Tearing Down China's Great Firewall 410
quadsoft writes to tell us The Toronto Star has a look at three University Toronto computer geeks who are working hard to circumvent the internet censorship problems like those found in China. From the article: "But the computer smarts of Ron Deibert, Nart Villeneuve, and Michael Hull, combined with their passion for politics and free expression, have led them to develop a highly anticipated software program that allows Internet users inside China and other countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Burma, to get around repressive censorship and not get caught."
nice (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, nice find.
Re:nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:nice (Score:3, Informative)
Occam's Razor is not on your side here. Actively censoring email messages is a fairly blatant step which is easily detected. If it were happening, the word would be out.
Additionally, as someone who from time to time works on projects involving Iraq and Iran (
Microsoft & Google should blow up Chinese fire (Score:4, Insightful)
Moreover, I fully expect that the majority of the funding for this Canadian effort will come from Microsoft and Google. I expect that both companies will be (if they are not already) the prime backers of this effort if their management do honestly regret the previous censorship.
I expect nothing of Yahoo. Reporters without Borders declares, "Now we know Yahoo works regularly and efficiently with the Chinese police [rsf.org]". If Buddhism has any validity, the managers (including the Yahoo chief, Jerry Yang) at Yahoo will be receiving their just karma in the next life.
Re:nice (Score:2, Funny)
Well maybe it's because Iran is under the control of Islamofascist assclowns who, while they're not busy enriching uranium for nukes aimed at the west, are waiting with baited breath for the "hidden Imam (pronounced assclown)" to initiate armageddon.
If you have relatives there, encourage them to flee the country because I don't know how much longer it's going to be there. If the US doesn't roll over the place in M1's, the Israeli's are going to nuke it into the stone age. Thousands of y
Re:nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:nice (Score:2, Interesting)
And what's even more ironic is that while the parent poster is worried about the "hidden imam" coming back to initiate armageddon, we already have a wonder-boy in the white house trying to do the same thing.
Iran (Score:5, Insightful)
If the US doesn't roll over the place in M1's, the Israeli's are going to nuke it into the stone age.
Just a few quick points to clarify some aspects of the Iranian situation for our American cousins. An invasion there would not be another Iraq. Iraq was a burned out shell of its former self, militarily, after years of sanctions and inspections. Iran is a whole other kettle of fish, and certainly no one is going to roll over with any time soon. Some facts, from all over:
Iran's army includes 350,000 regular soldiers (non-conscript) and 220,000 conscripts, and a 7 million-strong "Basiji" volunteer militia. Iran is sharpening its abilities to wage a guerrilla war. Over the last year, they've developed their tactics of 'asymmetrical' war, which would aim not at resisting a penetration of foreign forces, but to then use them on the ground to all kinds of harmful effect.
Iran designs and produces its brands of fighter and tank, among other things, some of which it exports to other countries. Initial developments in every field of military technology were carried out with the technical support of Russia, China, and North Korea to lay the foundations for future industries. Iranian reliance on these countries has rapidly decreased over the last decade in most sectors where Iran sought to gain total independence; however, in some sectors such as the Aerospace sector Iran is still greatly reliant on external help.
Iran has, at present, developed an uncanny ability to reverse engineer existing foreign hardware, improve it to its own requirements and then manufacture the finished product. They have currently a full spread of main battlefield systems, about 2,000 tanks, 300 combat aircraft, three submarines, hundreds of helicopters and at least a dozen Russian-made Scud missile launchers. Iran also has an undetermined number of Shahab missiles that have a range of more than 1,500 miles. Within minutes of any attack, Iran's air and sea forces could threaten oil shipments in the Persian Gulf as well as the Gulf of Oman. Iran controls the northern coast of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which oil tankers must navigate, and could sink ships, mine sea routes or bomb oil platforms.
Although the Bush administration charges that Tehran already has been interfering in Iraq, many Iranians brush off the low-level infiltration as minor compared to the damage it could cause by allowing Iraqi militiamen to take heavy weapons into Iran, by backing the most extreme Islamist groups instead of the moderates it now supports, or by dispatching operatives across the long, porous border between the two countries.
But don't worry, a war would be over by christmas, right? Thats why the American government was openly discussing a nuclear option recently, much to the horror of the rest of the world...
