Global Voices Advocacy » Israel

In Case of Disconnection: Preparing Gaza for an Internet Shutdown

Jillian York — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:24:05 +0000

For days, rumors have abounded that Israel—which controls the telecommunications infrastructure of Palestine—plans to shut down the Internet in Gaza. While thus far the rumors have proven false, various organizations and actors are working to ensure that Gazans are prepared.

Telecomix, a group notable for its assistance to Egyptians during the January 2011 Internet shutdown, has put forward a guide entitled “Telecomix #Gaza Emergency Room,” offering up tips for staying connected in the wake of an Internet shutdown. The guide includes tips on using an Egyptian SIM card, tweeting from one's mobile device, and accessing dialup connections.

Anonymous has also put together a comprehensive guide to keeping the lines of communication open in the event of a shutdown. Their package of tips includes the following:

FIND THE PRIVATELY RUN ISPs: In densely populated areas, especially in central business districts and city suburbs there are multiple home WiFi networks overlapping each other, some secure, some not. If there is no internet, open up your WiFi by removing password protection: If enough people do this it’s feasible to create a totally private WiFi service outside government control covering the CBD, and you can use applications that run Bonjour (iChat on Mac for example) to communicate with others on the open network and send and receive documents. **needs more clarification If you are a private ISP, it’s your time to shine. Consider allowing open access to your Wi-Fi routers to facilitate communication of people around you until the grid is back online.

Another package circulating was created by “the dod” and contains advice on using Tor, Tails, and PGP and is open for additional suggestions.

On the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Deeplinks blog, Eva Galperin provides analysis on the ongoing social media “battle” and offers the following reminder:

It is important to remember that dial-up connections are not secure. Your communications can be intercepted or spied upon. EFF recommends that you encrypt your browser traffic using HTTPS Everywhere.

There are also numerous guides available in Arabic. A blog entitled Resistance Tools for Gaza offers links to both a first aid guide and a guide to tech tools.

Nadim Kobeissi, the creator of CryptoCat, has been tweeting suggestions and offers of assistance. In one tweet, he cites a guide from Movements.org, suggesting it be translated into Arabic:

PRIORITY to get this into #Gaza, needs to be translated to Arabic:http://www.movements.org/how-to/entry/how-to-prepare-for-an-internet-connection-cut-off/ …

The guide, written by Susannah Vila, offers tips like:

Take all your contacts out of the cloud. It's a good idea to make sure you have a list of your contacts’ emails printed out and readily available. For example, the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page prepared for a possible Facebook cut-off in Egypt by asking supporters to share their email addresses and other contact information on a Google spreadsheet.

Kobeissi also created a tutorial for using OTR (off-the-record chatting) with Pidgin, a commonly-used chat client for PCs:

Liberal Jewish Blogger Under Attack

Bhumika Ghimire — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:44:10 +0000

Richard Silverstein, a liberal Jewish blogger, has come under attack from right wing nationalists and religious hard liners. In his blog Tikun Olam, Silverstein has posted a statement sent to his lawyer from David Yerushalmi-who accusing him of libel.

Blogger Richard Silverstein. Image via HuffingtonPost

“I am reluctantly forced to revisit the statements your client, Richard Silverstein, has made about me on his blog. When he first attacked me personally and stated that I was a fascist, racist, and Kahanist, I ignored them, even as others of his ilk provided these baseless statements “legs” allowing countless more “eyes” the opportunity to read what your client understood and represented to be carefully calculated factual statements about me. These statements are demonstrably false and your client made them knowing they were false or acting recklessly in this regard. This recklessness I believe was established in his deposition testimony in the Neuwirth case.”

Yerushalmi is a Washington DC based lawyer. In 2010, ThinkProgress reported on his questionable views on Islam and Islamic law. Yerushalmi claimed in an article for American Thinker that,

“Islam was born in violence; it will die that way. Any wish to the contrary is sheer Pollyannaism. The same way the post World War II German youth were taught by their German teachers and political leaders to despise the fascism of their fathers, with strict laws extant still today restricting even speech that casts doubt on the Holocaust, so too must the Muslim youth be taught from the cradle to reject the religion of their forebears.

Richard Silverstein, a moderate voice on Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is target of strong criticism from many in the blogosphere. Jewlicious accuses him of

“..veritable personification of moral decrepitude?”

Israellycool went a step ahead and called him a pro-terror, anti-Israel blogger.

