First Hand Look At Chinese Internet Censorship 398
Blanchek writes "Few Internet quotes have had a longer shelf life than John Gilmore's 'the Internet
interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.' An Ottawa
Citizen article from Professor
Michael Geist notes that the maxim may be dead. The article
reflects on a recent experience with Chinese Internet censorship and the blocking of news,
email, and Google searches, while providing a caution that it would be
mistake to think that the Internet in Canada, the U.S. and Europe will
always remain as free as China's is censored."
Internet Censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, even the Chinese can get around it. Alternatives exist for dissidents to get their polically sensitive information, look no further than excrypted communication via proxy, Freenet, etc. What enables all of this? Oh yeah, it's the Internet.
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
it would be mistake to think that the Internet in Canada, the U.S. and Europe will always remain as free as China's is censored.
As I've said before, keep your copper dry.
Those who control the pipes can control the content.
Bah. (Score:2)
The main thing that makes this possible is the 30,000 people sitting at machines editing 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' content. With unlimited power to block. This is not the Internet as we know it.
It's also not really that economically feasible in the U.S. or Canada - we'd need to have MACHINES to do this, and we don't yet. Google could build one, probably, but hasn't yet.
Keepi
Re:Bah. (Score:2)
Are you out of your mind? We don' need no steekin' machines. We'd just outsource it. To China, perhaps...
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Good advice. Let's all keep in mind one thing.
The Gov't/Phone Companies/ISPs might decide to 'pull the plug' on us, or attempt to censor/monitor us, etc.
But we can always buy a giant spool of Cat 5 cabling and hook up to each other directly. Oh wait- I forgot about WiFi! We don't even need to run wires. I've seen articles on
Yes, the reliability would SUCK. latency would be AWFUL. But we'd have our network. They'd have to go breaking down doors to get us- and if we are at that point, uncensored internet is the least of our concerns.
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
The common purpose of censorship is not so much to prevent you from speaking as it is to prevent the masses from hearing. Unless your home-made network has the same reach as the Internet, the oppressor's objective is achieved.
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, absolutely. Way before the Internet, there were underground newspapers and leaflets that were distributed the old-fashioned way. What I'm saying is that the Internet is an excellent medium, and losing it would be a big blow to how efficiently dissent can be heard.
The point is also that they don't have to shut it down entirely. As long as not enough people hear you, they've accomplished their purpose.
Look at file sharing as an example. The purpose of suing grand
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
The original maxim meant more than just excluding censored portions of the internet. It meant that you couldn't damage the internet in a way that would make censorship feasible. You can. That's what the article is about.
The technology to circumvent censorship may exist, but if you use them, you have next to no chance of flying under the radar. A totalitarian society can censor the internet.
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
Not true, at the moment it just requires a bit of tech savvy to do it. Encryption, steganogaphy, watermarking can all make information dissemination virtually unstoppable and virtually undetectable, even in the most totalitarian of states. All it takes is intent. To really f*ck up the authorities all that would be required is someone to combine the three into easy to use packages,
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:3, Interesting)
Hong Kong is part of China now. But s/Hong\ Kong/foreign/ and you'd have it.
Which makes one wonder, if the citizens seem to want access to this information, who is creating all of this censorship?
Stubborn remnants of the CCP old guard.
Who are the grandchildren and greatgrandchildren of the gentry class who used to be in power until the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. Perhaps because there is such a cohesive span of recorded history in China
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:3, Informative)
If you want to see the future government of China look more to HK and less
Where there's a will and no thought police... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was in China about two years ago and there was a big crack down on Internet cafes. So what was happening was that people were routing around the censorship and the government came in to stop it. Without that ability and will to enforce the censorship by those means, it ceases to be.
Could the US, theoretically set up a bunch of firewalls and restrict what we do? Sure. But it wouldn't matter unless working around those firewalls lead to men with guns showing up at my home. Frankly, if our country was at that point, we have a lot bigger things to worry about than what websites I can get to.