On a related note, I have a lot of friends inside Iran, both male and female, and I have been continually surprised at how open minded, educated and free-thinking they are, especially the women. I expected a downtrodden mentality at the very least, but these women engage me in intelligent debate, pulling no punches. Their culture is unique, with musical instruments I have never heard of anywhere else, and some wonderful music produced by these instruments. Its important also to remember, these are not arabs, these are Persians, they tend to get upset if you call them arabs. The food is remarkable, and the language is thousands of years old. Putting aside fox propaganda, and actually talking to Iranians, getting to know them, is an eye opening experience. Yes, they have many problems with the religious rulership of the country, but those problems are being resolved over time. As for their nuclear program, they simply see it as a response to American aggression. And they are right.
Re:5th column factor (Score:5, Insightful)
But it may take sides with the population if it rebels.
However much internal strife there may be in Iran, I think you may rest assured that they are well and truly united against American interference in their government. The divide and conquer method that worked effectively in several countries would not be as effective in Iran, especially after Iraq. And I mentioned that they can turn up the heat on America just as much by arming extremist Islamic factions in Iraq with serious firepower, not just IEDs. And American forces are already stretched in Iraq as it is, so not only would they be facing a well organised military force, they would have to suppress a violent insurgency in an already conquered land, threatening supply lines and established bases.
U.S. censorship of private emails to/from Iran? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have never heard of the USG actively censoring private email that wasn't to or from a serviceperson or that wasn't directly national security related (e.g., all the email to and from submariners and probably other Navy personnel afloat passes through censors who remove sensitive or geographically revealing information). Even then, they're pretty obvious about it.
If this is actually happening, yours is the first case I've heard of, and while I don't claim to be all-knowning (or even close to it) I consider myself pretty well-read in terms of current events
Re:nice (Score:2)
They did the same with email from iraq before the invasion (and quite possibly still do).
Re:nice (Score:3, Informative)
Sure the phone calls probably get listened in on, but nothing is getting censored.
Not get caught? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, because it's different things (Score:3, Insightful)
Well that means it's excellent for keeping things from being snooped on. SSH is a good example of this. When you connect to an SSH server the computers exchange a private key (encrypted using public key crypto) and then encrypt everything with
Re:Sure, because it's different things (Score:4, Insightful)
The trick will be making it look legit (Score:3, Insightful)
As for how to mask it, not my department, just pointing out why using crypto to keep a third party out is different than trying to use it to keep the recipient out.
Re:Sure, because it's different things (Score:2)
True but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:True but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sure, because it's different things (Score:5, Informative)
The reason the private key is called so is becasuse it is never transmitted. It stays on the machine that came up with it.
Here's how it works, and we can assume both machines do the same thing for each other. One comp comes up with a private key and public key pair, where things encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the private key (and not with the public). Then, the machine can send the public key plaintext (or with some other form of encryption, which we can assume can be cracked much easier than the key pair cryptosystem we're using for the bulk of the data). The receiving machine uses the public key to encrypt it's data and sends the encrypted data.
Now if we assume any transmitted data can be evesdropped upon, the hacker has our public encryption key and the encrypted data... but he doesn't have the private encryption key! The data is useless to him! (Unless the key pair is weak, the data is weak, or the hacker has the hardware to brute force keys, but we'll assume the users are smart enough to avoid the first two and the cryptosystem uses a long enough key to make the last one futile.) The first computer gets the encrypted data and decrypts it with the private key.
A similar process, reversed, is used in certificates. They are encrypted with a private key, and the public key is made available. Assuming sufficient mechanisms are in place to assure that the public key does in fact belong to the original computer, any message decryptable with the public key shows that the message must have originated from the only legitimate computer with the private key.
Re:Sure, because it's different things (Score:3, Insightful)
Nitpick of the nitpick (Score:4, Informative)
Also you shouldn't refer to signing and verification as "encryption" and "decryption" because they're semantically very different things. Both RSA encryption and RSA verification use the RSA public-key operation, but to be secure they must also use padding and the padding system for an encryption scheme will be different than that for a signature scheme. It's also bad to use the same key as an encryption and as a signing key.
As a last nitpick, AFAIK there are no PK systems for which brute force is the most effective attack. If such a scheme existed it could use really short keys, like the 128-bit keys used in symmetric cryptosystems. Every PK system I know of uses keys at least twice that length.