Committee to Protect Bloggers has a detailed post on legal troubles pushed on Silverstein's way and has also urged people to support Silverstein's work and his right to express his views.

For the first time in Israel – blocking Internet gambling websites

Tal Pavel — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:47:58 +0000

On July 2010 an article was published which received no proper attention so far – for the first time the Israeli police ordered Internet Service providers to block access to websites. The news was posted on ‘Haaretz’ websites in Hebrew and English as well as on ‘Globes‘, but without significant reference, if any, at other news sites.

Police ordered all ISPs to block access in a number of gambling sites, most of them abroad, which are suspected to be owned by Israelis: http://hebrew.vcpoker.com, http://www.victorchandler.com, http://keshcard.com, http://www.stanjames.com and http://thespinroom.com.

In practice, most of the sites are part of http://www.victorchandler.com (active in several languages including Hebrew) or link directly to it. This site indicates that there are different products that have designated URLs: VC Casino, VC Live Casino, VC Games and VC Poker. However, these designated pages actually redirect to http://www.victorchandler.com.

The police instructed Israeli ISPs to block the IP addresses of relevant sites and asked to respond within 48 hours. On the other hand, the ISPs argued for lack of actual ability to block IP addresses and lack of authority for such blocking. Indeed, with the announcement of this news, reference started in various forums, including tips on how to bypass the blockage over those web sites.

This instruction of the police is not the beginning of a move against online gambling in Israel, but for now the culmination of this activity;

Three weeks ago, 28 people were arrested in connection with two major sites: victorchandler.com and stanjames.com. This was in suspicion of distributing prepaid cards worth tens of millions of NIS for gambling on the websites. These cards are sold in amounts of 100-5,000 NIS for each. The need to use alternative paying cards came after the block, since 2007 by the credit card companies and under police orders, of the option to pay on these gambling websites using credit cards. In this regard, the Police examined in mid 2009 the Israeli banks internal procedures regarding the clearing of credit cards over the Internet, including a warning to bank managers to prevent the activities and involvement of criminal organizations in the clearing on the Internet.

Mid-November 2009, an online gambling affair was exposed with a raid on the homes of 36 suspected of involvement in a network of online gambling and bets made via the sites http://bet555.net, http://betbet.us. In February 2010 indictments were filed against 22 of those who were behind these gambling sites. It was the first time that charges have been issued in respect of bets made only on the Internet.

At the end of 2009 another gambling affair was exposed. In this case the roulette was aired directly on the Internet cafe in Israel and abroad and watched by the betting users. The police raided the relevant Internet cafes and arrested 12 defendants in the case known as ‘Queen Mary'.

A few days earlier an indictment of the management involved in online gambling network that spread across more than one hundred sites in Israel between the years 2000-2002 has been made public. Those who were involved were charged with gambling money laundering and tax evasion.

Behind this campaign of eradication of illegal gambling, stand the official institutions betting in Israel, Winner-Toto and the National Lottery. The only two that are allowed to conduct lawful gambling on the Internet in the country, even if their servers are located outside of Israel. According to their argument, the scope of the legal sports books in about 5 billion ILS (around 1.25 billion USD) a year compared with a triple amount of the illegal sports betting sector. It is estimated that illegal gambling is the main income of the crime organizations in Israel.

Israel – Another step in government restrictions on the Web

Tal Pavel — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:42:41 +0000

Two weeks ago, when police directive was published for the first time in Israel, instructing the Internet providers to block access to some gambling websites, the economic Committee of the Knesset (Israeli parliament) approved, on July 13th, a bill requiring Internet service providers to inform their clients about the dangers of the Internet and to provide their customers with free Internet filtering software. This followed a discussion in the Knesset on the matter before the same committee on July 5th.

Following the attempts being made in the last decade to limit by legislation the Internet freedom in Israel, MK Alex Miller submitted this bill, once again, on April 1, 2009 (P/456/18). The same bill was submitted in the previous Knesset (P/1752 /17) by the same member on November 27, 2006.

The proposal was discussed earlier in the Knesset on October 24, 2007 and was rejected at a meeting of the Economic Committee on February 26, 2008. To the current effort of MK Miller to pass this bill, joined six other members of the Knesset.

Now, after being approved, the bill will pass for a first vote in the Knesset. Most of the bills in the past were a real limitation on the free use of the Internet in the form of blocking sites or restricting access in workplaces and public places. However, those bills were not accepted in most cases.