Not just a way to do it (Score:5, Informative)
I've used this technique regularly when I need to work with people in China and find their mail and web services too unreliable to be useful. I simply provision them with tunneled services via work. No fuss.
Re:Not just a way to do it (Score:5, Insightful)
SSH tunnel or some other sort of VPN to a proxy somewhere outside the firewall and you're done.
Quoting the GP:
It's not the firewall that makes things difficult for you, but the guys who come bash your skull in if you try to get around the router
Your solution is a technological one and it can be easily trumped by the "skull bashers". They might not be able to see what's coming thru the tunnel, but they might very well come the endpoint's location and demand to know what's going on and will you please cease and desist.
I know very little (next to nothing) of China's investigative procedures or judicial system, but maybe they can come knocking on your door on suspicion alone and confiscate/arrest/interrogate/etc (can somebody with more knowledge on the subject enlighten us?).
Imagine government (not just China's) requiring some form of licensing to operate an ecryption tunnel. Then it would just be a matter of checking all unlicensed tunnels. Or maybe requiring a clipper-chip-like approach (remember those?).
Re:Not just a way to do it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not just a way to do it (Score:3, Insightful)
They might not be able to see what's coming thru the tunnel
but the authorities are naturally alert for anything resembling a potential covert channel for communication.
Which is why there needs to be a means for stego network traffic over innocuous-looking unencrypted port 80 traffic to what appears to be entertainment news, etc. where the photos contain the real information.
Re:Not just a way to do it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Where there's a will and no thought police... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where there's a will and no thought police... (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. PATRIOT gives broad authority to law enforcement, but it's really on thin ice legally. It survives because most people were freaked out by 9/11 and assume that PATRIOT will only affect the terrorists and other bad guys. As long as it is enforced in such a way that the average person doesn't notice it, it won't meet much opposition.
With any law, there are three factors that govern it's practical usage:
1) How it was written
2) How it is interpreted
3) How it is implemented
If they only implement it in limited ways it won't piss enough people off to question how it was written or interpreted.
If the government decided to use that to justify a massive firewalling of the US, etc, it would get wiped out in a heart beat. Invariably it's already being abused in more limited ways, and those abuses will lead to it's not being renewed when it's built in sunset clause gets rid of it shortly.
Say what you will about the idiocy of congress in passing such a thing in the first place, they were at least smart enough to put a time limit on it. Furthermore, as PATRIOT related cases have slowly worked through the system, the judiciary has been limiting it severely. They've been allowing "terrorists" to have lawyers, etc.
Re:Where there's a will and no thought police... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Where there's a will and no thought police... (Score:3, Insightful)
At the time it passed we as a nation had no idea how large the terrorist threat was. America has relatively open borders and there millions of people who agree with Bin Ladin. 10,000 terrorists plants operating in cells in the US could have done tremendous damage. Imagine:
9/11 pentagon and WTC are bombed
9/16 we have israel style suicide bombing in a few major shopping malls.
Re:Where there's a will and no thought police... (Score:3, Informative)
It basically describes in detail, how the US govt linked al qaeda (sp?) and osama when they had NO PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIP before 9/11. THey pretty much made al qaeda to seem like a crazy network of spies and infiltrators, when in reality, osama had given the hijackers money and then sent them o
Re:Where there's a will and no thought police... (Score:3, Informative)
The only thing unusual for the government would be to run a counter insurgency domestically. Other than that it would have been business as usual.
PATRIOT Act (Score:3, Insightful)
They've been allowing "terrorists" to have lawyers, etc.
While they may allow "terrorists" to have attorneys, these people have to get permission from their persecuters to talk to the lawyer. They may be slapped with another charge if they don't get that permission, violating a gag order. Though that's not exactly what happened to Sibel Edmonds, she did have a gag order slapped on her. A translator hired by the FBI after 9/11 she became a whistleblower when she got fed up with the incompetence of the
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:2, Insightful)
The other aspect to this is that if China can effectively block access to information for most people, it can also be done here.
