China Cuts Off Some VPNs 222
jaa101 writes The Register (UK) and the Global Times (China) report that foreign VPN services are unavailable in China. A quote sourced to "one of the founders of an overseas website which monitors the Internet in China" claimed 'The Great Firewall is blocking the VPN on the protocol level. It means that the firewall does not need to identify each VPN provider and block its IP addresses. Rather, it can spot VPN traffic during transit and block it.' An upgrade of the Great Firewall of China is blamed and China appears to be backing the need for the move to maintain cyberspace sovereignty.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Right. International business will be kept out of China because it's required to conform to local laws regarding internet access.
In other news, international business will be kept out of EU because of customer protection legislation and out of US because of danger posed by gun culture and gun laws.
Said no one with a clue, ever. On any of those points. Internationally ran businesses judge their presence in the target country based on profits and risks. Thing mentioned above are categorised as "risks", and as
Re: (Score:3)
Right. International business will be kept out of China because it's required to conform to local laws regarding internet access.
In other news, international business will be kept out of EU because of customer protection legislation and out of US because of danger posed by gun culture and gun laws.
Said no one with a clue, ever. On any of those points. Internationally ran businesses judge their presence in the target country based on profits and risks. Thing mentioned above are categorised as "risks", and as long as profits are greater than risks, which they will be in China for foreseeable future, risks will be mitigated through things like usage of local services that aren't blocked in China, providing the necessary support to users in EU and so on.
It depends on exactly what they are blocking. If they're blocking corporate VPNs, it will just make companies even less willing to trust the security of systems in China. Hint: they're not willing to trust that security now. Any major foreign corporation that keeps source code in China now is nuts.
Re: (Score:2)
Certainly. Which is a risk. Which needs to be mitigated, just like the other example I provide, exposure to support and warranty claims made in EU.
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
Where I work, you don't do anything with company-owned data unless it's on the corporate VPN.
It's one of the world's 5 largest software companies, does billions in business in the PRC annually, and it's not Microsoft or Apple.
I do not think when I visit China next month that I will find the corporate VPN blocked. It certainly isn't being blocked right now for my colleagues who live there.
Re:Well (Score:4, Informative)
Greetings from China. I don't live here, just working here for a few months.
Corporate VPNs work just fine.
Many non corporate VPNs work just fine too.
Actually I'm not seeing any problem. Both my OpenVPN connection on TCP port 443 (good luck blocking something like that without breaking the internet), and my PPTP connections to a Canadian VPN I subscribed to before I left still work just fine. L2TP has been sketchy from the get go but that was listed in the VPN's FAQ as well. Also China appears to throttle UDP traffic quite heavily so TCP based connections to the USA seem to be most reliable for me.
Basically I haven't seen any change in the past month or so.
Re: (Score:2)
OpenVPN is trivially identifiable on port 443, and has been for some time. Im not sure why theyre not blocking you-- perhaps you're using a site-to-site tunnel with static keys. Certificate-based OpenVPN is notoriously unreliable in China because they fingerprint it within about 20 minutes and kill the connection.
Part of the reason I know it can be fingerprinted-- aside from the fact that Im well aware of what works and doesnt behind the GFW-- is that Im good buddies with my employer's security team, and
Re: (Score:2)
out of US because of danger posed by gun culture and gun laws
This "danger" keeps violent crime at less than 1/7 the level of UK, comparing New York to London (similar population, similar percentage of "bad" minorities, etc).
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Where did you get that BS from? Fox News?
Hint, I think that you have the ratio the wrong way round.
Re: (Score:2)
It's probably to do with a difference in standards.
UK: violent crime is someone bumping too hard into someone else on the street.
US: unless someone is killed, it doesn't even make the statistics.
So that ratio of London 7 vs New York 1 sounds about right.
Re: (Score:2)
US "violent crime" includes Robbery, Rape, Assault, and Homicide. Note that guns, in and of themselves, are not relevant to "violent crime". It can be "violent" with a gun, a knife, or a pillow over the face of the victim....
