US trains activists worldwide in phone, Internet protection

CYBER WARS

by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) April 8, 2011

The United States is training thousands of cell phone

and Internet pro-democracy campaigners worldwide to

evade security forces in what it calls a "cat-and-mouse

game" with authoritarian governments.

The US government is sponsoring efforts to help activists

in Arab and other countries gain access to technology

that circumvents government firewalls, secures telephone

text and voice messages, and prevents attacks on websites.

"This is sort of a cat-and-mouse game and governments are

constantly developing new techniques to go after critics, to go

after dissenters," said Michael Posner, the assistant US

secretary of state for human rights and labor.

"We are trying to stay ahead of the curve and trying to basically

provide both technology, training, and diplomatic support to allow

People to freely express their views."

Posner told a small group of reporters that the theme of Internet

freedom will be "peppered" throughout the State Department's

annual report on human rights for 194 countries that is scheduled

for release on Friday.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is campaigning hard for

freedoms of expression, assembly and association online

-- what she calls the world's town square or coffee house of the

21st century.

The chief US diplomat has said the protests in Egypt and Iran

fueled by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube reflected "the power

of connection technologies as an accelerant of political, social

and economic change."

The US government, Posner said, has budgeted $50 million in

the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists

protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian

governments.

And it has organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in

different parts of the world.

A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered

activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to

their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.

"They went back and there's a ripple effect," Posner said.

State Department officials said one of the new technologies under

development is the "panic button," which allows activists to erase

contact lists on their cell phones if they are arrested.

"If you can get the panic button that wipes that (list) clean before

they get locked up, you're saving lives," said Posner.

The new technology has not yet been made available to

pro-democracy campaigners but it will prove useful in places like

Syria, where the authorities simply go out and arrest activists who

use their mobile phones.

The State Department said it has already funded efforts by private

firms, mainly from the United States, to develop a dozen different

technologies to circumvent government censorship firewalls.

"One of them has been very successful in Iran. It's being used

extensively. and we have the download numbers," a State

Department official said on condition of anonymity.

"It's going viral and now that technology is spreading all over

the Middle East," said the official, who declined to name the

technology in order not to endanger the people who are using it.

The State Department is also funding efforts to prevent

governments from launching attacks -- known as denial of service

-- aimed at shutting down websites that might publish an investigative

report or other critical material