No I think you are confused (Score:3)
As a practical matter, all public key crypto I've ever encountered uses private key crypto too because it's much less computationally i
Re:Not get caught? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is mathematically impossible to have an unbreakable DRM, whereas unbreakable (or at least impractical) encryption is possible. The difference is that DRM requires the computer of the potential snooper to have both the data and the decryption key. Encryption keeps the private key only in trusted hands.
CSS was first cracked when a program forgot to encrypt and hide its decryption key. From there they could mathematically solve CSS so that you didn't even need a key (and that's where you get the 4-line Perl DeCSS).
Re: (Score:2)
Admin's priveledge? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Admin's priveledge? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you allow a user to make a connection -- particularly an encrypted connection -- to an untrusted computer outside the network (or at least out of your controlled zone), they can basically get to whatever content they want, that's available to them from that outside connection.
As the administrator, all you can do is play an endless game of cat and mouse, trying to close these connections down; in the end you'll always be one step behind though, unless you have a very selective whitelist of allowed connections, and block everything else.
Re:Admin's priveledge? (Score:4, Insightful)
So how do we keep China from increasing it's isolation to a whitelist only firewall when this or similar software comes out? Economically, having a China Whitelisted website outside the PRC might become enough of a business asset that companies would conform to them instead of China conforming to the west. That's already happened.
Re:Admin's priveledge? (Score:2)
The lowest levels of employees can often be cut off from the outside world entirely but once you get beyond that to people who actually have to solve problems and create things or are expected to work from home and therefore need outside communication for work (e.g. to obtain datasheets, request samples, look for other people who have hit similar problems
Yes, or, why I'm glad to be an at-will employee. (Score:5, Insightful)
My personal feeling, given the work that I do, is that if I can't trust someone to not look at porn from his desk, I certainly can't trust them to make a presentation to a client or handle sensitive information which they could probably sell to a competitor for a not insignificant amount of cash (and, later, lots and lots of court-imposed fines for damages--but I don't expect someone who lacks the foresight to realize that pornography is going to get them fired to realize that leaking trade secrets will land them in court).
I would much rather figure out that I hired/was-assigned the wrong person because I walked up behind him one day and found him looking at porn, than after he did something really publicly embarrassing. Someone who doesn't implicitly get that it's not okay to look at porn while on company time, is not somebody I want to work with; full stop. It shows a lack of separation of one's personal life and business life, or at the minimum a great lack of understanding of the business world, which it is not an employer's job to rectify.
There seem to be a lot of companies that spend an awful lot of resources, from what I've read here on Slashdot, trying to control what their employees do online. It seems to me that those same resources would be better spent figuring out why they're hiring such dolts, and attracting and retaining quality people who don't need baby-sitting. Perhaps that's more expensive, but it makes for a much more pleasant workplace.
Re:Yes, or, why I'm glad to be an at-will employee (Score:2)
And more importantly did you post this while at work?
Web browsing at work can at times be a grey area. There are resources I find useful directly related to my work, and some other resources that I may seem to waste time on, but help to improve my skill set / domain knowledge.
Re:Yes, or, why I'm glad to be an at-will employee (Score:3, Insightful)
Where I work, a certain amount of personal browsing is accepted, and a fair number of people even use AIM to talk to their families at home from the office as well, and that's never been a problem that I've heard of. (As far as I know, there aren't any other Slashdotters in my midst; fantasy sports leagues seem to be more my coworkers' fare.) If you do good work, it's been my experience that people don't really care what you do to produce it, or really even how much time yo
Re:Admin's priveledge? (Score:2)
Tearing Down? (Score:5, Insightful)
To use a Berlin Wall analogy, what TFA is proposing is sneaking across to the West during the 80s and hoping to not be shot in the process. That contrasts quite strongly to tearing down the wall, which would be granting unrestricted access without fear of recrimination, as happened in Berlin in '89.
Re: Tearing Down? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's all about the people being able to call bullshit on their government when necessary, and to find out what the facts are, not the lies the government wants you to believe are facts.
Re: Tearing Down? (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter how many holes you punch, repressive governments use fear to keep the majority in line. Governments can never directly control 100% of the population. By making an example out of a minority of people, the majority will fall into line like sheep. Then the key is isolating those who do not fall in line through public stigma (control of education, patriotism, etc). Look at how many people far for accepting repressive laws in the name of fighting terrorism and ensuring global freedom.
It's all about the people being able to call bullshit on their government when necessary, and to find out what the facts are, not the lies the government wants you to believe are facts.