Since the bill is not a direct limitation on access to websites, but to impose a duty on Internet service providers to provide information and software on this matter, it is possible that the bill will eventually be approved.

Israel: Did Tzipi Livni's team erase Shai's blog post from Google?

Gilad Lotan — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:52:09 +0000

This story should serve as a warning for every internet user. It begins at a well known Israeli web-portal hook.co.il, with Shai Rozentsweig's blog, who writes funny satirical skits. Shai created a post that slightly mocks Tzipi Livni(a leading member of the Kadima party, and currently the front-runner for the primary election of the ruling Kadima Party) and her meager record of actual political achievements. This led to Google's intervention, most probably prompted by Tzipi Livni's team; an embarrassing surrender on Google's behalf, removing the blog from its search results.

Tom Wagner describes the events as they happened:

Shai Rozentzweig published a post named “Tzipi… Livni… achievements…” (ציפי ליבני עשייה) in his funny blog. Like many other readers, I couldn't stand the temptation and Googled “Tzipi Livni Achievements”. To my great surprise, Shai Rozentsweig's blog came up first. I found this very funny, added a comment to his blog, and wrote a note on my Facebook profile, saying – “the blogger that killed Tzipi Livni”. I added that if people who browse the web looking for her achievements see this post, it is proof that she lacks any!

One of my Facebook friends, who is close to Livni, saw this post and all of the comments it generated. He searched in Google and was alarmed as Shai's satirical post came up first. Now, several days after publishing that blog post, it is impossible to find it using Google search. If you query “Tzipi Livni Achievements” you do not see the blog post even in page 500. If one enters a whole sentence from the blog post into Google's searchbox, Shai's blog will not come up in the results.

How else can this be explained? I see a hysterical telephone call from Livni's office to someone in the Google offices, who most probably blocked Shai's blog. Everyone who trusts Google as a reliable search engine needs to know that Google is susceptible to political influence, that Google surrenders quickly, and that Google doesn't really care about information integrity when there is a possibility that nobody will find out.

Tom asked fellow bloggers to link to his story, hoping that if Google makes him “invisible” at least other links will keep the story alive. A long stream of comments trailed after Tom's story. Below are two of the many comments:

Sonny Daor writes:

It is shocking that Livni chose to deal with the situation this way, instead of doing actual things that go into her record and appear in the search result. Moreover, it is even worse that Google is realizing the Big Brother prophecies linked to the company from the very beginning.

Ronen Reznik writes:

I am not surprised from the minister's reaction – it is the anticipated behavior from a minister who is aspiring to be our next leader. Now she proved that she is not able to stand against criticism, even if light and satirical.
Google has no personal commitment towards us, but to the dollar! And the $$ interest dictates capitulation to local (political) forces (Israel, China, Saudi Arabia, and more…). We need to boycott Google. There are other information highways!

A day later, Tom receives a phone-call from Google's PR representative in Israel, Stern-Ariely. He writes:

I was very surprised – since when does Google call people who write a post against it? I will try to dictate the conversation in the most comprehensive manner:

‘…Google is not involved. It is not possible for us to block results within Google's organic search…’ When asked how it is possible that a blog appears in the first place, then disappears completely and then reappears in first place after much anger and outrage, the representative replied that he still has no answer.

Personally I am skeptical that I will ever receive an answer. My interpretation – Google surrendered first time to pressure from Tzipi Livni, and second time from us readers, when realizing that they've been found. If anyone has an alternative explanation please let me know.

Israel: Knesset Freezes Talkback Law for Web-Comment Censorship

Gilad Lotan — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:29:06 +0000

The Knesset has decided to freeze legislation regulating readers’ ability to respond to articles via the so-called “Talkback Law”, in an effort to allow web sites to practice self-regulation. The Talkback Law, submitted by MK Israel Hasson (Yisrael Beiteinu), passed its preliminary reading. It would make web sites responsible for the talkbacks (user generated comments) of its readers as though they were articles of the site itself.

Avner Finchuk of the Israeli Civil Rights Association, addresses the Knesset legislators in an article on ynet:

החוק לא נועד, וגם אינו יכול, לחנך את הציבור לנימוסים והליכות. אם רוצים המחוקקים בכנסת להשפיע על תרבות הדיון הציבורי, יתכבדו ויתחילו לעשות זאת בביתם ואל יפגעו בציפור נפשה של הדמוקרטיה.

