In the post-Snowden era, everyone is talking about the extent of Internet surveillance - however, Don Morrison of the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology in Trondheim is taking a different 'path' to 'countermeasures', developing a method that allows the monitoring of censorshipς στο Διαδίκτυο, και ειδικότερα σε υπηρεσίες όπως το Twitter και το κινεζικό Weibo.
According to a New Scientist article, Morrison created a virtual social network - simulation in which two users are considered "connected" since one of their posts appears on the other's timeline. The "pattern" of user-linking thus provides the "metadata" used to analyze network behavior.
Most social networks they consist of clusters of 'communities', the links between which create characteristic structures. When Morrison simulated the activity of government censors, who deleted at least 10% of publications, the "shape" of these structures changed significantly, indicating a "distorted" and less well-connected network. This was more apparent in cases where popular publications were 'targeted' which had been replicated (via retweet, for example).
Morrison's system was able to "sense" with 85% accuracy when large-scale censorship was taking place. It was also possible to program the system so that, by detecting changes in the "shape" of the network, it would be possible to send informations/ setting off an alert for activists and protesters so they know when authorities are cracking down on their posts.
Morrison envisions an automatic online censorship detector: "What is the" weather forecast "in terms of censorship on these networks today? I can imagine putting pressure on governments to curb censorship, "he notes.
Η work will be presented at the International Workshop on Data Mining in Social Networks in Taiwan in May.
