Canadians To Douse Chinese Firewall 342
FrenchyinOntario writes "Researchers at a University of Toronto lab are getting ready to release a computer program called Psiphon, which will allow Internet users in free countries to help users in more restrictive countries (like China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc.) to access the Internet by getting past the firewalls and getting around "rubber hose cryptoanalysis" which is a drawback of other anti-firewall programs as it reveals a user's tracks if discovered by authorities. Operating through port 443, Psiphon will allow users in monitoring countries the ability to send an encrypted request for certain information, and for users in secure countries to send it back to them. The UofT's Citizen Lab hopes to debut Psiphon at the international congress of the free speech group PEN in May."
A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:3)
HJ
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:5, Insightful)
The more there are, the better. No single point of failure, no single point for governments to attack. Fragment away.
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:4, Interesting)
https://psiphonat.myfriend.com/http://www.yahoo.c
and then proxy re-writes all URLs in the document to be of that same form so that clicks will automagically go through the psiphon proxy.
How is this better than Tor: http://tor.eff.org/ [eff.org]
I would tell you, but my corporate firewall won't allow access to that website.
or just an HTTP Proxy that supports CONNECT for SSL traffic?
Because people may be forced to use a proxy just to get outside of the firewall. You can't chain proxies, at least not with normal web browsers.
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:2)
What does that have to do with anything, your company will probably block myfriend.com soon, but they havn't because it's new.
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:2)
It's not like their software or hardware won't allow them to block by domain name, you know...
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:2)
You might retort with "omg your so dumb the application could request the new ip address", to which I'd reply "That's great, so long as you can connect to the URL updater's address in the first place (since your company firewalled it as per
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:2)
We're talking about getting through a corporate firewall, not passing through the underground railroad.
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:3, Informative)
They claim it is a feature - that you have to have a relationship - like an immigrated family member - with the owner of the system. That should reduce abusive uses to about zero, which should make it a lot more palatable for regular people to run, and a lot simpler, than an onion router system.
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:5, Interesting)
At least with this system, you're encouraged to form a relationship of trust with the node you're communicating with.
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:4, Informative)
China's internet censorship [wikipedia.org] works at several levels. It includes content-based filtering (banned terms [businessweek.com] in the text of what you are sending, including "human rights", "democracy" and "Dalai Lama"), so any attempt to bypass the filtering has to be encrypted. It also includes DNS-based filtering so some DNS lookups return the wrong IP addresses, and of course it also includes IP-based filtering that prevent Chinese users from accessing the BBC or Wikipedia, for instance.
Tor [eff.org] can be very effective at bypassing most of these protections, and you can choose to run it on port 443 (https) to avoid port-based filtering. Also, you can limit the amount of bandwidth you want to donate to other nodes, and the default outgoing policy prevents connections to port 25 so you can't use a Tor node for sending spam.
On the client side, using SwitchProxy [mozilla.org] for FireFox is helpful to maintain a list of proxies, including a local Tor instance, that works as a SOCKS proxy, and a list of open proxies [google.com] (SwitchProxy can automatically change proxy every X seconds).
Answer: It's not! (Score:2)
Open source.
Allows hidden services.
Supports any protocol using TCP/IP.
Perfect forward secrecy.
And lots of other stuff that I won't even go on about. A one hop proxy is just a bad idea for being anonymous. Tor is a much better answer.
If you've never heard of Tor then go read up on it at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
Re:Tor: Not the answer. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A HTTP Proxy with SSL? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How it is better? Is it a solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
So go ahead call me a troll if you want, but I see many news agencies and papers doing much worst then google and no one talk about it. This kind of auto-censorship is being around almost always and has hidden many truths from you peopl
People still care (Score:3, Insightful)
Reaction? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reaction? (Score:5, Funny)
fuck them
Re:Reaction? (Score:2)
Re:Reaction? (Score:5, Insightful)
The censors are always shutting things down.
I agree with the sentiments that publishing these ideas are a double edged sword. Its good to inform and have things coming from enough sources to get to the people and bypass the censors but it does give the gov. a heads up.
We will see. Or maybe yuou guys will and I wont
I have to ask myself the question... (Score:4, Interesting)
Over the past number of years we have seen a liberalisation of trade and a continuing move towards a free market economy - China style.
We have seen with the fall of the Soviet Union, democracy and free market economics overnight is extremely painful and possible dangerous - at times it was touch and go there (maybe still is).
China is a really big place with lots of people, a similar shift would probably be catastrophic for China and for the world at large. It takes a long time to turn a big ship.
Same must be true for the application of democratic principles.
Tiananmen Square etc was a wake-up call for the Chinese government. Yes, it was 15 years ago, but that's a blink of an eye in geopolitics.
The writing is sort of on the wall - 'democracy' is really inevitable. And slowly the ship will turn. It will probably turn to its own course, and Chinese style democracy will be the very interesting outcome (if you think the democracy you live in is the only kind then you are well wrong).
To the
This kind of access might only be available to a small few - but it will be available. It's like a dam with a small leak - a huge crack would be disasterous, and the dam would crumble. But a small leak - that works.
Watch this space...
Re:Yes they willl. But there is hope. (Score:2)
Re:Yes they willl. But there is hope. (Score:2)
Re:Yes they willl. But there is hope. (Score:3, Informative)
Fedex might do better, I don't know, but their service area is limited to a few major metropolitan zones, and cost is imposing.
I think illegal smuggling is probably the most reliable and cost-effective way to ship data into China by sneakernet. Hand off to a friend at the airport, whatever.
Re:Yes they willl. But there is hope. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yes they willl. But there is hope. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Reaction? (Score:3, Interesting)
I like that idea.
Six/Four? (Score:5, Informative)
Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Private initiatives like this are cool and all (and have proven very effective in the past), but it would be nice to see our governments taking a much stronger stand regarding free-speech. Free speech is the absolute foundation of democracy and freedom.
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
An interesting op-ed piece [timesonline.co.uk] I read today suggested that this is a war between Freedom and Fundamentalism. As we are seeing with the current Congressional Hearing involving Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc, Capitalism doesn't much care either way for Freedom or Fundamentalism, but is calculated solely on risk and reward - even if you purport to "do no evil". To look at Western politics around the world, and more topically the effects of those Danish cartoons which are not being published, most people don't have much of an opinion here either.
As has been said here previously, free speech only continues to exist when people exercise it. There is much uninformed opinion in the world, and even our leaders are increasingly elected on the basis of limited amounts of tightly controlled information. Does this lead us closer to Freedom and Democracy?
The Fundamentalist has a narrow agenda, is easily inflamed, readily invokes fear to reinforce their message, and has little respect for all who disagree. Those who favour Freedom will always suffer at the hands of Fundamentalists - Freedom is Fundamentalism's single worst enemy, and the uninformed Free will happily trade minor freedoms for any illusion of security against perceived threats. Against this slow but steady onslaught, Freedom's only weapon is exercising available freedoms - even to risk one's own life if necessary.
While it is the duty of the Free to selflessly attempt to liberate the oppressed, Capitalism guides us to minimise risk now and build short-term rewards. In the face of rising global Fundamentalism (whether Christian or Muslim, Capitalist or Socialist), Freedom dies by a thousand cuts.
It will do us all good to see more fearless initiatives like this one from Canada.
Re:Censorship (Score:2)
Re:Censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
"in what sense is our protection of free speech in the West categorically superior to the prevailing Chinese attitude that censorship may sometimes be necessary in order to preserve culture and maintain social order(?)"
Are you not aware that the Chinese regime has, since their invasion of Tibet in 1950, systematically destroyed all aspects of Tibetan life: Tibetan national identity, unique Tibetan language and script, unique Tibetan buddhism... not to mention turning Tibet into a giant Chinese nuclear missile site and nuclear dumping ground, ripping off Tibetan natural resources and promoting Chinese migration into Tibet, turning Tibetans into a rightless and stateless minority in their own country!? Preserving culture?? Maintaining social order?? While a large number of ethnic Chinese may find the CCP's dictatorship and the accompanying censorship as an acceptable tradeoff for being finally able to engage in "bourgeouis" activities, at least their party-approved mainstream culture hasn't been under systematic eradication since the end of the "Cultural Revolution" around 1976. If the majority is willing to remain under dictatorial rule and not care about the rights of others or the imprisonment and torture of innocent freedom-caring people at the hands of their regime, even that could be argued to be their right. Chinese accepting to live under Chinese mob rule.
