P2P pioneer creates novel way to unblock the internet – through crowdsourcing

Global internet freedom is in a state of precipitous decline, as observed by the Freedom of the Net 2014 report by Freedom House. The monitoring body notes that governments around the world are increasingly resorting to aggressive and sophisticated methods to target individual users and restrict access to the open internet.

Government authorities are no longer content with simply blocking and filtering sites; they’re imprisoning users in an effort to deter others and encourage self-censorship. As a result, the very nature of the internet is being fundamentally transformed: no longer can it be viewed as the ‘world wide web’, as accessible content varies drastically from one country to another.

Asian countries constitute the majority of the regions where access to internet is ranked by Freedom House as “not free.” Included in the list are China, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Turkey and Russia also witnessed a stark decline in rating from the previous year. Simply put, governments in these countries have resorted to online censorship in efforts to block opposition to the national narrative, decrease reach of independent media outlets, and quell populist uprising. The future looks bleak.

However, there might be some light at the end of the tunnel.

Lantern is a new online tool that aims to bypass restrictions using a peer-to-peer model. The tool gives netizens in the censored world unfettered access to the open internet by connecting them with users located in parts of the world that are unaffected by censorship. For example, Lantern will make it possible for a computer located in Beijing to directly connect with one in Los Angeles, thereby circumventing the entire network and avoid existing filters. All users have to do is to agree to share a small part of their bandwidth.

Motivated by freedom

“I’ve always been interested in free speech,” Lantern founder Adam Fisk tells Tech in Asia. “Censorship cripples the ability of ordinary citizens to be effective participants in making their countries as strong as they can be.”

Fisk, who was one of the developers of P2P file transfer service LimeWire, says he understood, from an early stage, the applicability of such techniques in areas other than simply sharing files. At the time internet censorship was beginning to become a global phenomenon, and he wanted to provide users with a method to bypass restrictions. In 2011, Fisk was given a US$2.2 million grant by the US State Department to assist with the development of the tool. He was able to hire a team and launched the beta version two years later.

The same year, Fisk elaborated on his work with the US government, and told a local media outlet they had been “incredibly hands off.”

Since launch, Lantern has diversified its architecture to move away from a core reliance on the P2P model. Without revealing specific details, Fisk says Lantern uses a couple of techniques to stay unblocked. If, for some reason, one technique is compromised, then the tool will automatically switch to another so users remain unaffected. “One approach is to use P2P where Lantern users in censored regions will use Lantern users in uncensored regions as bridges to the open internet. Lantern also hides in the traffic of other websites in a way that is difficult for censors to recognize and block,” he explains.