It's hard enough to do that in "open" western democracies.
Re: Tearing Down? Act of War? (Score:4, Interesting)
Suppose China uses its wide snooping infrastructure to log who's circumventing, who's funding them, and (aside from the citizens of China who want knowledge for information and not for overthrow purposes) who's benefitting from this (namely, the US government), then suddenly and capriciously says: "You, you, and you... you're the assholes behind this; effective IMMEDIATELY, your permit to conduct business here is revoked. You have one WEEK to pack up and get OUT. Not just you, but the FIRST FIVE levels of any subsidiaries and first THREE extensions of business partners. If you can't get your hardware out, then auction it off. Oh, and leave the buildings intact. You can't leave until we've inspected them for bombs, sabotage, or similar Saddam-shoots-the-horse-rather-than-returning-it-a live tactic..."
Personally, I am disappointed that coarse, harsh, and such penetrative domestic means are used against the population. But, you've GOT to see it China's way: They've been FUCKED WITH by the west (US and Europeans) as far back as 580 years: Opium, colonialization, subjugation, exploitation and more. I dare say that had not Commodore Peary showed up with some politicians' writ: "You will do business with us OR ELSE", Japan might not have had yet another reason to sprawl all over and do what it did to much of Asia. (However, how many people know that Korea actually invaded Japan, not once, but at least TWICE, in 1281 and 1284? Memories of a nation can span hundreds of years, and paranoid countries can be wary and vengeful, even if it takes 641 years to effect vengeance...).
But, I also feel that forcibly punching through and digging under a countries virtual customs borders to be tantamount to waging a stateless if not de facto war against various organs of a government.
Now, don't get me wrong: I do realize that China has a effective (how effective I don't know...) apparatus which is aiming computer resources at various governments around the world. It in itself is not a nice act, but unless and until anyone PROVES that China is actively knocking off US power grids or using proxies to do so, then PLEASE don't pull punches and equate military-military/government-to-government probes and studies to commercial/private venture proxy wars in the name of "democracy". (OTOH, how many have heard that the US CIA pressure on Vietnam to root out Communists was so intense that the VN actually rounded up and murdered some 1,800 innocent (and maybe a few dozen bona fide anti-US types) people PER MONTH for a few years? Talk about BAD KARMA. Obviouisly, that pressure is immensely worse than funding a business-to-government action like rending firewalls, but it's an historical wound many prefer to leave salved over...)
Whatever you think of China, Communism, oppression, and other things, look at your own back yards, too. Virtually EVERY country has bones in the closet and enough bad karma to warrant an occasional kick in the gut, smack in the face, or public humiliation, and the US is CERTAINLY not immune, not matter HOW MUCH "contribution" it makes internationally. NO country makes contributions without first scheming and then codifying a "hook-in-your-ass-to-control-you" tactic. IOW, NOTHING IS DONE FOR FREE.
I DON'T like censorship (unless it is to prevent a DIRE, GENUINE release of REAL/EXISTING national secrets, not some trumped up bullshit charges or to prevent embarassment...) or oppression (unless it's being carried out by publicly-routed corrupt politicians or power mongers), but I don't condone rambunctious or strategized abuse of the values of a country. The Chinese deal with their cultural, their local issues their OWN way. It may take another 25 years, but at SOME point, China's government of today will be somewhat if not a great degree different from what it is today. The US and its friends just need to quit being control freaks and have to accept that it IS NOT RIGHT for a junior land of some 325M to dictate or monk
Mod parent UP (Score:2)
L@@K: eBay ad circa 2016!!! (Score:3, Funny)
For sale: geniune piece of the great firewall of China.
Includes GENUINE certificate of authenticity.
You heard it here first.
Re: Tearing Down? (Score:2)
Geek Show? (Score:3, Interesting)
However if China's Great Firewall is so great, how do third-parties come to your rescue if the work they helped you to do still cannot get through?
For example, this search-by-email [imoou.com] site seems to bypass google.cn censorship, but what if
Because the firewall isn't great (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm actually supprised how lax their firewall is in general. For example they allow encrypted traffic out of the country. When my mom went over to China to teach English, she warned everyone not to say anything untoward about the government there. While they'd probably not hassle a foriegner who was there on their invataion for that, you never know. I figured she'd be getting a Chinese e-mail box and thus the worry. Nope, she just used her US one via webmail, which was 256-bit AES encrypted. There is no way they were spying on that, and yet they did nothing to filter it from anywhere.