I'm curious, what else does the UK count as "violent crime" ?
Re: (Score:3)
Hi, kids! It's time once again for that old Slashdot favourite, Meme #537, "[citation needed]".
A casual Google search for "crime rate new york city vs london" yields indicators that NYC has about 4 times the rate of homicides and other violent crime than London, as of last year.
The TL;DR version: "I think you're making stuff up."
Re: (Score:2)
Interestingly enough, when I used your search terms, I didn't get the results you got.
Three times the rate of HOMICIDES for New York, but about the same for rape and vehicle theft.
Of course, vehicle theft is NOT "violent crime" in the USA.
And the other links shown on the first page of your search don't seem to agree with you that New York had "about 4 times the rate of homicides and other violent crime than London, as of last year"...
Re: (Score:2)
in London, you get in a fight and you get a broken arm or a broken nose
in New York City, you get in a fight and you get a body bag
whenever the homicide rate of the USA is compared to other Western countries, NRA propagandized morons change the subject and counter about *violence*. as if *violence* is the same as *homicide*
frankly, i'd love the violence rate in the usa to go up and the homicide rate to go down. because a broken arm is not a body bag
and you get that with better gun control
but too many of my f
Re: (Score:2)
go to google news
type in "shooting"
and let's dip into the ocean today
http://www.newsday.com/news/ne... [newsday.com]
http://www.post-gazette.com/lo... [post-gazette.com]
http://www.ketv.com/news/omaha... [ketv.com]
http://www.twincities.com/crim... [twincities.com]
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2015... [cbslocal.com]
http://www.whsv.com/home/headl... [whsv.com]
etc.
etc.
tomorrow it will be another collection of dozens of shootings
every fucking day in the usa. oh it happens in other countries. at a much lower rate. because they make guns harder for douchebags to get
the usa enjoys no amazing lower rate of
Re: (Score:2)
Dude, all of England (aka: 56 million people) had 560 murders last year in 2013. NYC (8-9 million range) was crowing about 333.
I don't know where you got that number from, but I suspect it was from somebody who was skilled at the art of BS.
Re: (Score:2)
You're cherry-picking a single crime where NYC leads. In every other field, London wins handily. Compare: 1 [wikipedia.org] vs 2 [wikipedia.org].
I'd take a tiny chance to get murdered over not being able to walk in the middle of the city without being robbed or assaulted. Living in Poland, I have so far been robbed twice and assaulted 7 times (once with an injury), and murdered... still not even a single time. And by statistics, my chances to do so are really, really slim.
And these stats ignore the fact that murders happen predominant
Re: (Score:2)
You can't compare anything but murder because the categories are different. I personally have been the victim of two crimes which would be reported as violent crime in England, which I reported to the local cops, but were not included in these statistics. In addition to these two crimes I mentioned, my sister has been mugged three times in DC and NYC.
If you want a anti-gun-control person's takedown of this particular statistic I refer you to:
http://blog.skepticallibertari... [skepticallibertarian.com]
Re: (Score:2)
risks will be mitigated through things like usage of local services that aren't blocked in China, providing the necessary support to users in EU and so on.
You're probably right. That being said, all my developer friends in China use VPNs to access things like Github.
I know there are alternatives to Github, but really this is becoming an annoyance for them. It's not like they're artists or political activists, they're just using paid VPN access to get their job done and/or viewing the occasional Hollywood movies.
That's an entire class of people that were already pacified. There was nothing for China to gain by doing that. Blocking the free VPNs should have bee
Re: (Score:2)
I strongly suspect that one of the point behind this is to move business and create jobs in China instead of allowing foreign dominant services to take hold. In which case, this is very much successful.
Re: (Score:2)
AFAIK its technically illegal to have an encrypted laptop in China. Any guesses as to whether my employer, or federal employees, or other major companies just go "oh gee, better turn off disk encryption"?
Businesses arent going to just sacrifice a market, but theyre also not going to blithely let their secrets be stolen upon entry into China or on net usage.
