Hi LibTech Citizen Lab is undertaking research on the commercial market for censorship, surveillance, and computer network attack capabilities -- hence the interest in Blue Coat, but among many other reports we have done either alone or collaboratively with others on the topic. That would include reports going back to the mid 2000s on the use commercial filtering products, published under the auspices of the ONI, and including reports on Fortinet in Burma, Smart Filter in Iran, Websense in a variety of MENA / Gulf countries, and more recently Netsweeper. We have also published several reports on Gamma Group, and one on Hacking Team. Additionally, we are working collaboratively with Privacy International and Agentura.Ru on the commercial surveillance market in Russia and the former Soviet Union. Our interest is to document what's going on in the first instance, typically employing a mixed methods approach that we are refining -- and a lot of that can be opportunistic depending on the modalities of deployment. A second, growing concern of ours is around the question of what can be done about this market. Specifically on Blue Coat, readers of lib tech might be interested in an oped that Sarah McKune and I wrote that talks about the issue of shareholder pressure on Blue Coat as one approach short of regulation, after we determined that the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan is a majority owner of Blue Coat systems. You can read that oped here: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2013/02/06/teachers_pension_... I should mention that we posted questions directly to Blue Coat in our report here: https://citizenlab.org/2013/01/planet-blue-coat-mapping-global-censorship-an... ...and sent a letter directly to Blue Coat systems and the OTPP reiterating those questions. To date we have not received any reply. Our various publications on this topic can be found here: http://citizenlab.org/publications/ Regards Ron On 2013-04-06, at 12:14 PM, Kate Krauss wrote:
To me, the real question is, *If* Bluecoat, why are things going so well for them when they are a 45 minute drive from activists in San Francisco? Happy to explain--off this list--what this means in terms of political strategy and offline, nonviolent direct action.
This is definitely not an indictment of any group--there's amazing activism going on an a zillion fires to put out.
But there are great opportunities to be explored.
Kate Krauss (formerly of ACT UP Golden Gate, a group that successfully targeted major companies on the peninsula, from SF)
On Sat, Apr 6, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Jillian C. York <jilliancyork@gmail.com>wrote:
Honestly? Because there is ample evidence to support it at the moment. I would also suggest that it's only "singled out" in the US - in Europe, the focus right now is on Gamma (FinFisher) and Amesys, largely.
Activists have been accused in the past of "singling out" Cisco as well. Attention has now turned to Bluecoat. When there is evidence of another company's misdeeds, attention will surely turn there.
Is that sufficient logic for you?
On Sat, Apr 6, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb <ei8fdb@ei8fdb.org
wrote:
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Hi,
I've been thinking about this for a while, and can't find a logical reason. Possibly I'm not thinking about it hard enough.
I'm curious as to why Bluecoat seem to be singled out for all this attention regarding use in countries where the governments are "not nice"? Is it because they are a public, well known company? A lot the same stories repeat the same stories of Bluecoat equipment being used in the same oppressive regimes.
As someone who worked in ISP level infrastructure for a while (thankfully no longer), I've seen the equipment used "for neutral uses" - network management, etc.
However, there are a lot more sinister and disgusting companies who's products *sole-purpose* is surveillance and censorship, and sole market is those oppressive countries we talk about on this list.
My point of view is not to defend Bluecoat, quite the opposite, but there are nastier and uglier fish out there.
Can anyone set me right, or give an opinion? On or off list is fine.
thanks, Bernard
- -------------------------------------- Bernard / bluboxthief / ei8fdb
IO91XM / www.ei8fdb.org
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Ronald Deibert Director, the Citizen Lab and the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies Munk School of Global Affairs University of Toronto (416) 946-8916 PGP: http://deibert.citizenlab.org/pubkey.txt http://deibert.citizenlab.org/ twitter.com/citizenlab r.deibert@utoronto.ca -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE