New software could keep foreign governments out of your computer

Researchers at the University of Maryland have created software that they hope will allow users to prevent foreign governments from monitoring their web usage.

The system, called Alibi Routing, enables users to retrieve information without allowing it to pass through certain countries. Users can search “a peer-to-peer network to locate ‘peers’ — other users running the Alibi Routing software — that can relay a user’s packets to its ultimate destination while avoiding specified forbidden regions,” the researchers said.