Behind China's Great Firewall

DigitalDame2 writes "In light of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing, more scrutiny is being placed on China's Web-filtering practices. In May, China's technology minister, Wan Gang, told Reuters China he would 'guarantee as much [access] as possible,' defending Web limitations as necessary to protect the country's citizens. Truly understanding this cat-and-mouse game means taking a close look at what exactly the government filters out, how the Great Firewall works, and how others have found ways around it."

Firewall tech

[mactard (1223412)]

I honestly want to see pictures of that thing. I mean, every single packet that goes in and out of China goes through a giant box. That thing has to be huge to filter any sort of serious bandwidth.

Re:Firewall tech

[jeffmeden (135043)]

Who's to say it's not distributed among many (possibly hundreds) of gateways. It seems a bit impractical to think that China's internet connectivity funnels through one single geographical point, much less through one physical device. That, or you were being sarcastic...

Re:Firewall tech

[ricebowl (999467)]

I have a feeling that, with the censorship being taken mostly at the ISP level in order to avoid governmental scrutiny/sanctions, that it occurs at the ISP's servers. So rather than any one piece of hardware doing all the work there's hundreds (I presume, I have no idea how many ISPs operate inside of China, though I'd expect there to be quite a few).

Re:Firewall tech

[OeLeWaPpErKe (412765)]

Actually just about every ISP outside of america has internet filters in place (even those in the supposed "free" the Netherlands).

For starters if a country has 50% muslims, you can assume it filters the internet.

If a country is not free in speech (and that qualifies quite a bit more countries than you'd think, including all European countries), then they have either ISP or judicial filters, that in practice means their isp's filter.

Even Canada, matter-of-factly has ISP filters. Let's FIRST fix Canada, then we should move on to the UK or so, where there was one site that qualified as hate speech for advocacy against Blair.

I don't think what China does is good, I just question singling out China. And there are many countries where you actually might make a difference.

Besides slashdot users where by far in favor of sensoring stuff if it endangered people's safety, like when death threats were made by muslims about wilder's film. That was in the UK.

Let's start there. Then, AFTER that, and all other European countries and after Canada, then we can move Canada. What point is there in saying as a non-free country to China that they should be free ?

Re:

[vajaradakini (1209944)]

Do you care to provide a source that isn't a right wing website?

Perhaps one that doesn't include statements like this: in a country with Sunday shopping, abortion rights and same-sex marriage...[h]uman rights commissions are vestigial organs, a historical correction that no longer serves any useful function. in attempts to prove a point. I mean, to say that just because women have the right to reproductive freedom (if they live in a major city), gay people can get married and everyone can go shopping

Re:

[Stewie241 (1035724)]

I think the point was that there is no need for ISP filters if people are being fined by a human rights commission for speaking freely.

This saves the ISPs effort - they don't have to bother, because threats of legal action will scare people into silence.

I don't know the facts - just clarifying his argument.

Re:Firewall tech

[by Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and no. According to Erik Laykin of Navigant Consulting there are 3 points that connect China to the interweb (I think maybe Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzho.) The Chinese government is indeed spanning all 3. But considering that you have traffic for over 200 million people flowing through those 3 points, there are hundreds if not thousands of devices scattered all over the country to make up the Golden Shield. Interestingly, many of those devices of censorship were supplied by Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, etc. Long live capitalism!

Wow...

[Jor-Al (1298017)]

defending Web limitations as necessary to protect the country's citizens.

Yes, without filtered internet, who knows what untold damage might sweep through the populace!

Re:

[Hankapobe (1290722)]

defending Web limitations as necessary to protect the country's citizens.

Yes, without filtered internet, who knows what untold damage might sweep through the populace!

Questioning and opposing their Government?

Re:Wow...

[ricebowl (999467)]

defending Web limitations as necessary to protect the country's citizens.

Yes, without filtered internet, who knows what untold damage might sweep through the populace!

Questioning and opposing their Government?

Only terrorists question or oppose their government! Are you a terrorist?

Re:

[oahazmatt (868057)]

Only terrorists question or oppose their government! Are you a terrorist?

Negative, I am a meat popsicle

Re:

[Drakin020 (980931)]

Yes, god forbit people stand up for themselves and ask question.

I'm glad China is there to ensure nothing like that happens. /For the greater good.

Re:

[Gat0r30y (957941)]

Tubgirl?

errrmm....

[bsDaemon (87307)]

FTA:

Even the good old U.S. of A. has restricted access in some cases. In May 2007, just a few weeks after placing restrictions on soldiers' blogs, the Department of Defense blocked access for soldiers to 13 "social networking and recreational" Web sites such as MySpace and YouTube, claiming that they took up too much bandwidth and presented operational risks. Ultimately, the ban severely limited the ability of soldiers overseas to communicate with loved ones at home, especially since the sites couldn't be accessed throughout much of Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm not sure once can draw a moral equivelancy between the Army blocking what soldiers do over Army internet connections from war-zones and the Chinese blocking internet access for regular citizens.

Until the USA starts filtering my access to the BBC, I don't really know why they even brought that up -- its just like workplace filtering at any other job.

Re:

[Overkill Nbuta (1035654)]

Is a world without myspace a world we want to live it!

Re:errrmm....

[bsDaemon (87307)]

Is a world without myspace a world we want to live it!

Yes.

Silver lining...

[Hankapobe (1290722)]

...these measures are put in place to protect children and other Internet users from illegal and offensive content.

This is an illustration of the slippery slope and we all should show this to anyone who wants to censor or regulate the internet for obscene material or to "protect the children".

As a matter of fact, here's a perfect illustration how the "think of the children" rhetoric can be and is used for oppression of a people.

Re:Silver lining...

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

Why do you hate children so much? Are you some kind of cold, heartless terrorist?

Re:

[Hankapobe (1290722)]

Why do you hate children so much? Are you some kind of cold, heartless terrorist?

Apparently I am. Or at least the mod who gave me a "-1 Troll".

Re:

[Jor-Al (1298017)]

Wow this mod must be pmsing today. They've given troll mods to almost half a dozen posts so far. I'm still baffled by how any of them are trolling, though. Has Wan Gang become a slashdot mod?

Re:Silver lining...

[Gat0r30y (957941)]

Ok, who gave the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre all these mod points?

Re:Silver lining...

[Rycross (836649)]

I've noticed that theres a small contingent of very nationalistic Chinese Slashdot users who get butthurt whenever anyone says anything remotely negative about the Chinese government. Usually its with a "OMG Why do you hate us so much!?" sort of mentality that I previously thought was exclusive to blindly patriotic Americans (yes I'm American). Thats probably who's doing the down-modding.

I'm a bit amazed at how hesitant a lot of Chinese guys I know are to say anything remotely negative about the Chinese government and get really upset if you insinuate that its not all fluffy bunnies and flowers with the government. But then again I'm used to pretty much everyone complaining about my government.

Re:

[cyfer2000 (548592)]

Basically, the logic is "I know my government is a son of bitch, but it is still my son of bitch."

Re:Silver lining...

[bsDaemon (87307)]

You're also not used to having to look over your shoulder, wondering who is listening and what their real intentions are.

It's like how America is still looked upon favorably in parts of Eastern Europe, like Georgia. When you've experienced REAL dictatorship, REAL secret police, and REAL oppression, then you look at things differently than does the college kid who had his feelings hurt, so he blames it on whatever boogyman is popular to blame.

When you've spent your entire life wondering where little billy went after he said "i think mao sucked," you're going to be warry of saying those things and probably go out of your way to make sure that anyone else who heard it knows YOU didn't endorse that statement so that nothing happens to YOU.

We may be run by a bunch of retards and jackasses, but no matter how bad we have it, we still have it a lot better than the majority of people in the world.

Just something to think about.

Re:Silver lining...

[bsDaemon (87307)]

I have my party card in my wallet and a number of Congressmen's cellphone numbers handy. I'm not going anywhere, citizen.

No, that isn't a joke either. I really do.

But the government also isn't rounding up Americans off American streets and sending them to secret prisons (if they are, they're doing a good job keeping it secret).

They're rounding up foreigners that they get in foreign countries, who are (allegedly) in the act of doing stuff.

FDR made up the whole "enemy combatant" thing, lest we forget. And most of the interned Japanese were citziens or legal residents. I have yet to see DHS going around picking up taxi drivers and 711 clerks on suspicion of aiding and abetting the enemy.

I don't like Bush either, but can we please at least keep the accusations to things that he's actually done?

Re:

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

You assume they are Chinese. Why do you assume that?

