Is namedtelex, has been created by researchers in Computer Science from the University of Michigan (USA) and the University of Waterloo (Canada), andprevents a censoring government from blocking individual websites. “The Internet could catalyze change by giving people power through information and communication,” argues J. Alex Halderman, one of the creators of Telex. “Repressive governments have responded by imposing aggressive filters on the Internet; if we can find ways to keep those channels open we can give people back thefreedom of expressionand theaccess to information“, adds the researcher.
Typical anti-censorship systems currently have users bypass locks by redirecting them through an outside server called a ‘front man’. But the censor can monitor the content of the traffic throughout the network and sometimes finds and blocks the front man as well.
In the case of Telex, users install the program and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) located outside the censor country installequipment called Telex stations. When a user wants to visit a site that is prohibited, he establishes a secure connection to an HTTP site on the network, which could be any password-protected site that is not blocked. This is a decoy connection. The Telex program marks the connection as a Telex request by inserting a tag with a secret code in the page headlines. The tag uses a cryptography technique known as “public key stenography.” The user’s request goes through route devices at various ISPs, some of which may be Telex stations. These stations have a private key that allows them to recognize the tagged connections of Telex clients. The stations divert the connections so that the user can go anywhere on the internet.
Of course, for it to work, “it would require the support of countries that are friends of the cause of a free and open Internet,” said Halderman. At the momentresearchers have installed a Telex station on a simulated ISP in their laboratory. They use it for their daily internet excursions for the past four months and tested it with a client in Beijing who was able to view ongoing YouTube videos even when the site was blocked in his home country.
