ConceptDoppler Project: In the Media Spotlight

August 3, 2008

Albuquerque's ABC affiliate, KOAT 7, interviewed Prof. Jed Crandall on August 3rd, 2008 about the ConceptDoppler project, a kind of automated weather report tool for censorship. Then the August 6th issue of the Albuquerque Journal published a story about Jed Crandall's work, which is available on the website (subscription or free trial pass required). Next, Jed Crandall was interviewed August 7th on Santa Fe Public Radio (KSFR). And last, and certainly not least, Jed was interviewed by KOAT 7 again on August 27th, 2008, to see what he found about Internet censorship during the Olympics held in Beijing. ConceptDoppler has shown that the Chinese Internet censorship is not a true firewall. It tests keywords from the Chinese wikipedia and has discovered that on 28% of the tested network paths, the data made it through. During the Olympics, the filtering seemed lighter than normal, but was still present. In addition to sensitive topics such as Falun Gong and Tibet, many keywords on the blacklist are aimed at preventing rallies and protests. Thus, there is no way to know for sure what demonstrations might have occurred that were prevented by the censorship remaining in place. Video of both interviews are available: