Behind China's Great Firewall 148
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."
Article w/o ads or extra clickity (Score:3, Informative)
Blogs (Score:5, Informative)
In retrospect, blocking blogs isn't such a bad idea...
How it works. (Score:4, Informative)
Terrible (Score:3, Informative)
"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 (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Foreigner Have It the Wrong Way Around (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Firewall tech (Score:4, Informative)
Try China's Great Firewall by yourself (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.unix-center.net/uc/reg.php [unix-center.net]
sorry but the page is in Chinese only
Re:Try China's Great Firewall by yourself (Score:2, Informative)
ssh pythonist@x4100.unix-center.net
passwd: slashdotting
pls don't change the passwd
Re:Try China's Great Firewall by yourself (Score:1, Informative)
GFW reflects gap of generations in China (Score:3, Informative)
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 people(our parent generation) have opposite opinions. They think Internet is full of pornography, additive games, violence and bad guys/gals. Indeed, I know some brilliant high school students including my own nephew ruined by net addition.
However, I think cyber censorship ss more like stupid ISPs' wanting to be "politically right" rather than central gov's direct command.
Another site to test the Firewall (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html