Bennett Haselton

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Bennett Haselton (born November 20, 1978) is the founder of Circumventor.com and Peacefire.org, two US-based websites dedicated to combating Internet censorship. Peacefire.org is focused on documenting flaws in commercial Internet blocking programs. Circumventor.com is dedicated to distributing anti-censorship tools to users in countries such as China and Iran, and as of 2011 has over 3 million subscribers through distribution channels including email and Facebook pages. [1]

Contents

Haselton has appeared on CNN and The Montel Williams Show to discuss First Amendment issues and been quoted in The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Seattle Times , and The Village Voice . [2]

Haselton has testified before the US Child Online Protection Commission [3] and as an expert witness for the ACLU. [4]

He is the Guinness World Record holder for the most country capitals named in 60 seconds in response to a prompt of a random country name, achieving the first verified perfect score on December 12, 2015. [5] [6]

He listed in the Google Vulnerability Program Hall Of Fame for finding and fixing security holes in Google products. [7]

Early life and education

Haselton was born in Oklahoma. [8] Haselton's father is a geophysicist and his mother is a piano teacher. [2] Haselton lived in England and Denmark and graduated from Copenhagen International School. [9] At 15, Haselton became a member of the Danish National Math Team. [2]

Haselton's interest in censorship dates from when he was 10 years old and heard swear words for the first time. [2]

In 1995 Haselton returned to the United States for college. [8] Haselton earned a master's degree in mathematics from Vanderbilt University. [8] After graduation, Haselton worked on Visual Basic at Microsoft for seven months. [8] According to The New York Times, Haselton was fired from Microsoft, [10] however Haselton disputes this [11]

PeaceFire

Haselton delivering a presentation on internet censorship at Ignite Seattle 2011 Bennett Haselton 2011.jpg
Haselton delivering a presentation on internet censorship at Ignite Seattle 2011

Haselton started PeaceFire in August 1996 [12] to educate young people about the now-defunct 1996 Online Communications Decency Act. [2]

Peacefire first received national attention in December 1996 when CYBERsitter added PeaceFire to their list of "pornographic" Web sites. [12] CYBERsitter also sent a letter to PeaceFire's ISP [13] threatening to block all of their hosted sites if they continued to host PeaceFire. [12] [14] Two years later in October 1998 [12] PeaceFire started posting information about how to disable blocking programs. [8]

Haselton has come under criticism for starting PeaceFire by Marc Kanter, marketing director for the company that makes the blocking program, Cybersitter. [15]

In June 2006, reporters from the Los Angeles Times were blocked from accessing PeaceFire from their office. [16]

Blacklists

In 2003, Haselton found out that the PeaceFire.org domain had been placed on a blacklist by the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) list because of complaints that his ISP, Media3 Technologies, refused to cut off service to companies suspected of "doing business with spammers." [17] It took Haselton over a year to get off the MAPS list. [17]

Other activities

Internet security

Haselton found a security hole in Netscape that allowed web sites to gather details from visitors' computers, including bookmarks and cache information. [18] Haselton earned a $15,000 bounty from Netscape in 2001 for uncovering holes in the company's browser software. [15]

Anti-spam activities

Haselton has won 10 small-claims cases and thousands of dollars in judgments against senders of unwanted e-mail. [15] Haselton has become one of the most well known anti-spam plaintiffs in the United States. [15]

For example, in March 2002, Haselton won a $1000 award at King County District Court in Bellevue, Washington in each of three cases against Red Moss Media, Paulann Allison, and Richard Schueler (for sending misleading, unsolicited, commercial emails to its webmaster bearing deceptive information such as a forged return e-mail address or a misleading subject line), in a test of Washington's tough anti-spamming laws. [19]

Testimony

At 21, Haselton testified before the commission mandated by the Child Online Protection Act, where he presented evidence that the error rate in most commercial blocking programs was much higher than commonly believed. [3] In 2007, he testified as an expert witness for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, in the ACLU's lawsuit against the North Central Regional Library District, where a filter was enforced on library computers for all patrons including adults. Haselton's tests showed that sites which the library filter had blocked as "pornography" included a church, an immigration rights group, and the Seattle Women's Jazz Orchestra, and overall that about one in four .org sites blocked by the library filter was blocked in error. [4]