Defective by design. (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't help that most VPNs are so easy to detect and block at the IP header level. PPTP depends on the GRE IP protocol (47), and L2TP is usually tunneled over IPSec, which depends on the ESP IP protocol (50). By using different protocol numbers in the IP headers, the designers of these protocols made it mindlessly easy to block them, and made them harder to support, because routers have to explicitly know how to handle those nonstandard protocol numbers.
Re:Defective by design. (Score:4, Informative)
The last time that I was in China (a couple of years ago), OpenVPN using non-standard ports to my private server was blocked. In the end, I ran OpenVPN over tcp/22 (yes, ugly and slow, but it worked). I don't understand why VPN's were blocked but not SSH. OpenVPN uses UDP (by default), so no obvious protocol numbers to block.
Re: (Score:2)
Two year ago: Openvpn was fine, but webpages of providers were blocked (not a bad strategy...).
Last year: private Openvpn server worked, but connections dropped after ~1Gbyte was transferred, and well known providers were blocked
This year: openvpn was detected (not sure how!) and private server seems to have ended on some "gray" list, ssh connectionsafter that were very slow (although that could coincide with slow internet); sshing to singapore AWS cloud was fine, but i had the feeling that switching betwe
Re: (Score:3)
I'm here now. OpenVPN over TCP/443 works just fine, as does connections on various other ports like TCP/8333 (my current connection).
PPTP is curently not working (but it was about an hour ago), and L2TP currently IS working. But it hasn't really worked reliably since I got here.
Basically I'm not seeing anything new. VPN connections and internet connections to the outside world have been haphazard at best and it's been a guessing game of what protocol and which server will work best on any given day. Though
Re: (Score:2)
By using different protocol numbers in the IP headers, the designers of these protocols [...] made them harder to support, because routers have to explicitly know how to handle those nonstandard protocol numbers.
How do nonstandard protocol numbers make it harder for routers to route the packet? You have the destination IP: just forward the packet already. Oh, you want to be a firewall and block selected traffic or even do deep packet inspection? That's not routing.
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, fair enough. I usually lump firewalls and routers in the same bucket, because outside of backbone hardware, most routers also act as firewalls. The point is that a lot of (badly designed) consumer routers (firewalls) do stupid things like routing only TCP and UDP, or treating those other protocols as "special" under the assumption that VPNs will always be used from the inside out, never from the outside in, resulting in all sorts of fun.
Re: (Score:3)
I envision an SSL hack which connects to a valid SSL server but then turns into a VPN connection.
You mean, http[s] CONNECT? With openvpn as the payload (double encryption might be wasteful, but I'd keep it). You can then multihome over those connections with existing tools to your heart's content.
Re: (Score:2)
nothing new. there are even hacks to have ssh and ssl on the same port.
Re: (Score:2)
My point was that there was no valid reason for each of these VPNs to each use its own transport-layer protocol. A normal, connected TCP socket would have done the job just as easily. Every time someone strays from the expectation that all packets are either TCP, UDP, or ICMP, it means every hardware-based firewall maker (and every software-based firewall IT person) has to do extra work to deal with it, and hardware that worked before suddenly doesn't work or (if you're lucky) requires firmware updates.
I was just there, can verify this is the case. (Score:5, Informative)
I was just in China a few days ago. Was there for 3 weeks prior to that. I have a VPN setup in my apartment back in the US and I typically dial in to it. It was great for the first two weeks and a half weeks. After that, it would fail to authenticate or work really slowly, randomly drop traffic, then disconnect after a minute. I was using a relatively insecure PPTP system with 128 bit encryption. I wasn't worried about getting spied on, I just wanted news, youtube, and social media unblocked.
Frustrated, I had a friend set up a PPTP link at his apartment, using different keys and a different IP. That worked perfectly for the last few days I was in the country. So they're definitely doing some kind of long-term traffic analysis over many days, and then blocking close to real time after that (30-60 seconds).
Basically I got to witness the blockage go into effect. Yes it's real. Yes it's general purpose, not a high level block on specific free websites. Yes it was a huge pain the the ass.