The reason is, of course, it had never made theri "bad site" list. Why would it? It's a webmail page for a US ISP. I'm sure almost noone visits it. However, she could have been funneling all manner of things through that, had she wanted to, and they never would have been the wiser.
So unless China shuts down crypto out of the country, which they won't do because it would cripple business, they'll be hard pressed to stop those determined to circumvent their firewall.
Article full of holes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Article full of holes (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure by the context that they mean ssl.
Re:Article full of holes (Score:2)
It's to a selected group; not available to anyone (eg police) who's interested. Which is still advertising, but the writer was trying to simplify.
exactly what separate network is this
HTTPS.
See Psiphon: Analysis and Estimation [third-bit.com].
This will lead to a false sense of security (Score:3, Insightful)
If the police suspect anybody in your circle of friends, couldn't they do any of the following to break into the circle of trust and monitor your activities:
(1) Sneak into your associates' houses and install hidden monitoring software directly into their HTTPS stacks on their computers.
(2) Coerce your associates into providing them with access to their activities
(3) Use social engineering to convince you to let them into your cir
Re:This will lead to a false sense of security (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, of course. The idea is to allow people to access blocked websites relatively easily despite blocks; not to allow people who are already under suspicion to operate with impunity. Any targetted surveillance, eg just seizing their PC, installing keyloggers, etc, is going to get them. Just having this software installed is going to get you in trouble if you weren't already. Also it doesn't protect your email, u
Re:This will lead to a false sense of security (Score:2)
Re:Article full of holes (Score:5, Informative)
Using SSL is a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
First, the very fact of using encryption makes you stand out in the crowd. Do that a bit too often, and someone could very well come knock on your door.
Second, SSL can be defeated. I am pretty sure that all PC in China have a Chinese Government Certification Authority listed in their SSL root file. That is enough for mounting a man-in-the-middle attack against SSL. Now you have dissidents who believe they are safe because of SSL, but in fact the firewall is reading their exchanges. Knock, knock?
The article actually points to a much better solution: just use port 80, but rewrite the page to avoid the keywords that the firewall is looking for. For example, "New York Times" could be rewritten to "New Grok Dime", or whatever. That way, the traffic remains stealthy.
Re: using SSL -- MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
If the Chinese govt. wants to shut this down, they simply require financial institutions to "register" their subdomains at both ends (a whitelist, in effect), or, even more simply, require financial traffic to be port-shifted.
But you overestimate the effectiveness of trying to circumvent keyword restrictions. Keywords are the least effective of the three primary methods the Great Firewall uses.
Method 1: keywords.
Method 2: whole-site blacklists (wikipedia, bbc, etc. etc.)
Met
Re:Using SSL is a bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
No, no, no. This would let the Chinese government impersonate a server that has an SSL certificate that's signed by the Chinese government's CA. For example, the Chinese government could set up a phishing site for the bank of China without anyone noticing
I doubt the subserves have their secret SSL proxies registered with the government, so this point is irrelevant to them. They are probably using a trust model like SSH (refuse to connect if the host key has changed), or PGP (web-of-trust).
> Second, SSL can be defeated.
Sure, after nearly all the open problems in mathematics are solved. If you know of someone who's done this, there's several million dollars (and immortality) waiting for them.
If you want to "defeat SSL", it's probably easier to just use a rubber hose to beat to death anyone who uses it.
Re:Using SSL is a bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that you and the parent are making different assumptions about how the client end is implemented.
In a simple implementation, you might login onto your computer in China and open the Goodole Autoproxy Program. GAP updates, say, your Firefox preferences and configures Firefox to route all requests through the HTTPS-based proxy, goolole.canada.org. When you try to open a web page, Firefox tries to connect to the proxy with HTTP/SSL. The Great Firewall intercepts the request and relays it to cryptodemon.china.bad. cryptodemon automatically generates a phony certificate and signs it using the Chinese government CA. The phony certificate is returned to Firefox, which tries to validate it. Firefox finds that the Chinese government CA is in its database of trusted CA's, so the certificate is accepted.
However, the article doesn't provide any details about Psiphon's implementation, and it's not rational to say that their system is or isn't well-designed.
Re:Article full of holes (Score:2)
Exactly what separate network is this that is somehow being joined to the Internet?
