The grant came from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a private trust based in Chicago.
Called the OpenNet Initiative, the larger scope of the program is to study the connection between digital media and civic politics.
“States are becoming very adept at filtering communications traffic,” Prof. Ron Deibert, one of the program’s lead investigators, said.
The international study will focus primarily on countries such as China, Vietnam and Iran, where state-sponsored Internet censorship is rampant. Since 2003, the project has reported on the Internet filtering and surveillance practices of governments in various countries.
Citizen Lab does not passively study censorship. Known as ‘hactivists,’ the group often help people find " ways to get around censorship and surveillance [and] protect their privacy online," Deibert said.
To infiltrate state firewalls and monitor access to certain websites, project investigators use a variety of software tools often used by intelligence agencies.
Group members also have traveled to countries to host sites that document denial of service attacks and other forms of censorship, including a recent trip to Kyrgyzstan, where a number of sites were shut down by the incumbent regime during elections.