Freedom of speech and the right to privacy are maybe the most important elements of a modern society, yet the rights are often violated. This fact was the main reason for writing this thesis covering P2P network models, anonymity, censorship resistance and their use in real P2P networks and publishing systems. We discuss their effectiveness and suitability for specific purposes, but also the security considerations of their use. The second part of this thesis presents the LSPP publishing protocol, which is an library implementation of an anonymous censorship resistant P2P network. Finally, we analyze the proposed protocol and compare it with existing solutions.

Dizertační práce Miguel José Cuenca Drouhard ABSTRACT Key words: translation, Czech literature, 20th century, polysystem theory, censorship, history of translation, Čapek, War with the newts History as a scientific tool contributes in a unique manner to the evolution of mankind, its activities and ideas, because mankind, in contrast to things, is formed by its past. In the field of translation studies, History of Translation is perceived as a valuable instrument for understanding the complexity of translation work, and its importance among creative activities and within society in general. Among theories concerning human activities and translation in particular, polysystem theory is characterised by a descriptive and systemic approach that is rooted in Russian formalism and Czech structuralism. Polysystem theory emphasises the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of systems as opposed to the static, homogenous and ahistorical nature of systems which has wrongfully been attributed to the structuralists. Translation activities and its products are mainly part of the target culture's polysystem, because the translation process culminates in the target culture with the final reception and interpretation of the original work, in which in this phase the repertoire of the target system is incorporated. Despite the...