Most of us on this board are savvy enough to get around most restrictions etc, but the general population on the net doesn't have a clue.
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:2)
Even ssh can be used to create an encrypted tunnel. All anyone needs to get access to this censored info is ssh access to one system outside their firewall or censorship software, like, say, any system in the US or EU.
Is it illegal to purchase a shell account on a foreign system?
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not what the maxim meant and you know that. It meant "censorship isn't effective". I realized that was an absurd meme at 18. You control the network, you control information.
"The information wants to be free," is also a stupid meme. Information doesn't want to be free. It doesn't want to do anything. If information always moved flo
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:3, Interesting)
40 years ago you would never have had sex education for adults on television much less for children. What's being censored today is economic information not sexual information.
Young p
Re:Internet Censorship (Score:2)
"Nothing for you to see here, move along" (Score:5, Funny)
Scary... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Scary... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Scary... (Score:2, Insightful)
While we're at it...stop comparing Christianity to the 3rd Reich. Please realize that there is a vast difference between calling yourself Christian and
Re:Scary... (Score:3, Funny)
Right wing protestants (Pat Robertson)
Right wing catholics (Alan Keyes)
Right wing Jews (Micheal Medved)
Right wing muslims (no prominent leaders)
Right wing atheists who support religion based government (Straussians like Alan Bloom)
As for anything to do with Jesus and the New Testament, I have a couple responses:
1) This is in Christianity debate. Non Christian don't need to argue abo
The (Score:2, Insightful)
1984 seems to be 30 years ahead of it's time, but it seems to be on the way nicely.
1984 (Score:2)
1984 seems to be 30 years ahead of it's time, but it seems to be on the way nicely.
Are you sure? It may have been just 20 years ahead of its time: we carry cellphones with us, so the phone companies (and therefore the state) knows exactly our whereabouts. In London, the complete inner city is surveilled by video cameras, and as we now have a complete digital telephone system, monitoring that is also trivial.
We're already living in a 1984-like world. We're just not seeing it.
Boy I love it when people actually read (Score:2)
But what about SSH tunneling? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:But what about SSH tunneling? (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought anything can be on internet.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course it won't stay free here (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't RTFA (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I can't RTFA (Score:2, Informative)
Michael Geist
Citizen Special
Thursday, May 05, 2005
As the Internet was taking flight in the early 1990s, John Gilmore, one of the co-founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a leading online civil liberties group, is credited with having coined the infamous phrase that "the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.'' Gilmore's view has since been regularly invoked whenever there are failed attempts to limit the dissemination of infor
Re:I can't RTFA (Score:2, Funny)
Swing and a miss!
Internet Free America (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Internet Free America (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Internet Free America (Score:2)
What was the cost of Radio Free America? Do you think that everybody had the necessary communications equipment? No. And yet, it was a success. The radios made in-roads. And history was written. Once a sat. is up overhead, it can serve as a simply hub. Building a transceiver and dish should be fairly cheap iff the system is designed rig
Re:Internet Free America (Score:2)
the same thing that happened when USSR, Cuba, Et. Al. executed their citizens for listening to Radio Free America. Sadly there were many in the 60's. I can remember in the late 60s, reading about a Cuban family who was executed for having a radio at their house.
Free? (Score:4, Interesting)
So as a Canadian, I'm starting to worry when my ISP is going to decide to accidentally stop resolving known bittorrent tracker sites' DNS entries...
Re:Free? (Score:2, Informative)
There might be other culprits besides Rogers. I connect via Rogers as well, and I have the occasional issue, but often it seems the problem is on my end.
