, authorities block access to VPNs and Tor, while in North Korea, a national intranet called "Kwangmyong" replaces the Internet and only provides access to regime-approved resources. Finally, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are often used by states such as Russia and China to take down opposition and independent media sites.

How Governments Justify Online Censorship

In China, the "Great Firewall" is presented as a way to preserve social stability, justifying the blocking of Google, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and WhatsApp. In Russia, censorship of social media like Twitter was tightened in 2022 under the pretext of fighting "fake news" about the invasion of Ukraine, leading to the banning of the BBC and Meduza. In Iran, authorities claim to protect Islamic morality by banning platforms like Telegram, widely used to organize protests against the regime. In India, authorities regularly cut Internet access in Kashmir to combat "terrorist threats," while in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, many sites are blocked under the pretext of "protecting traditions," banning content on women's rights and LGBTQ+ diversity. Finally, in Turkey, Erdogan's government has blocked Twitter and YouTube multiple times, claiming it wants to prevent the spread of "hate speech" when these platforms were being used to spread information about political corruption.