Reporter: "So why can't the government spy on this?"
Geek: "We're using 128 bit SSL encryption, which is completely unbreakable."
Reporter: "What's that?"
Geek: "It's the same stuff that bank networks use to secure their data, and the ki
shhh... (Score:3, Funny)
good going tho, im all abouts free speechez n stuff...
Tor, sponsored by the EFF anybody? (Score:3, Informative)
I found http://www.third-bit.com/2004-fall/psiphon_ae.htm
(I live in Toronto. I want to go find these guys and slap them.)
Re:Tor, sponsored by the EFF anybody? (Score:2)
I use ssh port forwarded to squid at home.
It must have to do with switching hosts at regular intervals to confuse the opposition.
I wonder if their stuff is open sourced? That way we could all chip in.
Cheers,
-D
Another weapon in the censorship arms race (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me start by saying I applaud these guys' motivation. Circumventing censorship is certainly a worthy goal in the name of individual freedom. However, this is just another step toward that goal, though TFA gives these hackers status approaching messianic. The paragraph I found most interesting:
(emphasis mine)
First of all, to claim a new tool for defeating censorship is "nearly fail-safe" does not give the Chinese and other goverments enough credit. China hass a government heavily invested (financially and emotionally in terms of propaganda) in controlling information sources available to its people. I'm sure they will try very hard to make sure this tool is rendered ineffective. Here's hoping they don't achive this; but you can be sure they will try hard.
Secondly, the technical side is somewhat dubious. It relies on "close friends and family" in friendly countries such as Canada -- but what if all your friends and family are living in China? And even if you make a secure, encrypted connection, how long before the censor get suspicious? Say encryption is declared illegal, and all external access has to go through certain proxies. Where does that leave Psiphon ?
These are just my two cents on the issue. I'd like it to work, but it may just cause the net to tighten (no pun intended).
They better be 100% sure (Score:2, Insightful)
Those comp sci students better know what they are doing. If someone gets caught using their software to circumvent government censorship, people could die. P
Re:They better be 100% sure (Score:3, Insightful)
>change of government.
Right, so who is forcing the chinese to use this software?
Re:They better be 100% sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine this. You have some 19 or 20 year old college student in China who wants democoracy. He is not a computer whiz, but he finds software written by 3 programmers from the USA. These programmers say their software will circumvent government censorship.
What choices does the 19 year old Chinese college student have? Say he uses the software expecting to hide his identity, and the government discovers who he is. Does that make the software programers wrong for releasing the software? In the USA, if someone purchases software that doesn't live up to the hype, they can return it. In China, that guy is dead or in jail.
Now if no such software existed, the guy in China couldn't get into trouble. It would require more thought, and better orginization than just installing some software.
I'm just saying if someone is going to throw out a tool for people to use, which a government says is illegal, those people making the tool should be damn sure the tool works.
This goes to a deeper discussion of how much right does one culture have a right to change a different culture. Maybe in China most people really want communism. But 10% want democoracy. Should the USA help those 10% to overthrow the system of government in China, and to destabilize their economy?
I'm not a historian, but most stable countries that changed systems of government had a revolt which originated by native people. In France, it was the working class that overthrew the nobility. In the USA, it was farmers and working people who overthrew the british. In neither case was the revolution inspired or promoted by a forigen power. Sure, the people found friends and allies, but the allies didn't cause the revolution. Now contrast to Iraq where the USA is the source of the revolution. There are not enough Iraqi people who believe in USA values to sustane any form of stable government. That is the reason outside nations should not interfear.
Now, what if the government of China finds people using the software these three USA programmers wrote. China find this software violates their laws. Can China arrest those programmers. Or send operatives to kill them? The Israelis often send mussad agents to track and assasinate people who are not friendly to their nation.
It seems to me to be an unfreindly move by the USA to help dissadents in China.
Re:They better be 100% sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Fighting criminals is dangerous, but it's worth the risk. The people helping the dissidents need to do the best they can on the software, but the possibility of failure or disaster shouldn't deter them from trying. Even if the software is flawed, it may save a Chinese programmer a lot of time by serving as a base that can be improved upon.