However their regime nor the Chinese as a nation have absolutely no right to hold their neighboring Tibetan and Uigur nations under brutal Chinese military occupation with the "Final Solution" looming close to those oppressed non-Chinese peoples.
OK. Think for moment about the French, and then spare a moment for the Tibetans who are guaranteed to face imprisonment and quite likely torture as well for simply speaking against the ongoing Holocaust in Tibet, or just saying "Tibet should be free again"! In China, the regime has "laws" (and plain all-pervasive and ruthless paramilitary machine) that severely punish people for challenging in any way the regime's most transparent and ridiculous falsehoods denying the ongoing Holocaust...!
Should cultures which allow such things to take place be respected?
Are we obligated to "liberate" China's citizens from their cultural taboos against desiring privacy?
I'm curious, but what "cultural taboos" do the Chinese people have against desiring privacy?
We're talking about China (Score:2)
RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
It's not a government initiative, and it's in Canada, not the US.
Opressive Country to-do list (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Opress
Re:Opressive Country to-do list (Score:2)
2. never give up
Re:Opressive Country to-do list (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Opressive Country to-do list (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Opressive Country to-do list (Score:5, Informative)
"Unless a country wanted to cut off all connections for any financial transactions they wouldn't be able to cut off these transmissions," said Professor Ronald Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab.
rtfa kthnx
Re:Opressive Country to-do list (Score:2)
Unlikely to have much impact in practice (Score:4, Insightful)
But, it seems that I need to communicate with someone in China first, and offer my computer up to them, and then we both need to install something on our computers, and I give him a userid and password.
Isn't this just too clunky to work?
Re:Unlikely to have much impact in practice (Score:5, Funny)
But, it seems that I need to communicate with someone in China first,
First you log into World of Warcraft...
Re:Unlikely to have much impact in practice (Score:2)
Re:Unlikely to have much impact in practice (Score:2)
neat tech, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Young whipper snappers. (Score:5, Funny)
Back in my day if we wanted freedom we had to shoot someone in the face. Twice.
Now sometimes we do it for fun. -DC
Re:Young whipper snappers. (Score:2)
cool (Score:3, Funny)
Re:cool (Score:2)
and fixed telephones, faxes, radio and TV) for the purposes of counselling or inciting
suicide, or promoting or providing instruction on a particular method of suicide.
Possession or supply etc of material that is intended to be used for such offences is also
itself an offence"
from: http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/bd/2004-05/05b
Serious Responsibility (Score:5, Interesting)
So what happens if the person who you gave access to does something illegal (child porn for example)? Does the host become responsible, legally and/or morally? Unlike a general, open, free for all access, this individual approach appears to shift more of the responsibility onto the host, who may not be in a good position to make such a judgment. The program apparently has some facilities for doing forensics on the traffic, which then shift even more of the responsibility onto the host. I guess when you're trying to fight a repressive regime, you should be prepared to take on some heavy responsibilities. Kudos to those who are willing to do so.
Re:Serious Responsibility (Score:2)
If the person is in china and attempting to access information that has been censored by the chinese government it doesn't matter if it's kiddie porn or pictures of last year's freedom rally, that person is already breaking the law.
You either accept that censorship of speech is tantamount to enforcement of thought crimes - and resist such tyranny in all its forms even when it offends your delicate western ch
Re:Serious Responsibility (Score:2)
Child pornography might be associated with jail time but more likely with psychological evaluation.
I'd like to think they can distinguish pedophiles...
The Work of the Sweat Hogs? (Score:2, Funny)
They already have a program that does this (Score:3, Informative)
from the take-that-eh dept. (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks for the chuckle
Can you say "open Proxy"? (Score:5, Informative)
It has to be said (Score:2)
Those Canadians [geocities.com] are a bunch of hosers, eh?
international meddling, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
What would the Canadian government think if people in countries with different drug laws started intentionally mailing their drugs, which they consider legal, into Canada? Better yet, what would Canada think if such an action was sponsored by the government of the offending country (Psiphon is coming out of a publicly funded university in Canada).
As another example, currently a hot topic up here is gun violence. Many of the guns get into Canada from the US, where the gun laws are not as strict. Certainly, and rightfully so, the Canadian government would be offended if the US government funded a program with the goal of getting more guns into Canada.
I agree both drugs and guns *can* be much more harmful than information, but if the consequence of having that information is jail sentence in a Chinese prison, then enabling them to access it is something that should not be taken lightly.
Re:international meddling, eh? (Score:2, Interesting)
For 2, I think people who're going to use this type of program will already know full well what the program's intended purpose is, and what the consequences could be. If they still choose to use it, then it is their freewill, and they (should) fully accept the consequenc
Re:international meddling, eh? (Score:2)
Regimes respond by banning the offending receivers (satellite dishes are banned in Saudi Arabia, radio receivers are limited to government-approved frequencies in North Korea), or by using jammers. I don't recall hearing about offic
Re:international meddling, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
So much so, in fact, that he can't tell the difference between free speech and free drugs (that is to say, basic rights and freebasing). Which worries me.
It's not enough simply to excercise your own increasingly limited rights in such a beautifully softspoken manner, while being careful not to tread on the feet of oppressive regimes around the world.
If you stand for freedom--not the flag-waving, foaming-at-the-mouth Americanised version, but actual speech-in-the-wind freedom--you stand for it everywhere, and you aid it everywhere, governments and institutions be damned.
Re:international meddling, eh? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html [un.org]
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
It doesn't appear to mention dr
Peekabooty (Score:3, Informative)
China spammer crackdown (Score:5, Interesting)
There's definitely been some kind of purge since February 5th, when many of these were up.
This is different from a public anonymizing proxy (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is that this is a piece of software which runs on an individual person's computer.
This is more like peer-to-peer than it is like 50,000 people using a well know proxy.
The Chinese government can easily go to google and search for well known anonymizing proxies
and block access to them. What the govt can't do, is find out every IP address on the internet
running this software and block it. The downside of this software is that Chinese users must have
a friend on the outside to run the software, but the upside is that it's vastly less likely that the
Chinese government will be capable of blocking access to it.
Everyone toast the Canadians! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait. we might have to revise this.
Abbreviated version (Score:2)
Wrong approach (Score:2)
So called freedom nations could easily assist in this, if they really had the will to combat the filter regimes. But they won't. Because that would escalate into a foreign policy crisis, since these regimes would consider such
How about you announce how it works??? (Score:2, Insightful)
You can be certain the Chinese firewalls will just start to block 443 and ban encrypted http... What have they got to lose!?
team america? (Score:2, Insightful)
I see this report as America admitting that sometimes, censorship is a prerequisite to peace. And not all news is acceptable in all places at all times.
In relations to this project however, my worry is how this would affect diplomacy.
Moral absolutism (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't write the above (though feel free to disbelieve me), but I know I've struggled with the same question. It's quite true that the CCP's efforts to protect China's conservative values, through censorship, enjoy wide support among the population--just as a majority of French and German citizens support their governments' suppression of Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial, and arguably rightly so.
Certainly I personally wouldn't want to live under such a government, but then, apparently a majority of Chinese wouldn't want to live under ours. Who are we to say they're wrong in their desire to be so nannied?
Thoughts?
Re:Moral absolutism (Score:2)
Dude, I don't want to be rude, but what have you been smoking? Holocaust denial??? If any countries in the world claim it happened and teach it in schools (I remember seeing quite "impressive" movies about it in school when I was around 16), it is France and Germany!
As far as Nazi propangada goes though, it's just the same as these "speeches with the goal to induce racial hatr
Re:Moral absolutism (Score:2)
In other words: 1. The French and German governments suppress Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial. 2. These countries' citizens support this suppression.
Re:Moral absolutism (Score:2)
You call that a fact? Thanks to that censorship, we'll never know for sure, will we?
This reminds me of those 'elections' that were popular in Communist states, where the single candidate always ended up with 100% of the votes.
Who are we to say they're wrong in their desire to be so nannied?
It's not as if the Chinese have a lot to choose under the current regime. And a popular revolt isn't likely, given the results the last time it happened (Mao rose to power)
Re:Moral absolutism (Score:4, Interesting)
Having said that, I think the reason they believe this is largely due to government propaganda. But the fact remains that they do believe it. The whole mishandling of SARS a few years ago helped some people come around to understanding why a free press is beneficial (it was covered up if you'll recall, resulting in the deaths of many who would have otherwise not died) but the vast majority still feel as though there are things that the government should protect them from.