Re:Silver lining...

[Rycross (836649)]

Because the posts in question where I noticed this claimed that they were Chinese. The people I met in person were, in fact Chinese. It is not a huge logical gap to think that people defending the Chinese government are, at least in part, Chinese. Whats your point?

Re:Silver lining...

[value_added (719364)]

I've noticed that theres a small contingent of very nationalistic Chinese Slashdot users who get butthurt whenever anyone says anything remotely negative about the Chinese government.

Not just Slashot users, but Chinese in general. I watched a news program or documentary recently that covered the subject, and it turns out the Chinese, the young and college educated particularly, exhibit the same reaction.

It turns out that, and I'm generalising here, the Chinese, if they don't "like it that way". have few objections to strong government control. For a westerner that might be hard to fathom, but I think it's unfair to dismiss their preferences as absurd or characterise them as the result of some sort of brainwashing.

What shouldn't be hard to fathom is that for someone who's Chinese, China is their country. Last I checked, national pride is a universal phenomenon, and treading on other's sense of identity or pride, however enlightened or well-intentioned, is always bad form and inevitably leads to conflict.

nationalism is not an american invention

[circletimessquare (444983)]

that there are han imperialists and han apologists shouldn't really amaze you. every culture and country in this world: russia, brazil, nigeria, mexico, india, etc., etc. has a loud vocal nationalist sentiment

the americans that engage in nationalist chest thumping of course deserved to be spoken out against, but most importantly on this point, in the usa, according to law, you can actually speak out against them

whereas in china, or cuba, or turkey, and other countries, to criticize your country or your gove

Re:

[Hankapobe (1290722)]

Yeah! Who do we talk to about keeping folks from a ".cn" domain modding on China internet stories?

Re:

[Gat0r30y (957941)]

Wouldn't that be internet censorship?

Hell with them...

[Ralph Spoilsport (673134)]

China's technology minister, Wan Gang, told Reuters China he would "guarantee as much [access] as possible," defending Web limitations as necessary to protect the country's citizens.

Protect them?

PROTECT THEM???

From WHAT??? Other than finding out what a murderous bunch of thugs run their craptastic fascist gov't?

RS

Re:Hell with them...

[geekoid (135745)]

Don't get outraged. everyone knows it's crap and that it's in place to protect the current government.

They don't want people reading how all their peasants are moving to cities into sweat shops, they don't want there people to ahve a tool to use to organize rallys. The last thing they need is another tank man;which most people under 20 in China have never even heard of.

Deal w/ it every day

[J05H (5625)]

It's understandable from a policy level but they have been throttling the hell out of their trans-Pacific connections. Our team over there was getting 36kbs downloads from a (flaky GoDaddy client) connection the other day.

The truth is the Chinese govt. faces a very real terrorism threat w/ the upcoming Olympics and are doing everything including monitoring the Net to keep it from happening.

Re:Deal w/ it every day

[MightyMartian (840721)]

It's more the pity that the biggest threat would be no one showing up to offer support to the Butchers of Beijing.

Hm...

[Fayn (1003629)]

Now that I think about it, the way China is right now is strikingly similar to how view an Internet in which Net Neutrality has been soundly defeated and one can only visit approved sites. There are, of course a few differences...govm't approval vs. corporate sponsorship. But the end result of a strictly regulated Internet experience remains the same. Or I could be completely full of it.

Article w/o ads or extra clickity

[flattop100 (624647)]

http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a%253D228357,00.asp [pcmag.com]

Blogs

[goatpunch (668594)]

I was in China last month and the only sites that I had any problem accessing were blogs. It seemed that most popular blog sites were completely blocked. Wikipedia, Slashdot, Youtube, Facebook, etc. were all accessible. They don't seem to be using a whitelist though, as my own small unimportant domain worked fine.

In retrospect, blocking blogs isn't such a bad idea...

Re:

[sdsucks (1161899)]

I was also in China last month.

I had a hard time accessing:
- Some blogs as well
- Some earthquake news in the days immediately following the event (Some was accessible, some not)
- Some other misc news sites would not load. (Google world news page was out on me for days, while most other google news and google sites worked fine) ... I didn't go looking to hard for anything that would raise flags.

FWIW I think the blocking is mostly keyword based.

