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Encrypting pages keeps government spooks out

by on30 May 2017


Wikipedia found to be a useful HTTPS case study,


Harvard researchers found fewer instances of government Wikipedia censorship after the site started encrypting all of its traffic.

Governments have been trying to censor the wackiest things on Wikipedia. In Turkey, Wikipedia articles about female genitals have been banned; Russia has censored articles about dope; the UK, has killed off articles about German metal bands and in China, the entire site has been banned on multiple occasions. This is on top of Wikipedia’s own censorship which has included the Everywhere Girl, Mike Magee and Fudzilla.

In 2011, Wikipedia encrypted its site and new research from the Harvard Centre for Internet and Society found it has been successful at cutting back on government censorship.

The outfit added support for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), which is the encrypted version of its predecessor HTTP. Both of these protocols are used to transfer data from a website's server to the browser on your computer, but when you try to connect to a website using HTTPS, your browser will first ask the web server to identify itself.

HTTPS prevented governments and others from seeing the specific page users are visiting. A government could tell that a user is browsing Wikipedia, but couldn't tell that the user is specifically reading the page about Tiananmen Square.

Until 2015, Wikipedia offered its service using both HTTP and HTTPS, which meant that when countries like Pakistan or Iran blocked the certain articles on the HTTP version of Wikipedia, the full version would still be available using HTTPS. But in June 2015, Wikipedia decided to axe HTTP access and only offer access to its site with HTTPS. The thinking was that this would force the hand of restrictive governments when it came to censorship—due to how this protocol works, governments could no longer block individual Wikipedia entries.

The new research from Harvard shows full encryption did actually result in a decrease in censorship incidents around the world.

Although countries like China, Thailand and Uzbekistan were still censoring part or all of Wikipedia by the time the researchers wrapped up their study, they remained optimistic: "This initial data suggests the decision to shift to HTTPS has been a good one in terms of ensuring accessibility to knowledge."

Last modified on 30 May 2017
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