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Free Tools To Evade China's Web Censorship
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Aug 04, 2008 11:10 AM
from the just-in-case-you-are-curious dept.
from the just-in-case-you-are-curious dept.
narramissic writes "The Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC) offers a set of free tools that can be used to circumvent Chinese Internet censorship. The group claims approximately 1 million people in China use its tools to access the Internet. And, says Tao Wang, director of operations for GIFC, 'it's a very good time to remind Western reporters that there are such tools.'"
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Like they won't just block the site? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Like they won't just block the site? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Like they won't just block the site? (Score:5, Interesting)
Call it silver-backing, that will be a smashing buzzword.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Call it silver-backing, that will be a smashing buzzword.
Hmmm... "silver-backed backups" or simply "silver backups" actually would be a pretty cool name for the "process" described by this quote attributed to Linus Torvalds: [liw.iki.fi] "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it."
Re:Like they won't just block the site? (Score:4, Informative)
She said the same thing. Thanks! Shame I cant get there!
(currently trying to send her the info over proxy)
Parent
OT- your sig (Score:2)
The "four boxes in defense of liberty" are from a short story by Robert Hienlien. I don't know who Ed Howdershelt is, but I would disagree and put "ballot" before "soap".
Re:Like they won't just block the site? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure the Chinese government can too
I'm sure they can and they can't. It seems any time there is some sort of institutional effort to establish controls on the content delivered via the internet there are always a myriad of ways to circumvent any given system. The problem with a article like this is, we will all feel very good about ourselves, "See they have the tools! The people can take democracy into their own hands!". But I'm sure Chinese are just like Americans, if it just works, whats the fucking point? If what they connect to walks, talks and acts like the Internet and provides them with useful services. Where is the benefit for them to go out and find and use tools like this at the risk of being labeled as subversive? There are too many more pressing needs in place for some while the more well to do have many diversions to keep them occupied from exercises in futility such as this.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Well said.
Moreover, here are some tools that might land you in jail. Go for it!!! The fundamental problem being it's not their skin on the line. It reminds me of the long-ago rush to build feature-complete hospitals in developing nations that would stand empty because they couldn't afford the film for the x-ray machine, couldn't afford/find/train skilled workers, etc.
Like building feature-complete hospitals in developing nations, this project is a **total** waste of resources. Sure, they can feel good "
Re:Like they won't just block the site? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well...I think perhaps you guys aren't respecting the full range of personalities out there. These tools aren't necessarily for everyone, I'm sure. They're for the Chinese citizens that: (a) feel they should be free to engage information as they like and/or (b) have information to share with the outside world that the Chinese govt may not want shared and (c) are willing to take the personal risk to engage their vision of the way things should be.
One of the things that I have found in my travels to China is that they do not regard their govt the same way we do (I'm assuming the parent and GP poster are Americans, b/c I'm American, and that's what we do :-) ). Chinese do not identify their country with their govt, they're two separate things. In the US, because our govt is supposed to have been founded on (and with the aegis to protect) the principles of the social contract of our country, we do not make a distinction. The Chinese attitude is, the country's been there long before this regime and will be there long after.
In the meantime, here are some tools to stir the pot a little. So what's wrong with that?
I will say this, though. It's not enough to have the tools. You also have to have the know-how to hide them properly. I suggest storing all of these apps on an encrypted partition. (I wonder if the Chinese govt blocks linux sites.)
Parent
Re:Like they won't just block the site? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm intrigued to hear that, because I'd started to form the opposite impression: whereas Americans consider it patriotic to criticise their government (attacking the government == defending the people), Chinese seem to consider it unpatriotic (attacking the government == attacking the people). But I've never been to China - perhaps the crucial difference is whether the criticism comes from inside or outside the country?
I must admit I find it hard not to get defensive about my country's actions, even when I disagree with them, if I feel I'm being blamed. If Chinese people feel the same way then maybe it's more productive to focus on tools that help them organise resistance within their own country, than on tools that help them access Western media (with the implication that they should aspire to be more like the West)?
Parent
Re:Like they won't just block the site? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only can the Chinese government block them, they can detect who is using them and declare them enemies of the People.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Great Chinese Firewall recently has been quite erratic. Surprisingly searching for a lot of open source software will set off Google, and lock me out for a few minutes. Maybe it's got something to do with being 'free'
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, some people could also download the tools before they go to China, right?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The new way to block a site is to abusively register it as malware-ridden. Take a look at the results of a Google search on site:tibet.com (the Tibetan gov in exile)... http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Atibet.com [google.com]
Pauvre Tibet (French) [discu.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
consequences (Score:2)
missing (Score:5, Funny)
western reporters (Score:5, Informative)
I doubt many western reports will have problems. If you work for a company of any size, the company has a VPN. You log into the company VPN. ( I promise you China does not block them. I live here. ) Once you are logged into your VPN, you surf where ever you want. Plus, it is encrypted - so no spying.
