huridocs-tech Repressive regimes may be targeting Net service providers

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## author     : jwalker@networx.on.ca
## date       : 10.02.99
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Repressive regimes may be targeting Net service providers

02/09/99
By Dan Gillmor / San Jose Mercury News
http://www.dallasnews.com/technology-nf/techbiz9.htm

An Internet service provider in Dublin, Ireland, a couple
weeks ago was forced to shut down temporarily after a
cyberattack on its computers. Topping the list of suspects
is Indonesia.

The Internet company was hosting a ''virtual nation'' on
behalf of people who want to end the brutal Indonesian
occupation of East Timor, the eastern half of a South
Pacific island the size of Massachusetts. We take open
political discourse for granted in the United States, but in
this case political speech had a price.

If the Indonesian government was pulling the strings, it
wouldn't be the first time a regime tried to control a
medium that tends to find ways around censorship. All over
the globe, governments are desperately trying to limit their
citizens' access to materials deemed inappropriate or
dangerous.

Nor is this the first time a government may have been
involved in trying to suppress a foreign-based Internet site
it didn't like. The Spanish government, by some accounts,
tacitly supported an electronic mail-bombing campaign
against a San Francisco Web site that published material for
Basque separatists.

But if the Indonesian regime did mastermind or otherwise
play a role in the hacking of the site about East Timor,
this cross-border challenge is an escalation of sorts.

Changing times

For governments and their foes, foreign and domestic, it's
another warning that the Information Age brings new
complexities to some old notions. It raises fascinating,
maybe fundamental questions - about the nature of
sovereignty, authority and more in the virtual world.

As with other cases of hacking of Web sites, moreover, the
incident highlights how the Internet's basic openness is
double-edged. Decentralization lets information be viewed by
anyone anywhere. It also creates vulnerability to outside
attacks.

A little history:

When Portugal decided to cede control of East Timor in 1975,
Indonesia invaded and annexed it as a province. Widely
reported human rights abuses followed. International
protests, including from the United Nations, have had little
effect - until recently, perhaps coincidentally, when the
Indonesian government suddenly suggested it might grant
independence to East Timor.

The Internet had played a role in the continuing campaign
against the occupation. There were the usual mailing lists,
Usenet newsgroup discussions and Web sites where advocates
and opponents of East Timor independence promoted their
viewpoints.

But the most interesting Web development came in late 1997,
when an Irish Internet service provider, Connect-Ireland,
joined forces with Nobel laureates Jose Ramos-Hort and
Bishop Carlos Belo, who had been among the most active
people in the East Timor freedom movement.

The idea behind their East Timor Project was to create what
amounted to a virtual nation. To do this, they took
advantage of the way Internet domains are created.

A ''top-level'' national domain - granted by a central
authority run under contract with the U.S. government, a
system now being revamped - consists of a two-letter
abbreviation. For example, the United Kingdom uses .uk,
where a Web site might be called website.co.uk (the ''co''
stands for commercial in this example).

In the United States, most Internet domains are registered
to top-level domains such as .com, .edu and others, though a
top-level national abbreviation, ..us, does exist and is used
in some circumstances.

Creating an East Timor top-level domain name, .tp, was a
clever political maneuver. It effectively established a
semiofficial presence, though what that really means is open
to interpretation.

In any event, Indonesia's government wasn't amused. A
spokesman told the Irish Times newspaper, with the utter
hypocrisy so prevalent in officialdom, that it had nothing
against freedom on the Net.

But the government was ''concerned that this freedom has
been misused . . . to spread a campaign against Indonesia.''

In an explanation on its Web page, Connect-Ireland
(www.connect.ie) says the site had been probed repeatedly in
the year since the domain was established. But the company
wasn't prepared for what happened two weeks ago:
simultaneous cyberattacks from locations around the globe.

Swamped systems

The attacks, apparently designed to bog down the computers,
were so effective that Connect-Ireland was forced to
temporarily shut down its systems. The company says it is
upgrading equipment and software to make the site less
vulnerable. Systems administrators worldwide are working
together to trace the people responsible, according to
Connect-Ireland. It's entirely possible that the guilty
parties will escape detection.

A Web site that challenges a corrupt or repressive regime
may be perceived as a serious threat by that government.
Given the power of information to be a catalyst for action,
it may be an actual threat. That doesn't make the
counterstrike any more legal or righteous, but at least you
can understand the motive.

It's bad enough to shut down an opponent's printing press or
radio station inside one's own nation. It's plain outrageous
to cross borders to do this.

As an act of Web warfare, the attack on the East Timor
Project had another effect that's all too common in war:
what military people so quaintly call ''collateral damage,''
injury to innocent people and property. Connect-Ireland's
regular customers found themselves without access to their
e-mail and other Internet services.

Ultimately, regimes will learn the hard way that they can't
stamp out information they don't like, not in the new world
of the Information Age. They'll try, though, in an ongoing
arms race.

Last week, the East Timor Project's Web presence
(www.freedom.tp) finally was back in commission. But the
East Timor human rights movement isn't. That's the most
important message.


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