Freedom of Speech is not as valued in most of the world as it is in the US (and recently it's not very much valued there, either.)
Re:Moral absolutism (Score:3, Interesting)
It's quite true that the CCP's efforts to protect China's conservative values, through censorship, enjoy wide support among the population--just as a majority of French and German citizens support their governments' suppression of Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial, and arguably rightly so.
How can the Chinese people have an informed view of whether the censorship is good if they do not know the scope of the suppression of information? And how can they know the scope if that itself is a subject of cens
Re:Moral absolutism (Score:3, Interesting)
I can understand and appreciate your argument, but it becomes a problem when someone living under the Chinese government *doesn't* want to be nannied. Then the question(s) become: shouldn't this person be allowed to live somewhere else where the government is more in line with their values? why s
Obligatory definition (Score:5, Informative)
*cough* (Score:3, Insightful)
Canada = The new America? (Score:2)
Free Speech Fanatism ? (Score:5, Insightful)
We forget so often that the chinese government isn't stupid, and maybe not even evil. They have reasons for why they do what they do. You may disagree with the reasons, of course. But let's not forget that preventing large-scale civil unrest is among them. Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong. But are you ready to gamble a few million lives on that?
The french revolution took maybe 100,000 lives (40k alone went to the guillotine), in a country of about 40 mio. people. Now imagine the body count in a 1200 mio. people country. Add modern firearms and tanks. 3 mio.? 4 mio.? maybe 5 mio. people could die during an all-china civil unrest.
If the chinese leaders are wrong, they are oppressive tyrants who've killed thousands. But if the free speech advocates are wrong, they are rebellion initiators with millions of dead on their consciousness.
China is moving towards more freedom, though at glacial speeds. That is probably too slow. But the demands of the western world for essentially immediate total freedom are very certainly too much, too fast. Change needs time, and a look into our own history books would tell us what the stakes are.
Re:Free Speech Fanatism ? (Score:2)
Yeah I'm sure the Dalai Lama would agree with that.
Re:Canada... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Canada... (Score:2, Interesting)
I recall hearing from Canadian relatives that the CRTC at one time failed to renew the license of a particular radio station because of "offensive" behavior of some of the station's jockeys.
I also remember hearing about how they approved Al Jazeera, but requested that instances of "hate speech" had to be edited out by broadcasters.
Between "hate speech" legislation (itself a very ant
Re:Canada... (Score:3, Interesting)
The issue arises is if people on average think that various instances of censorship is a feature rather than a bug. Now, I would prefer individual-induced boycotts against any stations that a person finds offensive. This could coerce regulation by media companies (monitarily-influenced). A customer should also be able to make a station forbidden unless permitted.
That is what I like about the
Re:Canada... (Score:2)
Re:Canada... (Score:4, Insightful)
The US keeps making laws I have problems with, like the Patriot Act, but then I see the polls which show that most people support them.
Re:Canada... (Score:2)
A free country is a country with a strong constitution, in our case, the first ten ammendments to our constitution.
Re:Canada... (Score:2)
Re:Canada... (Score:2)
Re:Canada... (Score:2)
Re:Canada Fears China (Score:2)
Just thought you might like the reference...
Paul B.
Re:Something important from Canada (Score:2)
Cadillac?
Rolls Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Bristol, TVR...
Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini
Mercedes Benz
Sorry, can't remember the name of the car maker for the politbureau but apparently they're not too bad
Bugatti or even Citroen if you're being picky
Lexus or even Honda
I thought the
Re:Something important from Canada (Score:2)
Re:There are VERY few Internet users in North Kore (Score:2)
http://www.whyy.org/tv12/franklinfacts/apr0402_4.
They don't have electricity there -- let alone computers.
HJ
Re:saudi arabia? (Score:2)
FTN.
Re:Ethnocentric (Score:3, Insightful)
Very well, if that's so, and good luck to them, and I hope they're happy behind their firewall. For those few who don't support censorship, this project exists. It's not as if anybody's forcing them to use it, after all.