Censoring the internet

[Beancounter]

Extract from yesterday's news here in South Africa (apologies for not providing a link) demonstrating the level of paranoia in the upper echelons of Zim politics.

"Zim suppresses the net

The Zimbabwean government has proposed new contracts to Internet service providers that will force them to block content with 'malicious messages' about Zimbabwe. The service providers will have to make sure that all the content available on the web is compliant with Zim laws."

Is this possible in practice?

[evildave]

Not really.

At best, upon receiving a complaint, they could punch out a website. To pre-scan in realtime all the places that *might* have 'offensive' material would be impossible.

They might try to filter all the data they send through to users. Something like the bayesian filters that recognize spam by the statistical likelihood keywords in the text taken together are 'offensive'.

Unfortunately for the ISPs, this processing is way too computationally expensive to provide economically feasible service, and even trivial measures would defeat it.

The simplest measure would be to disable all web site access except what the government explicitly approves. Not a very popular measure with users, and fruitless. People will simply connect to portal servers that do seperate dns lookups and go around the 'official' filters.

[Soapy Sam]

Dave- I think you are seeking technical answers to the question.
Zimbabwean controls on local ISPs are likely to be more direct.
Probably at two in the morning, with baseball bats.