Re:Blogs

[coaxial (28297)]

That's interesting. I was in Beijing in April, and stayed at an "international" hotel there across the street from the Bird's Nest, and documented some experiments [robotmonkeys.net].

My television received NHK, TV Monde, and CNN International. Once during a CNNi story about the protests in Tibet did the cable cut out. I have heard of the government doing that, but the images were later shown on CCTV, but of course the accompanying commentary would very likely be different.

Wikipedia was accessible, except for certain pages. Google.com was accessible, but if you googled a certain phrases, the connection would be reset, and you couldn't access google for a few seconds.

Domains like tibet.com simply wouldn't resolve.

Seemed like every Taiwanese forum/blog was blocked.

Re:

[coaxial (28297)]

They're hard to control.

Re:

[bsDaemon (87307)]

Its not even so much that they're hard to control as it is that they lack any sort of journalistic integrity or professional ethics. They are often poorly written and filled more the opinion and innuendo than actual information.

Due to certain disgraceful actions on the part of main-stream journalists in the past, and due to perceived bias or partisanship by at least half of the population towards a source, a lot of people are looking towards "unfiltered" "sources" of "information," because they mistakenly

How it works.

[physman_wiu (933339)]

In America, the Internet was originally designed to be free of choke points, so that each packet of information could be routed quickly around any temporary obstruction. In China, the Internet came with choke points built in. Even now, virtually all Internet contact between China and the rest of the world is routed through a very small number of fiber-optic cables that enter the country at one of three points: the Beijing-Qingdao-Tianjin area in the north, where cables come in from Japan; Shanghai on the central coast, where they also come from Japan; and Guangzhou in the south, where they come from Hong Kong. (A few places in China have Internet service via satellite, but that is both expensive and slow. Other lines run across Central Asia to Russia but carry little traffic.) In late 2006, Internet users in China were reminded just how important these choke points are when a seabed earthquake near Taiwan cut some major cables serving the country. It took months before international transmissions to and from most of China regained even their pre-quake speed, such as it was.

Thus Chinese authorities can easily do something that would be harder in most developed countries: physically monitor all traffic into or out of the country. They do so by installing at each of these few 'international gateways' a device called a 'tapper' or 'network sniffer,' which can mirror every packet of data going in or out. This involves mirroring in both a figurative and a literal sense. 'Mirroring' is the term for normal copying or backup operations, and in this case real though extremely small mirrors are employed. Information travels along fiber-optic cables as little pulses of light, and as these travel through the Chinese gateway routers, numerous tiny mirrors bounce reflections of them to a separate set of 'Golden Shield' computers.Here the term's creepiness is appropriate. As the other routers and servers (short for file servers, which are essentially very large-capacity computers) that make up the Internet do their best to get the packet where it's supposed to go, China's own surveillance computers are looking over the same information to see whether it should be stopped.

Think again of the real importance of the Great Firewall. Does the Chinese government really care if a citizen can look up the Tiananmen Square entry on Wikipedia? Of course not. Anyone who wants that information will get it-by using a proxy server or VPN, by e-mailing to a friend overseas, even by looking at the surprisingly broad array of foreign magazines that arrive, uncensored, in Chinese public libraries.

What the government cares about is making the quest for information just enough of a nuisance that people generally won't bother. Most Chinese people, like most Americans, are interested mainly in their own country. All around them is more information about China and things Chinese than they could possibly take in. The newsstands are bulging with papers and countless glossy magazines. The bookstores are big, well stocked, and full of patrons, and so are the public libraries. Video stores, with pirated versions of anything. Lots of TV channels. And of course the Internet, where sites in Chinese and about China constantly proliferate. When this much is available inside the Great Firewall, why go to the expense and bother, or incur the possible risk, of trying to look outside?

All the technology employed by the Golden Shield, all the marvelous mirrors that help build the Great Firewallâ"these and other modern achievements matter mainly for an old-fashioned and pre-technological reason. By making the search for external information a nuisance, they drive Chinese people back to an environment in which familiar tools of social control come into play.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/chinese-firewall [theatlantic.com] So they are going to let certain IPs get anything they want. So it won't even seem like there is a 'Golden Shield' to most foreigners that visit China for the Olympics.

Terrible

[gigne (990887)]

Ugh. A terrible article which you could summarise in one sentence..
"Use a VPN or proxy if you want to use the internet without fear or restriction."

