A team of Canadian researchers have uncovered an unusual new
example of “upstream filtering,” where online content in one
country is blocked in another country due to filtering that
happens in transit. Researchers at the Citizen Lab at the Munk
School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, revealed
that some Oman Internet users using the Omantel ISP are also
being subjected to Indian content restrictions because of
traffic flowing through India. “It goes to show what you can
find when you begin to probe beneath the surface of the
Internet, and what you see when you have governments start to
mess with the openness of the Internet,” Ron Deibert, Citizen
Lab's director, told Ars on Thursday. “In this case you have a
perverse situation where citizens in one country are subject to
filtering in another country.” While there have been numerous
examples of specific countries blocking foreign or domestic
content that they find objectionable, as it runs afoul of their
own laws or regulations, it’s rare for one