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The threat of surveillance by governmental and industrial parties is more eminent than ever. As communication moves into the digital domain, the advances in automatic assessment and interpretation of enormous amounts of data enable tracking of millions of people, recording and monitoring their private life with an unprecedented accurateness. The knowledge of such an all-encompassing loss of privacy affects the behavior of individuals, inducing various degrees of (self-)censorship and anxiety. Furthermore, the monopoly of a few large-scale organizations on digital communication enables global censorship and manipulation of public opinion. Thus, the current situation undermines the freedom of speech to a detrimental degree and threatens the foundations of modern society. Anonymous and censorship-resistant communication systems are hence of utmost importance to circumvent constant surveillance. However, existing systems are highly vulnerable to infiltration and sabotage. In particular, Sybil attacks, i.e., powerful parties inserting a large number of fake identities into the system, enable malicious parties to observe and possibly manipulate a large fraction of the communication within the system. Friend-to-friend (F2F) overlays, which restrict direct communication to parties sharing a real-world trust relationship, are a promising countermeasure to Sybil attacks, since the requirement of establishing real-world trust increases the cost of infiltration drastically. Yet, existing F2F overlays suffer from a low performance, are vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks, or fail to provide anonymity. Our first contribution in this thesis is concerned with an in-depth analysis of the concepts underlying the design of state-of-the-art F2F overlays. In the course of this analysis, we first extend the existing evaluation methods considerably, hence providing tools for both our and future research in the area of F2F overlays and distributed systems in general. Based on the novel methodology, we prove that existing approaches are inherently unable to offer acceptable delays without either requiring exhaustive maintenance costs or enabling denial-of-service attacks and de-anonymization. Consequentially, our second contribution lies in the design and evaluation of a novel concept for F2F overlays based on insights of the prior in-depth analysis. Our previous analysis has revealed that greedy embeddings allow highly efficient communication in arbitrary connectivity-restricted overlays by addressing participants through coordinates and adapting these coordinates to the overlay structure. However, greedy embeddings in their original form reveal the identity of the communicating parties and fail to provide the necessary resilience in the presence of dynamic and possibly malicious users. Therefore, we present a privacy-preserving communication protocol for greedy embeddings based on anonymous return addresses rather than identifying node coordinates. Furthermore, we enhance the communication’s robustness and attack-resistance by using multiple parallel embeddings and alternative algorithms for message delivery. We show that our approach achieves a low communication complexity. By replacing the coordinates with anonymous addresses, we furthermore provably achieve anonymity in the form of plausible deniability against an internal local adversary. Complementary, our simulation study on real-world data indicates that our approach is highly efficient and effectively mitigates the impact of failures as well as powerful denial-of-service attacks. Our fundamental results open new possibilities for anonymous and censorship-resistant applications. / Die Bedrohung der Überwachung durch staatliche oder kommerzielle Stellen ist ein drängendes Problem der modernen Gesellschaft. Heutzutage findet Kommunikation vermehrt über digitale Kanäle statt. Die so verfügbaren Daten über das Kommunikationsverhalten eines Großteils der Bevölkerung in Kombination mit den Möglichkeiten im Bereich der automatisierten Verarbeitung solcher Daten erlauben das großflächige Tracking von Millionen an Personen, deren Privatleben mit noch nie da gewesener Genauigkeit aufgezeichnet und beobachtet werden kann. Das Wissen über diese allumfassende Überwachung verändert das individuelle Verhalten und führt so zu (Selbst-)zensur sowie Ängsten. Des weiteren ermöglicht die Monopolstellung einiger weniger Internetkonzernen globale Zensur und Manipulation der öffentlichen Meinung. Deshalb stellt die momentane Situation eine drastische Einschränkung der Meinungsfreiheit dar und bedroht die Grundfesten der modernen Gesellschaft. Systeme zur anonymen und zensurresistenten Kommunikation sind daher von ungemeiner Wichtigkeit. Jedoch sind die momentanen System anfällig gegen Sabotage. Insbesondere ermöglichen es Sybil-Angriffe, bei denen ein Angreifer eine große Anzahl an gefälschten Teilnehmern in ein System einschleust und so einen großen Teil der Kommunikation kontrolliert, Kommunikation innerhalb eines solchen Systems zu beobachten und zu manipulieren. F2F Overlays dagegen erlauben nur direkte Kommunikation zwischen Teilnehmern, die eine Vertrauensbeziehung in der realen Welt teilen. Dadurch erschweren F2F Overlays das Eindringen von Angreifern in das System entscheidend und verringern so den Einfluss von Sybil-Angriffen. Allerdings leiden die existierenden F2F Overlays an geringer Leistungsfähigkeit, Anfälligkeit gegen Denial-of-Service Angriffe oder fehlender Anonymität. Der erste Beitrag dieser Arbeit liegt daher in der fokussierten Analyse der Konzepte, die in den momentanen F2F Overlays zum Einsatz kommen. Im Zuge dieser Arbeit erweitern wir zunächst die existierenden Evaluationsmethoden entscheidend und erarbeiten so Methoden, die Grundlagen für unsere sowie zukünftige Forschung in diesem Bereich bilden. Basierend auf diesen neuen Evaluationsmethoden zeigen wir, dass die existierenden Ansätze grundlegend nicht fähig sind, akzeptable Antwortzeiten bereitzustellen ohne im Zuge dessen enorme Instandhaltungskosten oder Anfälligkeiten gegen Angriffe in Kauf zu nehmen. Folglich besteht unser zweiter Beitrag in der Entwicklung und Evaluierung eines neuen Konzeptes für F2F Overlays, basierenden auf den Erkenntnissen der vorangehenden Analyse. Insbesondere ergab sich in der vorangehenden Evaluation, dass Greedy Embeddings hoch-effiziente Kommunikation erlauben indem sie Teilnehmer durch Koordinaten adressieren und diese an die Struktur des Overlays anpassen. Jedoch sind Greedy Embeddings in ihrer ursprünglichen Form nicht auf anonyme Kommunikation mit einer dynamischen Teilnehmermengen und potentiellen Angreifern ausgelegt. Daher präsentieren wir ein Privätssphäre-schützenden Kommunikationsprotokoll für F2F Overlays, in dem die identifizierenden Koordinaten durch anonyme Adressen ersetzt werden. Des weiteren erhöhen wir die Resistenz der Kommunikation durch den Einsatz mehrerer Embeddings und alternativer Algorithmen zum Finden von Routen. Wir beweisen, dass unser Ansatz eine geringe Kommunikationskomplexität im Bezug auf die eigentliche Kommunikation sowie die Instandhaltung des Embeddings aufweist. Ferner zeigt unsere Simulationstudie, dass der Ansatz effiziente Kommunikation mit kurzen Antwortszeiten und geringer Instandhaltungskosten erreicht sowie den Einfluss von Ausfälle und Angriffe erfolgreich abschwächt. Unsere grundlegenden Ergebnisse eröffnen neue Möglichkeiten in der Entwicklung anonymer und zensurresistenter Anwendungen.

The National Theatre in Prague during the Nazi Occupation: The Foremost Theatre Scene between Oppression and Resistance. (A Historical-sociological Analysis) ABSTRACT The submitted dissertation, based on historical-sociological analysis, describes and explains the status, reaction and functionality of the National Theatre in Prague during the hardest times of our modern history - the occupation of the Czech lands by Nazi Germany, the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939-1945), the era when the National Theatre, as the top cultural institution, consolidated its artistry, its permanent values and interpretation efforts of its ensemble to defend the right of our society to preserve its own culture, its own existence. The principal objective of this work is to analyze methods and techniques by means of which the National Theatre in Prague, in line with its audience, steadily faced critical situations caused by the Nazi occupation. Among key factors in this process were the acts of Czech theatre performers proving their bravery as they put their work careers and even their own lives at risk to help guide our nation towards awareness and determination not to relinquish the nation's sovereignty. The Nazis viewed the National Theatre in Prague as a potential instrument for fulfilling their plans...