Re: (Score:3)
I was in China last summer. Essentially exactly the same thing happened to me, although I was using SOCKS5/ssh not PPTP. My girlfriend and I subsequently had a hell of a time playing Heroes 3 for Linux remotely even when not using ssh, so they must have shit-listed my IP address. Then, a few months later, everything magically started working again and the ssh proxy my girlfriend was using worked fine. So did Heroes 3, thankfully.
During the shit-listed time, I came across this list: https://www.torprojec [torproject.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure if I'm getting lucky or not but they seem to be pretty haphazard in their approach. For the past few weeks I've been having no problems with PPTP though L2TP has been an issue. Today I can't even connect over PPTP but L2TP seems to be blazingly fast.
In any case OpenVPN over 443 seems to be the most reliable connection which has worked pretty much every time without issue.
Free Trade (Score:2)
If China blocks US VPNs (our exports), why isn't the US considering blocking Chinese goods in return?
If nothing else, it is our own long-term best interests to force China to become more free, as it is the only thing that will prevent them winning a race-to-the-bottom competition on wages.
Re: (Score:2)
why isn't the US considering blocking Chinese goods in return?
Yeah because policy to suddenly raise the cost of goods in America is exactly what is needed during times of economic trouble. I'm sure the general populace would stand behind their president all in the names of improving freedoms in a different country.
Re: (Score:2)
Bullshit. You don't watch Shark Tank.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, sure it would. It would mean that the 90% of Americans who don't work in manufacturing would be paying significantly more for goods (i.e. become significantly poorer) so that the 10% of Americans who do work in manufacturing are doing well.
Why bother with the complex and annoying trade excuse for thi
Re: (Score:2)
Because, fortunately, even the moron-in-chief seems to have more sense than that.
Oh, we can easily prevent the race to the bottom. In fact, you can do it yourself: just look at your paycheck in cents instead of dollars. Se
Re: (Score:2)
What I mean is that, any country which has no democracy has no workers' rights. Therefore, Chinese workers will never effectively demand decent working conditions. This makes them more competitive than the EU/US, and our workers (who rightly expect decent treatment) will be out-competed by cheap labour from contries that abuse their workers. The result is unemployment in the West, and "slave"-labour in the East.
In an unrelated story ... (Score:2)
... the United States government wants to prohibit encryption.
In China right now using a VPN (Score:2, Informative)
I'm a Canadian expat and I've been in China almost 3 years now. They started blocking VPNs over 2 years ago.
I've tried StrongVPN, Astrill, and PIA and found StrongVPN with PPTP usually works pretty well.
OpenVPN will work for about 10 min before becoming unusably slow. L2TP sometimes works but recently (in the last year) becomes too slow.
My guess is they like PPTP because it's flawed and they can break it easily, which I don't care about as long as I can access youtube, facebook, ect. The PRC doesn't care
Registration (Score:2)
TFA says:
VPN services that wish to operate within China are required to register with Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for permission
Would it make sense for corporate VPN to register? I mean the situation where the VPN service is only accessible for non Chineese employees visiting mainland for business purpose.
And if it makes sense, what is the procedure?
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
But when your own Western countries decide to block IS websites which encourage violence and mayhems to Europe / America why you guys never cry foul?
Who is "you guys"? I assure you that not everyone is part of some sort of mindless hivemind just because they live in a certain country. I'm against all censorship, whether it's the US, the EU, or China doing it.
Re:What's the difference between China and EU? (Score:5, Insightful)
Help me understand your point of view. We run liberal democracies here in EU. We do block some things based on cultural expectations, and in some cases, because certain foreign power that shall not be named forces us to do so typically through government corruption on high level as shown in leaks by certain man who now resides in Russia.
But on the principle, we still consider freedom of speech to be of paramount importance, and unblocked internet access to be an important cornerstone of this principle. As you point out we do make some deviations from the principle, but these deviations tend to be based on rather awful historic facts and are very much targeted.