1 - try capping the number of connections BT is using. You might be exhausting the capabilities of your machine (particularly if you're on Windows) and/or your router
2
Re:Free? (Score:2)
Public WIFI will lead to more censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
100% agree (Score:3, Insightful)
In my opinion, free WiFi is the "hook" that will almost certainly lead to fewer choices, and eventually to only one choice: the government sanctioned and c
Re:100% agree (Score:3, Insightful)
How can the Chinese become a software superpower? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How can the Chinese become a software superpowe (Score:2)
Re:How can the Chinese become a software superpowe (Score:2)
I dont see them surpassing India anytime, if this is the trend... Hardware...maybe.. software ... never!
A common notion has developed that Indian IT consists of software only. China emphasized this a few weeks ago when Wen Jiabao spoke fancifully about dividing up the IT market with software going to India and hardware to China, with his twin pagodas remark [bizhat.com]. I don't see India going along with this silly stereotype. Thier potential market advantages in hardware are the same as China's. Expect them to c
Why technological means for censorship don't work (Score:5, Interesting)
Blocking sites? Use a proxy.
Blocking content? Use an encrypted proxy or tunnel.
Even if (and that's a really big *IF*) laws are passed in the USA and Can that force censorship on us there will be those people who can find a way around it. Huge industries will blossom that will allow people to view "forbidden" content; people will get rich and arrested.
Censorship will never happen because the porn industry is so huge and they will see to it that our free speech continues on the internet so they can make money.
Re:Why technological means for censorship don't wo (Score:2)
The other issue there is risk- if the punishment for accessing censored data is a $5 fine, people will do it. If the fine suddenly becomes imprisonment, well then, even those peopl
Re:Why technological means for censorship don't wo (Score:3, Interesting)
Encryption works because the amount of computer time required to 1) encrypt the information and 2) decrypt the information with the key is vanishingly small compared to 3) the amount of computer time required to decrypt it without the key.
It is possible to design data in such a way that a computer has no chance of "reading" the content; think of those images with odd letters in them that websites use to prevent bot account registrations. This of course isn't the answer
Re:That's not an athoritarian regime thinks. (Score:3, Interesting)
In Gandhi's treatise on civil disobedience, he states that the goal of civil disobedience is not to force the government to end oppression, since by definition there is no force involved. However, civil disobedience can make the cost of continued oppression (defined however) outweigh its benefits to the regime.
In this case, China's government is caught between a desire to maintain authoritarian control and a desire for econo
Politics is Business as Usual (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems a little naive to believe that Business and Politics are not intertwined. I realize that wasn't the intent of that statement but even so...
Priorities (Score:5, Funny)
It could happen (Score:5, Insightful)
The government would just say they were censoring child porn and terrorist web sites and everybody would be ok with it. Then they'd say they are censoring hate literature web sites and everybody would be ok with it. Then they'd say they were censoring unAmerican web sites and everybody would go along with it because they don't want to be unAmerican. Then, they'll be living in China.
the thing that's scary is... (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, the vast majority of the Chinese have no idea they're being censored. It's not as though a huge red screen pops up saying, "THIS INFORMATION IS CENSORED BY YOUR GOVERNMENT". If we were being censored, how would we know?
We see little things - like Bush using "planted" reporters to rig questioning at the White House. How long before another step is taken?
Scary stuff. Eternal vigilance is the price.
Re:the thing that's scary is... (Score:2)
What scares me is that many don't even care. The old attitude of, "Eh. It's just politics," and "I can email my friends and get my photos, music, and movies." I can see why they say that, it doesn't effect them.
Re:the thing that's scary is... (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, right, Republican president. Different standard.
Re:the thing that's scary is... (Score:5, Insightful)
People are shocked at how uninformed many americans are despite living in a society that is very open. Suppose China is able to bring it's average citizens up to european/us living standards and still maintain the great firewall. Then you will have a country as powerful and influential as the us and yet even more ignorant of the implications of its own policies than americans currently are.
That scares me.