Related Research Articles

An Internet filter is software that restricts or controls the content an Internet user is capable to access, especially when utilized to restrict material delivered over the Internet via the Web, Email, or other means. Such restrictions can be applied at various levels: a government can attempt to apply them nationwide, or they can, for example, be applied by an Internet service provider to its clients, by an employer to its personnel, by a school to its students, by a library to its visitors, by a parent to a child's computer, or by an individual user to their own computers. The motive is often to prevent access to content which the computer's owner(s) or other authorities may consider objectionable. When imposed without the consent of the user, content control can be characterised as a form of internet censorship. Some filter software includes time control functions that empowers parents to set the amount of time that child may spend accessing the Internet or playing games or other computer activities.

A Domain Name System blocklist, Domain Name System-based blackhole list, Domain Name System blacklist (DNSBL) or real-time blackhole list (RBL) is a service for operation of mail servers to perform a check via a Domain Name System (DNS) query whether a sending host's IP address is blacklisted for email spam. Most mail server software can be configured to check such lists, typically rejecting or flagging messages from such sites.

The Great Firewall is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic. The Great Firewall operates by checking transmission control protocol (TCP) packets for keywords or sensitive words. If the keywords or sensitive words appear in the TCP packets, access will be closed. If one link is closed, more links from the same machine will be blocked by the Great Firewall. The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools and mobile apps, and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations.

Internet censorship in Tunisia decreased in January 2011 following the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The successor acting government removed filters on social networking sites, such as YouTube and Facebook.

Peacefire is a U.S.-based website, with a registered address in Bellevue, Washington, dedicated to "preserving First Amendment rights for Internet users, particularly those younger than 18". It was founded in August 1996 by Bennett Haselton, who still runs it. The site's motto is, "You'll understand when you're younger."

This is a comparison of both historical and current web browsers based on developer, engine, platform(s), releases, license, and cost.

Norton Internet Security, developed by Symantec Corporation, is a discontinued computer program that provides malware protection and removal during a subscription period. It uses signatures and heuristics to identify viruses. Other features include a personal firewall, email spam filtering, and phishing protection. With the release of the 2015 line in summer 2014, Symantec officially retired Norton Internet Security after 14 years as the chief Norton product. It was superseded by Norton Security, a rechristened adaptation of the original Norton 360 security suite. The suite was once again rebranded to Norton 360 in 2019.

A wordfilter is a script typically used on Internet forums or chat rooms that automatically scans users' posts or comments as they are submitted and automatically changes or censors particular words or phrases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scunthorpe problem</span> Problem caused by profanity filters on the Internet

The Scunthorpe problem is the unintentional blocking of online content by a spam filter or search engine because their text contains a string of letters that appear to have an obscene or otherwise unacceptable meaning. Names, abbreviations, and technical terms are most often cited as being affected by the issue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freegate</span> Internet software utility

Freegate is a software application developed by Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT) that enables internet users to view websites blocked by their governments. The program takes advantage of a range of proxy servers called Dynaweb. This allows users to bypass Internet firewalls that block web sites by using DIT's Peer-to-peer (P2P)-like proxy network system. FreeGate's anti-censorship capability is further enhanced by a new, unique encryption and compression algorithm in the versions of 6.33 and above. Dynamic Internet Technology estimates Freegate had 200,000 users in 2004. The maintainer and CEO of DIT is Bill Xia.

In networking, a black hole refers to a place in the network where incoming or outgoing traffic is silently discarded, without informing the source that the data did not reach its intended recipient.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet censorship</span> Legal control of the internet

Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains but exceptionally may extend to all Internet resources located outside the jurisdiction of the censoring state. Internet censorship may also put restrictions on what information can be made internet accessible. Organizations providing internet access – such as schools and libraries – may choose to preclude access to material that they consider undesirable, offensive, age-inappropriate or even illegal, and regard this as ethical behavior rather than censorship. Individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship of material they publish, for moral, religious, or business reasons, to conform to societal norms, political views, due to intimidation, or out of fear of legal or other consequences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kaspersky Internet Security</span> Internet security suite developed by Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Internet Security is a internet security suite developed by Kaspersky Lab compatible with Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Kaspersky Internet Security offers protection from malware, as well as email spam, phishing and hacking attempts, and data leaks. Kaspersky Lab Diagnostics results are distributed to relevant developers through the MIT License.