Chinese model is about denying large portions of free speech, such as political non-threatening free speech of political dissidents to improve social cohesion of their society. How is it hypocritical to criticize this aspect of Chinese society from European point of view? We very clearly differ here, and there is no hypocrisy at play. Our blocking is targeted, specific and based on history. It specifically makes a point to avoid suppressing political dissent when at all possible. Chinese is pre-emptive, overly broad and its main intent is suppression of political and social dissent.
I fail to see hypocrisy. Please point out the mistake in my logic and explain how exactly this critique is hypocritical.
Re: (Score:2)
but these deviations tend to be based on rather awful historic facts and are very much targeted.
Perhaps people should fight lies with truth rather than getting government thugs to censor information they don't like.
Re: (Score:2)
That wasn't my question, nor am I interested in an off-topic debate.
Re:What's the difference between China and EU? (Score:4, Interesting)
write on weibo, go to readjustment camp... (Score:2)
tell that to the people in prison in China for writing something on Weibo...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
you've listed a bunch of red herrings, tangential topics, and pointless observations to say nothing valid or interesting at all on the topic
it's as if you lack the capacity for critical thought... or you are demonstrating a weak timid mind taught that to approach certain taboo topics and verboten observations leads to punishment
hmmm...
so here we see the mediocre fruitless mental quality of someone raised in a walled garden of a "harmonious" society of cotton headed propaganda tools
Re: (Score:2)
if i read something, i expect it to have a fucking point. your post, for example, has a point. but if it's a meandering brain diarrhea dump, i'm going to complain. i don't have the right to do that?
Re: (Score:2)
How is it hypocritical to criticize this aspect of Chinese society from European point of view?
If I may butt in here.
I too don't think there is anything hypocritical in criticising China - and if you search for my many, previous comments on Chinese matters, you will see that I have a lot of understanding for China's position. What I have always had a problem with, is unfair criticism; criticism that is black-and-white, dishonest, deliberately mis-reading or mis-representing the facts etc. But that applies to anything - if we want to make progress, solve problems etc, then we must be honest to the fac
Re: (Score:2)
so you're saying that criticism of the chinese government is ok, as long the chinese government approves the criticism
do you even listen to yourself? how propagandized and/ or braindead do you have to be to not see how stupid that sounds?
Re: (Score:3)
I didn't make any of these broad claims. I wanted to specifically address the claim that this particular criticism of Chinese policy is hypocritical from European point of view. Nothing else.
I fully agree that Chinese may have a system in place that is socially stable enough to make a successful state. Historians in the far future rather than people today will judge that. We simply do not know which system is better, and we know for a fact that democracy in the way it's practised across the West has serious
Re: (Score:2)
Chinese model is about denying large portions of free speech, such as political non-threatening free speech of political dissidents to improve social cohesion of their society. How is it hypocritical to criticize this aspect of Chinese society from European point of view?
Apparently, quite a lot. On the very same day when millions chanted "Je suis Charlie" on streets, several Russian TV channels were banned in Latvia. Because of their "one-sided" view on certain events.
So yeah, I'm starting to think that European insistence on the 'freedom of speech' works only one way.
Re: (Score:2)
We run liberal democracies here in EU
EU is liberal, but no democratic. Do you remember the Lisbon treaty was adopted as a rewrite of the EU constitutional treaty, which was rejected by referendum in France and Netherlands?
Re: (Score:3)
What kind of vile scum are you to equate free speech for political change with videos of people chopping heads off and incitement to murder?
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, I see you use the Ministry of Truth's dictionary. Stop abusing language.
Re: (Score:2)
Child porn and free speech are the same? You're messed in the head.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Transmitting data is communicating, so yes. Rather than spewing forth nonsense like "X isn't free speech," why not just admit you want to restrict people's freedoms so you can get the government to censor content you don't like/find harmful?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What's the difference between China and EU? (Score:5, Insightful)
When free speech threatens innocent lives
It doesn't. Actions threaten innocent lives. Rape, physical assault, believing and acting on baseless rumors in harmful ways, and murder are harmful. A video or picture is only subjectively offensive at most.
these things should not be allowed in a free society for damned good reasons.
