Panel: Censorship Circumvention, From Academia to Practice

Chair: Amir Houmansadr, Univ. of Masssachusetts Amherst

Moderator: Amir Houmansadr, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Panelists:

Adam Fisk, Lantern

Eric Wustrow, Univ. of Colorado Boulder

Daniel Ellard, Raytheon BBN Technologies

Ben Schwartz, Google

Panel Description:

Internet censorship practiced by repressive governments is impacting hundreds of millions of users on a daily basis by refraining them from open access to the Internet. In response to that, the research community as well as practitioners has designed and developed various tools and mechanisms to bypass Internet censorship, such as VPNs, Tor, and similar systems. In this panel, we plan to discuss the interactions between the researchers and practitioners working on censorship circumvention technologies. We will discuss what needs to be done to fill the gap between the two communities, and therefore produce stronger circumvention technologies that can be used by censored users reliably.