Fiji blog readers worried about being detected

Updated May 25, 2009 16:10:26

People in Fiji are reportedly scared to be seen using the internet in case they are thought to be reading anti-government blog sites. That's according to one of the bloggers behind the blog Coup Four Point Five, who says it's not just bloggers themselves who are careful about being identified by the government, but blog readers as well. Several lawyers were allegedly "outed" as anti-government bloggers last week, and were taken-in for questioning. Bruce Hill reports on people's fears about being caught reading blogs, and what they can do to remain anonymous.

Presenter: Bruce HIll
Speaker: Anonymous person behind blog Coup Four Point Five; Patrick Gray, Australian internet security specialist

HILL: Now that formal censorship has been imposed on mainstream media outlets in Fiji, internet blogs have become a popular source of information. But one of the people behind the blog Coup Four Point Five, whose voice has been electronically disguised to protect their identity, says feedback from that site's readers indicates that many people in Fiji are worried about simply being observed at a computer accessing the internet.

BLOGGER: From having a look at blogs, I'm sure you will know that from that particularly quite anti-interim governments and there's a new one, Raw Fiji News, now who definitely have not been shy in their support for Commodore Frank Bainamarama and the interim government.

HILL: What kind of impact do you think blogs are having? Is there any way of working out how many people are logging on and reading you in the absence of a free news media?

BLOGGER: We don't see them. One of the comments that was interesting is that someone has to keep it short, and we can't be seen to be surfing the net, we can't be seen to be on the internet, so we want to get information as quick as possible, and the easy way to digest and that is through shorter [postings] and again of course reliable.

HILL: And how paranoid should people be who read the blogs? A number of people in Fiji have suggested that the government might be looking for you who are reading the blogs and they might get into trouble even just for reading the site?

BLOGGER: Paranoid is too strong a word, but I am thinking there should be some caution. We certainly operate with a level of caution as I said and also to a level of thinking for our sources. We're trying to think too that we are keeping them as safe as much as possible. I do not undermine the interests of the interim government as taking blogs. They are certainly, I think, very interested in who is doing what and where the information is coming from and certainly what their sources are. And we saw last week that with the two lawyers, they have been targeted and their material have been confiscated that there is cause that there is something to be able to do our work. And you saw to the power of that web site that outed the three lawyers and suddenly, voom, they were definitely under the microscope.

HILL: So how worried should people be that Fiji's interim government might be able to work out that they have been accessing blogs?

Australian Internet Security specialist, Patrick Gray, says there are some software tools available which might help them avoid detection.

GRAY: I think anyone in the position that the average Fijian is in at the moment would be entirely justified in feeling paranoid. It is possible for governments to track people online. There are a number of different ways they can do that, which are of varying degrees of difficulty. But look if someone is paranoid, there are ways that they can safely browse the internet and safely post comments on blogs. There are software that exist called Tor which is basically an anonymisation bit of software that you can load onto your computer and it will really help you to avoid people from being able to determine where you are from. Now there is a very good implementation or package of this software called Incognito. If someone wants to find it, they can go to Google and search for "incongnito live CD" and then click through on that first link, and then read the about section of that web site and that will give them a lot of good information.

The one thing is though there are caveats with the use of that software, so I would say that people really need to familiarise themselves with the way that it works and actually understand the way the software works before they rely on it entirely to protect their identity.