Circumvention tools are primarily designed to bypass Internet filtering, the core principle behind the technologies is to bounce the connections using one or more collaborative servers.

This report offers a technical review of ten different projects and a practical methodology to evaluate them. The review aims to make accessible an area of knowledge for those interested in circumvention but not necessary enjoy reading dozen of acronyms or installing all the tools available.

One of our first findings performing this review is that comparing the initiatives has not been a simple task, developing a simple evaluation criteria is far from straightforward and many solutions are black boxes that require reverse engineering to gain understanding of their functionality. We have accepted the challenge to develop a digestible methodology that looks at the tools under five basic categories: sustainability, trustworthiness, usability, privacy and infrastructure.

As a result of the evaluation we have identified twenty criteria that can be used to assess the suitability of a tool. Our major finding is that tools designed for circumvention are not necessary suitable for privacy protection and there is not enough awareness about the risk involved in using technologies that can be easily spotted.

A major recommendation of this work is that investments in this area should focus on suitable business models, usability and ultimately technical solutions that can scale up taking advantage of peer-to-peer infrastructures. Not all users need to hide their use of circumvention tools but those who are and live at risk should be fully aware of what circumvention tools can and can not provide.

• Introduction to the wireless project
• Radio Simulations for Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso
• Specification of Civil Work
• Activity plan and Hardware budget

The project aims to build two academic wireless networks, in Ouagadougou and in Bobo Dioulasso. Each network will interconnect a set of academic partners, belonging to the Universities (of Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso) or the CNRST1 (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique). The main purpose of the networks is to build an independent academic ICT infrastructure that can be used for local data and voice services between partners and to negotiate better conditions for upstream connectivity.

The project is supported by Sida/SAREC, and carried out by the University of Ouagadougou (UO), the National Science and Technology Research Centre (CNRST), and the Polytechnic University of Bobo Diolasso (UPB). The project is coodinated by Oumarou Sie (Team leader at the University of Ouagadougou) and Johan Ernberg (Project Coordinator at DSV).

The presentation focused on 10 areas that are important to consider in ICT for Development:

• Training & Education
• Free Open Source Software
• Localization
• Wireless Networks
• Voice over IP
• Network Security
• Energy Solutions
• Mobile Services
• NOC Design
• ICT Policy and development Plans

Requirements Document
The document compiles a set of technical and policy requirements for the design of a wireless metropolitan area network (MAN) in Fez. When possible the requirements aim to be technology neutral and should be used as guidelines for the adoption of solutions based on certain technology and/or network architecture. The document includes a summary of all requirements and recommendations in three different areas; Application (12), Wireless technology (11) and Policy (4).
[Download]

Implementation Plan
The document presents the Implementation plan for Phase 1 of the Wman@Fez project with time and activity plans.
[Download]

The paper translated in July 2008 by the Association of Progressive Communications to three languages (english, french and spanish) describes tools and technologies for equitable access. Commentaries from Carlos Alfonso and Steve Song are available in here.

GPS coordinates of all the sites described in the report are available at http://fantsuam.it46.se in the form of a KML file that can be visualize using Google Earth.]]> http://www.it46.se/entry/315 2008-01-11T17:39:40+00:00 aep@it46.se (Alberto Escudero-Pascual) More than 120 freedom of expression advocates from around the world gathered the 8-12 of September in Montevideo, Uruguay at the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) General Meeting.

As an introduction to the general meeting, an ICT Forum focused on secure communication and Internet censorship was held the 7th of September. IT +46 participated in the ICT Forum with a talk on the topic "Tools to secure your computer and where to find them". The talk focus on how to move from a security policy to an implementation in the organization.

The presentation includes 10 security areas that an organization should focus on. Special emphasis is made in the need of formulating a security policy and a realistic implementation plan accepted by the organization. ]]> http://www.it46.se/entry/311 2007-12-12T06:24:10+00:00 aep@it46.se (Alberto Escudero-Pascual) During the third global knowledge conference, Alberto Escudero Pascual participated in the panel ET1: ICT for a Multilingual Knowledge Society. The presentation covers three lessons learned during the effort to localize OpenOffice.org to Kiswahili and presents the new PAN African Localization iniative: PAN L10n (Panlion). ]]> http://www.it46.se/entry/310 2007-12-12T06:15:00+00:00 aep@it46.se (Alberto Escudero-Pascual) The VoIP4D-primer is an initiative to provide training material and documentation to those who want to understand and deploy VoIP infrastructure in developing regions.

The Free Telephony project provides free hardware designs for telephone systems. Both the hardware and software are open.

David and Alberto, presented the initiative during the third global knowledge conference GK3 in Kuala Lumpur. This is our presentation that summarizes the vision of both initiatives and focus on a trail of the technology in developing regions ]]>