Re:They better be 100% sure (Score:2, Insightful)
Certainly culture and sovereign interests need to be respected, but it comes down to a question of is what they are doing right or wrong? Denying your people the truth and the ability to make actual informed decisions for themselves is wrong, at least by my standards. And, it certainly doesn't erode
Re:They better be 100% sure (Score:3, Insightful)
That's pure bullshit. I think our many distinguished war veterans, not to mention our peacekeepers, who are currently engaged in Afghanistan, and who have served in many war torn areas in an attempt to provide stability and security, would beg to differ. Do we unilaterally invade other countries? No. But that hardly makes us apathetic.
Re:They better be 100% sure (Score:2, Interesting)
I will concede that point, with a "but". The problem of course is what is considered a basic human right or not? My point of view is obviously west-biased, where I enjoy a great deal of freedoms and rights, many of which are not available in other countries. This is one of the few topics where I am willing to take a stand and present an opinion that a forward thinking natio
Re:They better be 100% sure (Score:2)
I think you've strained this analogy past the breaking point. How is invading a foreign country analogous to helping political dissidents communicate safely?
Imagine if the people of amsterdam decided that drugs should be more available in the USA. Should they help Americans break the law inside the borders of the USA?
Sure, why not? If they believe drug laws are unjust, then it makes sense for them to help Americans circumve
Re:They better be 100% sure (Score:2, Funny)
Nonononono - they don't die; the government just publicly says that "they cannot be found" (after the government has privately gotten to them).
Nations and Cultures have no rights (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not one world where all people believe the same things. One nation should be allowed to keep its culture, even if another nation disagrees.
Nations and cultures do not have rights, indnviduals have rights, but the statement above is implying just the opposite. It also implies that individual rights are just some kind of culturial thing, and not inherent. What about HK? their culture strongly respects rights. But China does not want to respect those at all. Funny how Chineese citizens who go to HK seem to adjust in a matter of days.
Hey, "if not us, then who? if not now, then when?" This has nothing to do with US policy, it has to do with us and if we are willing to help people looking for freedom.
In later news... (Score:2, Funny)
Mr. Hu, tear down this wall! (Score:2, Flamebait)
Now, tearing down the firewall would be the easiest thing in the world. It just requires a collaborate effort between governments in the West, or at least some powerful companies in the West, namely to host servers for distributed protocols a la Tor and s
Re:Mr. Hu, tear down this wall! (Score:2)
It wouldn't kill many people, but you won't ever see such an effort. I leave it as an exercise to figure out why.
Strength in numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Strength in numbers (Score:2)
Similar to peekbooty? (Score:2)
How is this effort different than peekabooty? [sourceforge.net]
How this is different from peekabooty (Score:3, Funny)
Difference: peekabooty is not vapourware (Score:2)
Best. Headline. Ever. (Score:2, Funny)
You have to wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
Go over the firewall with satellites (Score:4, Interesting)
Welcome new Chinese Netizens! (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, I'm just looking at the boobies too.
Traffic analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
* Communicates on port 443 (SSL)
* Only a few Chinese computers ever connect to the foreign proxy
* Those that do connect, tend to do so extensively.
So the Chinese see this pattern and block the proxy or worse.
As an alternative countermeasure, would it be feasible for the Great Wall to act as a man-in-the-middle on all SSL connections which cross it?
Re:Traffic analysis (Score:2)
Re:Traffic analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
As I understand it, not unless the initiator of the connection knows which host key to trust. If you don't distribute a trusted set of host keys by another method, then the MITM can just emulate both sender and receiver, and intercept all communications.
That's why your ssh client will save a list of trusted hosts, ask you to authenticate new hosts, and give a big warning when the key for an IP doesn't match what's on file. It's also w
I Live in China and hack the firewall every day (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless the gov't is specifically spying on you this is more than enough.
Let us look from the perspective of ethnic Chinese (Score:4, Interesting)
You know how many of them were disseidents, that is expressed even slightest dissatisfaction with Chinese government? None. Including Taiwanese.
For me it is clear indication that the weakness of Chinese opposition is a result of genuine destaste of Chinese to all sort of revolutions in favor of a piecemeal balanced development, not information blackout.
May be westerners should get themselves a break for a change and let Chinese decide what to do with the country?
What is with this Kiplingian (Kiplinguesque) "burden of a white man"? It is XXI century already... Stop revolving other peoples lives!
