Threats to the Open Net: Week of 12/13/2010

Every week, the OpenNet Initiative will provide a weekly roundup (dubbed "Threats to the Open Net") on our blog, in addition to our usual in-depth blog posts. If you would like to subscribe to the RSS feed for the entire blog or the weekly threats update, you may do so; you are also free to use the feed on your own site, with attribution to the OpenNet Initiative.

Threats to the Open Net

* Malaysia is not planning to implement filtering, reports Communication and Culture Minister Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum to the Malay Mail.

* A profile of anonymity and circumvention tool Tor hits the New York Times today. Writes Virginia Heffernan:

"A Tor transmission these days might start in Addis Ababa, hop to Dallas, then to Stockholm and finally Johannesburg. (There are some 2,000 Tor relay nodes at any one time across the globe.) The only thing the Johannesburg recipient can discover is that the data came from Tor, and Tor has successfully identified itself with no person or group, only with ideological incoherence. For the person trying to get a message out through Tor, this means he communicates exactly as much as he chooses and no more."

* The Australian IT News reports that the UN is mulling stricter Internet regulations in light of the recent events surrounding WikiLeaks. China and Saudi Arabia (both of which practice pervasive Internet filtering) are amongst the backers.

* In the US, a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has determined that email is protected by the Fourth Amendment.