Thesis Alena Slezáková and her position in media. Biographical study deals with career of a journalist, who has witnessed during her activie years in media important events of Czech and Czechoslovakian history. Since the year 1964 she worked in Lidová demokracie, Lidové noviny, Mladá fronta DNES and magazines Naše rodina and Týden. In the year 1969 she was forbidden from entering parliament. She was allowed to return after Velvet Revolution, when she also started to work on education of young and beginning journalists. In the end of her career, right before she retired, she became a book reviewer. This biographical study uses method of oral history, which means that author of this thesis interviewed Alena Slezáková regularly. It also uses method of qualitative content analysis of her texts, that informed about events in politics and society in Czech Republic and Czechoslovakia. Thesis also mentions important historic affairs, so the life and work of Slezáková can me contextualized. Aim of this thesis was not only to describe life of Alena Slezáková but also to outline transformations in media she witnessed - censorship and its dissolution, new media law and transformation of party's press. Part of this thesis are also two hypotheses which were confirmed. During the research it was shown that events...

When the filmed version of The Last Temptation of Christ was released in the United States, it met with significant protests from conservative Christians who felt it was blasphemous. Using the controversy surrounding the film and its reception in Austin, Texas, this is a case study in censorship as a social process and in the cultural conflict it signifies. Certain societal factors must converge to create an art controversy. Through an examination of the film, the groups involved in the protest, and the social and political climate at the time, some of these factors are described. Imbedded in this controversy are the underlying tensions that permeate many modern cultural debates: shifting ideas of the sacred and the profane and definitions of moral authority.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how opinion-forming journalists in Västerbotten experience threats and hate and if these things vary depending on if the affected journalist is a woman or a man. This study also aims to examine how these threats and the hate affect the opinion-forming journalists in both an emotional and a professional way. To strengthen the analysis this study is based on four theoretical frameworks. Strömbäcks theories support analyzes about self-censorship and the opinion-forming journalists' importance for democracy. Butler's theories about hate-speech describe how hate-speech can be expressed and affect the receiver. Lazarus and Folkman contribute with a psychological perspective with coping strategies, how they cope with the threats and hate. The theories from Hanitzsch presents various perspectives about the journalistic cultures and supports analysis connected to the journalistic role. The method used to gather the material was qualitative interviews with six opinion-forming journalists in Västerbotten. For the analysis meaning condensation was used. The result presents a total of ten themes, sorted in three chapters based on the issues. The result and analysis indicates that threats and hate is common for opinion-forming journalists in Västerbotten to be exposed by. At the same time, a majority of the participating opinion-forming journalists state that they feel spared. Furthermore, it is very common for the opinion-forming journalist who receives threats or hate to be affected emotionally, mainly with negative emotions such as fear, sadness and discomfort. The biggest professional effect that threats and hate can lead to is self-censorship. Finally, this study can show that there are differences in threats and hate between female and male opinion-forming journalists in Västerbotten. The biggest difference is that women receive more threats and hatred based on sexism and containing sexual allusions.

The purpose of the thesis is to analyze the Information Policy of the Republic of Uzbekistan, focused primarily on the mid. 90s up to nowadays. The focus is mainly given on to the ICT development and its support by the Republic of Uzbekistan. It covers the analysis and descriptions on access to information, restriction problems of the press and censorship. Theoretical knowledge has been supported with practical analysis gained during the study tour to Uzbekistan. During the study tour has been accomplished a small exploratory study conduct a survey of how the Internet and the mass media is accepted and used by the population of Uzbekistan. The case study, at the end of the thesis, tries to approach the use of the Internet and particularly the so-called new media by independent journalists from Radio Ozodlik, an Uzbek department of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Political and educational role of public libraries in the 50 and 60 years in Ostrava region The thesis is focused on cultural politics of the communist regime in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century in relation to public libraries. Based on archival materials the main attention is paid to the situation in the Ostrava region Cultural policy was aimed in two directions. First through repression, when citizens were banned from access to ideas and works that the regime considered as harmful or objectionable. This activity was implemented by censorship of printed materials, sorting of collections and persecution of opponents. Second way to filling the gaps after undesirable denied authors by pro-regime publications, written in the style of socialist realism. Public libraries were using different sorts of methods how to bring readers to this new literature and how to bring them up to be loyal and conscious builders of socialism - e.g. discussions and reader's conferences, literature contests and polls, Fucik's badge, Month of books and so on. The focus is also on libraries promotion of actions and activities supporting the policy of the Party and the government, such as celebrations of party anniversary, recruitment in mining, atheistic education of readers etc.