Great Firewall of China (Score:2, Funny)
Collateral damage (Score:2, Interesting)
They should be very worried about that! This tactic frames owners of the unprotected computers. How many will be investigated or even arrested because somebody used their computer to access forbidden sites? It is one thing to have willing accomplices who accept
Little understanding of China... (Score:5, Insightful)
One is that many people in a place like China are not even aware they're being censored, says Geist. Even if they are, he predicts, few will make the attempt to get around it. Qiang notes that even young urban males, the greatest beneficiaries of China's economic boom, are reluctant to rock the boat and risk their wealth.
Beyond that, the vast majority of users in China do not own their own computers - they spend their time in internet cafes... which means they're even less likely to have the proxy program. While its a huge topic outside of China, in China itself its not an issue at all.
The only way to tear down the Great Firewall of China is for the regime to collapse.
hmm, ssh might work better (Score:2)
SSH has a SOCKS proxy built in, is on a large number of boxes by default, and everybody has to leave the port open anyhow because the only other option would be to use unencrypted access protocols and administration which would leave computer networks vulnerable.
Perhaps having public ssh accounts on secure VM's with a method of decentralized authentication or standardized access rules would work better. In theory they could even use full fledged x-windows apps over the internet leaving no trace of their ac
Dupe! (Score:2)
Not to be negative but... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the paper I am sure it is a noble goal "freedom of speech" but de facto you are publishing way to go around china law. So how would you fee if China did the same to US law ?
This might sound like a troll, but this is an earnest question : many country are feeling sick of US interventionnism from its governement, or from its citizen... Furthermore , you know the proverb "do not do unto me what you would like to be done by me unto you".
PS: feel free to mod me as flamebait or troll, I always like irony (cue to the discussion theme).
Re:Not to be negative but... (Score:4, Interesting)
You ask a good question if we refine the example a bit. Imagine citizen activism against a foreign government's unjust laws. Take your drug example, and ask how the US government would react to Chinese citizens creating covert systems for delivering medical marijuana to the US.
Re:Not to be negative but... (Score:3, Insightful)
While I recognise the obvious other problems with that content the basic principle is the same, you're trying tobreak another country's laws simply because you disagree with them. It's basically trying to imprint your morals on the world, something it's fair to say western countries have been accused of before.
I'm very uneasy about this.
Propaganda. (Score:3, Insightful)
Their stories are tailored to a certain head-space. They don't present news so much as they filter ideas and pre-digest them for a bunch of working parents raising kids. The Star is basically just a really fat daily edition of, "For Better or For Worse." (--Or, "How to accept slavery and severely limited possibilities in life while pretending you are happy and that there is nothing more.")
Poor Lynn Johnston. She's a shill and doesn't know it. That's the best way to subvert a populace; get genuine and honest creators to believe in the lie and then repeat it with charisma and talent. There's a reason why, "For Better or For Worse" is the MOST popular comic strip in North America. It's morphine for the wounded.
The problem is that The Star, (and papers like it), are direct arms of the corporate paradigm, which are linked to all kinds of nastiness. Whenever a paper uses emotionally charged terminology when sharing facts, you automatically know that biases are involved. The fact that it's so bald-faced is an indicator of just how far the people have been subverted.
For example. . .
"But the computer smarts of Ron Deibert, Nart Villeneuve, and Michael Hull, combined with their passion for politics and free expression, have led them to develop a highly anticipated software program that allows Internet users inside China and other countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Burma, to get around repressive censorship and not get caught."
The average person if they were to read the same phrase usage in a Chinese newspaper, would gag and cry, "Propaganda!" but when it's displayed right in their hometown paper, it's suddenly invisible while retaining all of its subversive power.
So is there an Agenda? Hell, yes! I wonder how exactly the Toronto Star is going to spin Bush's military strikes against Iran?
That's right! Iraq all over again. Baseless lies about war ambitions spun into a such a fear frenzy that the cozy suburban family provider will shudder at the very thought and willingly go along with corporate fascism. Same old story.
Our 'Liberal Media' is designed to make us stupid.
-FL
Re:Ahem. Burma? (Score:2)
Fine (Score:2)
Re:Is this really helping? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Geeks and Nerds (Score:2)
Re:This sounds utterly stupid (NOT) (Score:3, Informative)
However since they are using encrypted traffic, I suspect their biggest threat would be identification of suspicious or unusual Internet traffic patterns. A Wi-Fi connection to an unsecured router could solve that problem.
The other concern would be government officials checking out the proxy server and determining it's purpose. Since the approach is to send the server information to friends/family, one could set the server to only connect to certa