One problem that is not commonly discussed is what I call the "great American firewall". For better or worse, a lot of western sites block all requests from China. It is really annoying if you want to make a few online purchases and you aren't trying to hack their site. I should start to compile a list of specific examples.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
also, the American side is a user driven firewall, not a govt imposed on.
Approximately (Score:2)
That's a really small demographic in comparison to the population there...
Are they being conservative or do they have factual numbers? That seems low to me.
No I didn't read the article.
Chinese Population (Score:3, Informative)
There are 1,313,973,713 people in the PRC.
20.8% (male 145,461,833; female 128,445,739) are 14 years old or younger.
71.4% (male 482,439,115; female 455,960,489) are between 15 and 64 years old.
7.7% (male 48,562,635; female 53,103,902) are over 65 years old.
The population growth rate for 2006 is 0.59%.
The PRC officially recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, the largest of which are the Han Chinese, who constitute about 91.9% of the total population.
Large ethnic minorities include the Zhuang (16 million), Manchu (10 million), Hui (9 million), Miao (8 million), Uyghur (7 million), Yi (7 million), Tujia (5.75 million), Mongols (5 million), Tibetans (5 million), Buyei (3 million), and Koreans (2 million).
In the past decade, China's cities expanded at an average rate of 10% annually. The country's urbanization rate increased from 17.4% to 41.8% between 1978 and 2005, a scale unprecedented in human history. 80 to 120 million migrant workers work part-time in the major cities and return home to the countryside periodically with their earnings. Today, the People's Republic of China has dozens of major cities with one million or more long-term residents, including the three global cities of Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.
Stopping censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's a very good time remind Western reporters that there are such tools," said Tao Wang
I don't know. You get a couple hundred (or thousand) reporters getting censored while reporting on a very high-profile event? I think it would do more to call attention to China's policies. They'll talk for months about how hard it was for them to do their jobs and the freedoms they had to live without. If they use these tools, they'll go home afterward and forget all about the fact that they needed them at all.
Re:Stopping censorship (Score:4, Funny)
Last time I let a Wang tell me what to do I became a father.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Evasion is good (Score:2, Interesting)
That way you won't have to see the cute internet police [cnet.com] on your browser every 30 minutes.
Re: (Score:2)
oh boy (Score:2)
Why circumvent? (Score:2, Insightful)
Working around the censors will be the quickest way to be detained in China for a long time.
it is good these tools are developed (Score:2, Interesting)
Here we go again... (Score:5, Insightful)
I predict insightful moderated posts about how people are going to be executed or "disappeared" for downloading some software, by people who have never left their own country before.
Yes there are many technical ways of circumventing the Chinese firewall or any other net censorship. The real issue here is that the vast majority won't use them because they can't be bothered, leading to widespread ignorance about issues that really need to be addressed.
The reason censorship works so well is because people are generally lazy, regardless of country or race and don't go hunting for information that isn't spoon fed to them.
So to summarize, the definition of success when it comes to censorship isn't that they stopped 100% of information getting though, but that they stopped it a little, combined with a disproportionate amount of easily digested propaganda leading to an impenetrable wall of ignorance that no little circumvention tools are going to help.
Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, like the lazy masses that like to get their information/propaganda spoonfed to them without even noticing how their right to say (and even to listen to) what they want is eroding away, that make up the vast majority in other countries, too?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, to sum it up, in China, politics dictate the news stories, in the US, news outlets dictate the politics.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Can we use them to circumwent out own censorship? (Score:3, Interesting)
Severe punishment of people who freely share information bites (1) which are deemed a threat to the functioning of the system (2) by the ruling classes is not only happening in China, you know...
So when is the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC) going to offer tools to circumwent our own capitalistic censorship machine? Or do they count censorship as such only if somebody else does it?
(1) aka "files"
(2) aka "intellectual property"
Re:Can we use them to circumwent out own censorshi (Score:2)
It's actually more accurate than you may think. The US economy system is actually dependent on IP. If there is no censorship of IP being distributed freely, the system will not hold much longer. Censorship of freely distributed information is actually more in support of the so called free world than it is for China.