Censorship in Denmark has been prohibited since 1849 by the Constitution:

§ 77: Any person shall be at liberty to publish his ideas in print, in writing, and in speech, subject to his being held responsible in a court of law. Censorship and other preventive measures shall never again be introduced.

The Golden Shield Project, also named National Public Security Work Informational Project, is the Chinese nationwide network-security fundamental constructional project by the e-government of the People's Republic of China. This project includes a security management information system, a criminal information system, an exit and entry administration information system, a supervisor information system, a traffic management information system, among others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ultrasurf</span>

UltraSurf is a closed-source freeware Internet censorship circumvention product created by UltraReach Internet Corporation. The software bypasses Internet censorship and firewalls using an HTTP proxy server, and employs encryption protocols for privacy.

Internet censorship circumvention, also referred to as going over the wall or scientific browsing in China, is the use of various methods and tools to bypass internet censorship.

SmartScreen is a cloud-based anti-phishing and anti-malware component included in several Microsoft products:

The precise number of websites blocked in the United Kingdom is unknown. Blocking techniques vary from one Internet service provider (ISP) to another with some sites or specific URLs blocked by some ISPs and not others. Websites and services are blocked using a combination of data feeds from private content-control technology companies, government agencies, NGOs, court orders in conjunction with the service administrators who may or may not have the power to unblock, additionally block, appeal or recategorise blocked content.

uBlock Origin Web browser extension

uBlock Origin is a free and open-source browser extension for content filtering, including ad blocking. The extension is available for Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Firefox, Brave, Opera, Pale Moon, as well as versions of Safari before 13. uBlock Origin has received praise from technology websites and is reported to be much less memory-intensive than other extensions with similar functionality. uBlock Origin's stated purpose is to give users the means to enforce their own (content-filtering) choices.

References

  1. ↑ "Circumventor.com".
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 the Stranger. "Regular Genius: Bennett Haselton Attacks Censorship So We Can Say Fuck" by Pat Hearney. November 29, 2000. Archived March 8, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  3. 1 2 "ALA: Select Testimonies to the Child Online Protection Act Commission". American Library Association. Archived from the original on 2013-02-23.
  4. 1 2 "Bradburn v. NCRL Decision". Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington. Archived from the original on 2013-04-15.
  5. ↑ "Bellevue man clobbers capital quiz, sets Guinness Record". Bellevue Reporter. 24 December 2016. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  6. ↑ "Most capital cities named in one minute". GuinnessWorldRecords.com. 12 December 2015. Archived from the original on 11 January 2016. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  7. ↑ "Vulnerability Reward Program" . Retrieved January 9, 2018.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 CNET. "Newsmaker: Cracking the great firewall of China" by Paul Festa. May 20, 2003.
  9. ↑ Copenhagen International School. "Dear Fellow CIS'ers (no "former" CIS'ers – it's a lifetime designation)" by Bennett Haselton. Archived November 20, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  10. ↑ New York Times. "Ex-Microsoft Employee Publicizes a Potential Security Flaw" by Michael Brick. May 15, 2000. Archived March 7, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  11. ↑ PublicEditorMyAss.com. "My experience trying to get the New York Times to correct an online article" by Bennett Haselton. Archived April 16, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  12. 1 2 3 4 "About Peacefire.org". www.peacefire.org. Retrieved 2024-08-02.
  13. ↑ http://www.peacefire.org/archives/SOS.letters/bm.2.media3.12.6.96.txt
  14. ↑ "Cybersitter Goes after Teen". 2000-06-20. Archived from the original on 2000-06-20. Retrieved 2024-08-02.
  15. 1 2 3 4 Seattle Post Intelligencer. "'Supergeek' fights spam" by Luis Cabrera. June 3, 2002.
  16. ↑ New York Times. "Some Sites Off Limits, Even in a Newsroom" by Sara Ivry. June 19, 2006. Archived November 19, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  17. 1 2 Washington Post. "Blacklists vs. Spam" by David McGuire. May 14, 2003. [ dead link ]
  18. ↑ Information World Review. "Security hole found in Netscape" by John Geralds. April 21, 2000. [ permanent dead link ]
  19. ↑ Mariano, Gwendolyn (March 25, 2002). "Spammers lose in small-claims court". CNet News. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
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