“This law was not meant to educate the general public towards politeness and manners. If the Knesset legislators want to have an influence on the public conversation culture, they are welcome to begin to do this in their homes, not harming the soul of our democracy.”

Shahar Ilan of The Marker, writes:

נציגת משרד המשפטים, עורך דין תמר קלהורה, הביעה התנגדות להצעת החוק של חסון. לדבריה, אין להשתמש באמצעי החקיקה הקיימים לגבי מדיום חדש כמו האינטרנט אלא יש לבנות לו כלי חקיקה חדשים כמקובל בעולם. הצעת משרד המשפטים היא שברגע שתתקבל תלונה על תוכן גולשים. טוקבק או כל תוכן אחר האתר המארח יפנה לכותב, אם הכותב יודיע שהוא מתכוון להגן על התוכן בבית משפט, התוכן לא יוסר, אם הכותב לא יעשה זאת התוכן יוסר.

Lawyer Tamar Kalhura, representative from the Ministry of Justice, conveyed her objection to Hasson's law proposal. She claims that the existing legislative methods must not be used on such a new medium as the internet. It is necessary to build new legislative tools, as is done around the world, she continues. The Ministry of Justice proposes the following solution – when a website receives a complaint on a talkback (comment) or any other (user generated) content, the hosting site will contact the writer. If the writer claims that he/she will protect the content in court, it will not be removed, otherwise if the content writer does not respond, it will be removed.

From this proposal, it is not clear how content provided by anonymous sources will be handled. Yonatan Klinger of 2jk writes:

The website owners got what they wanted, Hasson got his headlines (and removed his legislative whip), but the public, users who surf the web, came out losers. It was decided that within this framework of “self-regulation”, each website will decide its own comment-censoring policy, under the patronage of the Israeli Internet Association (which is, by the way, today's biggest winner) in order to protect the public from being exposed to the horrors of web-comments!… oh, the horrors!

Today's losers are the public. If up until now, comments on Israeli sites represented a form of public space – a city square which supported open conversation. From now on these conversations will depend upon the policy which each website decides to use.

Alisa describes Israeli “talkbalk” culture as important, but not always at its best:

Israel is a small country with a very vibrant political atmosphere. As everyone knows, every Jew, especially an Israeli one, has at least one opinion on any given issue, public or otherwise. Add to this the fact that we live in a somewhat interesting neighborhood, and that the issues we have to deal with are often just as interesting, and it is a small wonder that the advent of the Internet brought with it an explosion of various sites that deal with current affairs. But the really big explosion and the real action is in the commentary sections of these sites – the Talkbacks. The Talkbackists, as they have become known, are often the real stars, very often not in a good way.

Israel: Israblog's Decision Against Banning Pro-Ana Sites

Gilad Lotan — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:57:05 +0000

An agressive campaign to shut down pro-ana blogs has been taking place in the popular Israeli portal Israblog. Pro-ana refers to the promotion or support of anorexia as a lifestyle choice. Many pro-ana organizations state that they exist mainly to give anorexics a place to turn to discuss their illness in a non-judgmental environment.

There have been numerous online conversation for and against banning of these sites. Ilana, a representative of the Israeli portal, responded to the petition calling to close down blogs that encourage anorexia. Below is a translation of her response:
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Israel: Law for Censorship of Web Comments Passes Initial Knesset Voting

Gilad Lotan — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:09:38 +0000

Israeli web culture is known for having an active talkback (web commenting) scene. Every major news site allows users to submit comments for every single one of its stories. Israeli culture at its best and worst thrives through discussions held within these spaces; discussions which are planned to fall under future censorship, according to the Talkback Law, proposed by Knesset member Israel Hasson. The proposal passed initial voting in the Knesset yesterday, January 16th.

According to the proposal, a popular site, defined as one with an average of 50,000 hits or more per day, will be considered a “newspaper” and thus liable for the damage or harm caused to a person as a result from its user generated content (i.e. – comments). Ironically, the web post describing this case, published yesterday on the popular ynet news site, has already received over 200 comments.

Hasson's reasoning for the importance of such a law:
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Israel: the censorship bill unanimously approved

Sami Ben Gharbia — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:09:50 +0000

The censorship bill for internet porn and violence proposed by Amnon Cohen of the ultra-orthodox Shas party has been unanimously approved by the Ministerial Committee on Legislation and will be brought to the Israeli Knesset.