China is currently experiencing a huge economic growth. And a lot of people benefit from it. As you might know, from experience or history, most people put privacy and personal freedom secondary
Carrier pigeons to be shot (Score:3, Funny)
The IOC and the ISPCA are very worried about the Chinese government's plan to shoot down all pigeons as a means to prevent illegal communication to the outside word via carrier birds. Said Li Chung, a government representative- "We thought of putting a giant net over the whole province, but it would just enhance the perception of mass pollution in the area."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Said Li Chung, a government representative
He's just an underling carrying out orders. His boss' name is Fow Kew.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I know you were joking but in the Cultural Revolution of Communist China there was the Great Sparrow Campaign [wikipedia.org]
Will you be caught though? (Score:5, Interesting)
The big question is will you be caught circumventing the censorship.
From what I understand, it's not that hard to break through the censorship. But will you leave any tracks behind--however small--for the government to see? That's the big question.
If you just want to read one NYT article, go ahead and chances are nothing would happen to you. But if you plan on doing this day in day out, from your home connection, then a few months down the road you may get a knock on your door in the middle of the night.
possible malware in download (Score:5, Informative)
My antivirus software said the "GIFC Anti-Censorship Tools Bundle" download from the Global Internet Freedom Consortium contained "probably a variant of Win32/Delf trojan."
I am not sure if this is a false positive alarm or a bona-fide infection, but you may want to exercise some caution before installing the software on your computer.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I just heard back from the anti-virus vendor. They confirmed it was a false positive and fixed it in the next signature update.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
ob Red Dawn (Score:2)
A million screamin chinamen use these tools to access the internet?
"Last I heard, there were a billion screamin chinamen."
(Pours coffee in fire.)
"There were!"
Company VPN or SSH (or RDC?) (Score:2)
Does china block RDC connections? This would be the best way I think. Just RDC over a SSH tunnel. This would allow you to actually operate a computer stateside and not behind their firewall. Plus you would not have sensitive files floating around.
Introduction to Chinaâ(TM)s Laogai (Score:3, Interesting)
Introduction to China's Laogai:
Up to 30,000 "Internet Police" monitoring your every move.
"The Laogai institution known as laodong jiaoyang --- commonly abbreviated as
"Laojiao" - also serves as a tool for the Chinese Communist Party in its constant efforts to silence critics and punish political criminals without having to bother with investigations and legal proceedings."
"There is an end to Laogai, but Jiuye (forced job placement) is forever"
" In 1979 and 1980, many jiuye renyuan or âforced-job-placement-personnel" who had completed their sentences but were still forced to labor within the Laogai camps under a policy that denied their release, were finally allowed to return to their homes. Previous to this change in practice, upwards of 90 percent of all Laogai and Laojiao prisoners remained in detention indefinitely under this Jiuye policy even after they had completed their sentences.
"There used to be a saying in the labor camps: "There is an end to Laogai, but Jiuye is forever.""
Laogai:
http://www.laogai.org/hdbook/hb_intro.htm
http://www.laogai.org/news/index.php
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=280233-6
Think "Soviet Gulag".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
Can't happen here?
Ex Machina:
https://tagmeme.com/exmachina/a/002450.html
Has anyone used JAP? (Score:2, Informative)
JAP [tu-dresden.de]
At least Chinese Censorship is Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Czech dissident writer Zdenek Urbanek once said...
In one respect, we are luckier than you in the free west, because we have learnt to read between the lines, and you believe you have no need; but you do.
George Orwell recognized that western media operates on self-censorship way back in the 40s. He wrote a preface to Animal farm all about it, but the preface itself was censored and never published. Amongst other things, he said...
The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. ... [Things are] kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that 'it wouldn't do' to mention that particular fact
For example, if you read the BBC online, you probably know that Hugo Chavez shook the Spanish King's hand recently after their previous spat. Hardly Earth shattering news. Yet you probably won't be aware that Colombian President Alavaro Uribe is under investigation for possible involvement in the planning of a massacre by right wing paramilitaries. The general trend is that bad stories about allies are either ignored or only reported in passing, whereas those about official enemies such as Chavez are accentuated and repeated ad infinitum.
Anyone interested in censorship in the western media should read "Manufacturing Consent" by Hermann and Chomsky, or watch the documentary on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wksCW3ooJ5A [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that they don't deserve to have access to everything, but it's their regulation and should be somehow respected as the rules and regulations of other countries. The US has a drug policy that the Netherlands would find intolerant, that doesn't give them any rights of providing tools to the people in the US to easily have access to drugs while in the US
Why not? Especially considering that our drug laws may well be unconstitutional, meaning the law is illegal. They had to pass a Constitutional Amendment to