Thinking Upstream

Why is your favourite website not available? Is your blog visible overseas?  Use Herdict Web at Herdict.org and you can help answer these questions. Herdict Web is an Internet service that detects signs of censorship or disruption. Read “Herdict—Using the Crowd to Fight Censorship” to learn more. Simply browse Herdict Web and view the reports for your web sites or countries of Interest. Run some of the tests yourself, and help build up a picture of the health of the Internet. You can view the global picture as a Google map, with status reports overlaid on the location of origin. That is a valuable service for this stormy season of Internet interruptions. Several countries are enforcing severe Internet censorship, and some websites have been disrupted by botnets. Be security concious when using your own PC, so that it does not become part of a malicious botnet. Botnets are a source of spam, and some are programmed to send invalid traffic. Due to the huge numbers of PCs in a botnet, this can swamp the targetted web site. Herdict is reviewed at toolness.com and futureoftheinternet.org. Herdict is provided by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. The OpenNet Initiative (ONI), which tracks Internet censorship around the globe, is an international collaboration of the Berkman Center and other leading academic institutions.