Free Tools To Evade China's Web Censorship 140
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.'"
Like they won't just block the site? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Like they won't just block the site? (Score:2, Insightful)
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: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.
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.
Why circumvent? (Score:2, Insightful)
Working around the censors will be the quickest way to be detained in China for a long time.
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:Stopping censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Like they won't just block the site? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, some people could also download the tools before they go to China, right?
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?
Re:Like they won't just block the site? (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 "sticking it to the man" that can't reach them, but when the feel-good moments are over, the net contribution is zero.
Grow a pair and do something for others that puts your skin on the line.
Re:Like they won't just block the site? (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:You can always provide tools for... (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 outlaw alcohol, why did they not have to amend it to outlaw other drugs?
Whether or not drug laws are constitutional, someone in the Netherlands is not under US law. It might be illegal for me to recieve tools to obtain drugs from someone in the Netherlands, but it would NOT be illegal fro him to provide them. He has every right to supply me with anything his country's laws allow, and I have every right to subvert Chinese law.
Re:western reporters (Score:3, Insightful)
also, the American side is a user driven firewall, not a govt imposed on.
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.)
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:Here we go again... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, to sum it up, in China, politics dictate the news stories, in the US, news outlets dictate the politics.