As the Chinese government says... (Score:2)
Spam, anyone? (Score:2)
Most spam originates from the US. (Score:2)
Interesting to note, that many spam mails can be traced back to .cn domains
That's actually a myth. Most spam comes from the US [spamhaus.org]. Just because spammers forge 'From: ' headers doesn't mean they are sending spam from chinese networks.
In a recent survey, more than 72% of the spam came from the ARIN netblock (the US being the biggest part of it), 16% from RIPE and the puny remaining rest from APNIC (where most .hk and .cn domains belong).
Re:Most spam originates from the US. (Score:3, Informative)
Tell it to my mailserver... I was running an ISP for a few years so I know a thing or two about accurately tracing mail and ignoring forged headers.
The "from:" address can, of course, be completely ignored. But you can't ignore the IP of the server that delivered it to yours, extremely difficult to spoof. The highest percentage of these come from open relays, followed by open relays via open proxies, followed by spam friendly hosts (whether they realise/care or not).
By the time yo
If the Chinese Government Doesn't (Score:3, Funny)
Problem solved, no censorship required.
Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
The BBC News stories were, naturally, all being aggregated by Google News.
I arrived excited to witness this mass censorship in action, and jubilant that I couldnt really find anything of the sort.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Taiwan (Score:2)
Re:Taiwan (Score:3, Informative)
Why won't you traceroute yourself?
Re:Taiwan (Score:2)
Bypass the filtering via VPNs (Score:2, Informative)
www.witopia.net
www.publicvpn.com
www.wiphi.c
All of these guys have endpoints in the US. So when you surf, you surf in the US.
And geez...why the heck would you plug in to the net with a clean connection in a totalitarian regime? Geez, you're just asking The Man to come and take a look.
Firewalling the wrong way (Score:3, Interesting)
geist (Score:2)
First the censors came... [Martin Niemöller] (Score:5, Insightful)
First they came for the smut peddlers, and I did not speak out because I was not a smut peddler.
Then they came for the gamblers, and I did not speak out because I was not a gambler.
Then they came for the terrorists, and I did not speak out because I was not a terrorists.
Then they came for the music pirates, and I did not speak out because I was not a music pirate.
Then they came for me...
and there was no one left to speak for me.
With apologies to Martin Niemöller [wikiquote.org]
Read my signature (Score:2)
If they get out of line, we fire them.
VOTE WELL! Don't make important decisions with your emotions, make them with logic.
Monthly censorship check (Score:5, Interesting)
Are any of these blocked in your area?
Re:Monthly censorship check (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Monthly censorship check (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, I had never heard any opposition to the Iraq war until reading your post. Thank you for opening my eyes and saving me from this oppressive American censorship.
Is your content managed? (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue here isn't whether hackers can bypass it (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure there are ways for those with the requisite technical skills and political activism to get around the censorship, but then censorship has never worked on that segment of the population anyway. Agent of the police state were watching them long before the internet existed.
The reason this censorship is so damaging to chinese society is because it means the average person doesn't know just how hard they're being screwed by the criminals who run the country. The state gets away with telling plausible lies because 98% of the population lacks the skill and gumption needed to uncover the truth.
Lee
Project Golden Shield (Score:4, Informative)
However China's information control doesn't stop at just the Internet. During the SARS scare, China tried to keep information about it contained but was unable to do so because they did not consider the use of SMS messaging and similar technologies. This has only given them more determination to control all information through the Golden Shield Project.
Re:yay communism! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yay communism! (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it really _so_ hard to see that extreme left is very, very similar to extreme right? China is pretty much extreme left (with a business twist, lately). Censorship in the US is coming from the extreme _rightwing_ nutcases that brought us the Patriot act and the like...
Not making the distinction between extreme lef
Re:yay communism! (Score:2)
and to add to the parent (Score:2)
Re:Polyanna (Score:2)
It could happen, as soon as governments realize that terrorists are using spam to avoid traffic analysis.
Of course, it won't happen immediately, but they are already gradually taking freedom of speech away, piece by piece.
Re:it would never happen in the USA (Score:2, Funny)