I was hoping for more detailed information on the operational hardware involved in filtering a country, not confirmation it happens, which is already widely known.

blocked sites

[pangloss (25315)]

Some of the sites that I know to be blocked:

Blogger
Blogspot
Flickr (only the photo serving subdomains)
Typepad
Wordpress

Formerly blocked, but now open:
Wikipedia
BBC News

As far as I'm aware, the blocks on the blog-related sites are domain or netblock level--not the result of keyword or content-level filtering.

Defend citizens

[Thelasko (1196535)]

...necessary to protect the country's citizens.

It's not protecting Chinese citizens that's the problem. It's protecting the rest of the world from the Chinese citizens [slashdot.org] that concerns me.

Foreigner Have It the Wrong Way Around

[mutantcamel (213431)]

Largely, amongst the well educated, English speaking professional Chinese people that I meet (I've lived in China for 2 years) who are in their mid/late 20's, the reverence and respect they havefor the CCP is probably more fervant tham amongst the older generation who helped to found the People's Republic. The patriostism gives way to nationalism, and I find some of my friends who I had respected as having been able to form their own intelligent opinions on the world at large have descended into China-loving, French-hating lunatics.

Westerners have to try to understand that the generation that's in it's mid-late 20's owe their standard of living and level income to the Communist Party, they and look to the party members for moral guidance. Propaganda, even on the "international" CCTV-9 has reached an all time high with wall to wall interview of people who have lost everything praising the work of the government.

When it comes to Internet censorship, it's largely a joke. Websites can be overcome with any number of web proxies, and even if you can't get to the porn that you want, you can go to the local computer markets in Zhongguancun or Chaoyangmen, where you'll be offered "DVD sex movies". The BBC had been unblocked, but blocks are still in place for servers on Flicker and on Livejournal and Blogspot.

The government here is rather sneaky. They don't say that they actively and specifically filter websites, rather, they ask ISPs to self-censor and these ISP's face heavy fines for allowing undesirable content through. This is the reason that websites that are accessbile in Shanghai aren't accessible in Beijing or other parts of China.

A good project to keep an eye on is Concept Doppler, which has a list of what keywords and phrases are filtered by the GFW. What is interesting is that of all the tests that CD team performed, a certain number of the phrases did managed to get through the filter, showing that the GFW doesn't filter everything all the time, but filters some most of the time, which creates the impression that everything is filtered, and, ultimately, keeps people scared.

Try China's Great Firewall by yourself

[pythonist (1289628)]

You can register an SSH account in a Unix machine located in China and try GFW by yourself

http://www.unix-center.net/uc/reg.php [unix-center.net]

sorry but the page is in Chinese only

GFW reflects gap of generations in China

[pythonist (1289628)]

Having gained my four year college education in University of Science and Tech. of China, I have some experience on GFW. Chinese people's attitude toward GFW reflects gap of old and young generations.

Almost all young Chinese, me included, think GFW is totally stupid and the people who are in charge of the blocking have pig brains. why?

1. CNN/BBS/FalunGong/TibetGIE should not be blocked since nobody in China reads them.

2. Some irrelevant websites such as sourceforge used to be blocked.

However, most of old pe

dear han ultranationalists:

[circletimessquare (444983)]

china is obviously a great power in this world. when you are a great power, you get criticized. with great power, this kind of criticism is a natural occurence

a true great man can take lots of criticism in stride. an immature powerless man meanwhile freaks out every time someone suggests the slightest negative thing about him. it shows a lack of confidence, an insecurity

han ultranationists: do you believe that china is a great power? if you do, then start acting as that great power status dictates: have more confidence. china will be criticized more and more every year since it is so powerful now. if you cannot handle that criticism, then you are in danger of destroying your own greatness with your own insecure behavior

to defeat the creation of insecure people in china, you should foster a healthy amount of internal dissent and self-critical thinking in china. if you do not, if you censor anything that remotely criticizes the chinese government or the chinese nation, then what you do is make the chinese people permanent children. you incubate chinese who are unable to handle criticism without freaking out in insecurity and a lack of confidence

and thereby diminishing the greatness of china

china is a great nation. i believe that as an american. so start acting like a great nation, and grow some thicker skin when foreigners criticize china. being criticized is a natural product of being powerful. get used to it. believe me, as an american, i know something about being criticized on the world stage! and mostly, i just shrug it off. you should to