How to be a cyber-dissident (and get away with it?)

Reporters Without Borders is working to help ensure that every determined blogger in a speech-oppressed nation has a guide to keeping their blog “censor-slippery,” or to put it more bluntly, to be able to say and report on what you want (i.e. stuff that might be critical, report on atrocities and civil rights violations, and other “disloyal” items), while getting the content past government censors, from China to Iran.

The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents, published in several languages and available for free download (English version is a 1.7MB PDF file) is a comprehensive guide that teaches the ambitious commando-web activist everything from blog basics, to how to set up an account and use the correct blogging tools while using pseudonyms and proxies to avoid traceability and detection. There’s even a section on ethical reporting principles, and techniques for getting your blog linked by search engines.

Launched at the Apple Expo Computer Show in Paris (because we all know that the real hip bloggers are Mac users, right?), the guide focuses on using circumvention technologies to slip content past government-imposed internet filters. It also makes clear the penalties for being caught using these technologies, should you foul up and have your identity umasked. As such, running a “renegade” blog to report on the things the “mainstream” press won’t is still the domain of the brave at heart.

Of course, every web news site is abuzz about this guide. But not a single major news site I’ve come across actually links to the document itself. Why?!

This also begs the question: how long until the governments of the target nations (*ahem* Iran *ahem* China) filter out the Reporters Without Borders site for disseminating such “contraband?” I’m guessing the organization hopes that other bloggers might link to local copies to ensure availability. Whoops. 🙂