The society you want is not free at all, as it places restrictions upon one of the most fundamental rights based on completely flawed reasoning.
And if anyone thinks they should be, let them and their loved ones be the first victims
Victims of freedom of speech? You need to learn the difference between action and speech.
All I can say is that as long as authoritarians such as yourself exist, we'll need to continuously improve technologies that help us keep our privacy to reduce the risk of being harassed for saying things that you don't like.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Defamation is a civil case in most countries of the world. The right to free speech guarantees protection from prosecution by the government. They are two very different things.
Re: (Score:2)
Just out of curiosity, where do you stand on defamation?
If someone believes a baseless rumors and acts on it in a harmful way, it is their fault, not the speaker's.
or should their freedom of speech be respected?
It should.
Re: (Score:2)
Just out of curiosity, where do you stand on defamation?
If someone believes a baseless rumors and acts on it in a harmful way, it is their fault, not the speaker's.
Baseless rumor? but USA Today says they verified the story with two eyewitnesses and now Slashjones' local paper says the same thing. Now your clients are ditching you because they have two papers putting out a convincing story that you are are evil. Even if you can prove you didn't do it, the papers don't have to run a retraction. The two "eyewitnesses" don't have to recant. After all, defamation isn't actionable. If you want to let the free market sort it out, I think you'll find the party with the bi
Re: (Score:2)
Saying something and proving it are two different things. If you believe in baseless rumors (and yes, even if everyone says it's true, that doesn't make it so) and take actions that harm others, you're responsible for the damages.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And how do you feel about someone yelling "fire!" in a theater?
You do realize that same court case was used to suppress war protestors, correct?
As for how I feel about it, I don't like it. If someone yells "fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire, and people panic and hurt others, it is the fault of the people who panic and hurt others.
But I do support the theater owner's right to throw people out who scream random things while others are trying to watch a movie or what have you, so this is a non-problem anyway.
Often speech is an action itself.
Speech does not possess people and force them to
Re: (Score:2)
You don't think that deliberately causing a panic with the intent to hurt people is an action? I think you're being deliberately obstinate on this point. That's like saying it's not your fault for pulling the trigger, it's the bullet's fault for jumping out of the gun so quickly.
"This man murdered my son!", regarding a person who you know full well did no such thing, is an example of speech that is expressly intended to cause harm and has no real value. This is why when you're giving testimony in a court
Re: (Score:2)
You don't think that deliberately causing a panic with the intent to hurt people is an action?
No, it is speech. Panicking and harming others is an action.
If so, then if a man literally holds a gun to your head (and, for that matter, the heads of those close to you) and said he will kill you unless you aid him in stealing all the jewellery from the jewellery store, are you fully responsible for your actions?
Holding a gun to someone's head is an action, loaded or not. The speech isn't the issue.
Does a real fire in a packed theater force people to act?
No, but in that case, it is justifiable to get out of the theater. If you hurt someone on your way out, it is *still* your fault, but it may not always be punishable.
Suppose you set such a fire
Jesus, you're an idiot. I'm tired of this. Almost every single one of your examples can be brushed aside just by saying, "Please learn the difference between actions and speech." This is about pure
Re: (Score:2)
I also find it funny that you mention slippery slopes in response to a provably real slippery slope. Authorities have no problem defining your precious 'protected speech' as harmful.
Re: (Score:2)
And if anyone thinks they should be, let them and their loved ones be the first victims, for "their cause".
That's certainly a risk. Not a huge one, but a real one. One in a million is not zero.
This is why freedom requires courage and bravery, and an acceptance of personal responsibility. To be sure, such concepts are anathema to many individuals.
Then perhaps the rest of us in the world can then live better lives.
You mean to say 'safer' lives. A life without freedom is never better for people who value i
bad for business (Score:2)
well, just as it happens china chose the certain line to be such which makes it hard for overseas businesses to operate in China.
It makes things like payments and everything like that harder for them.
besides though, it's an arms race. I'm sure there will very shortly be vpn software that wraps the stuff in something else to fool the protocol detection. and then they'll try to block that. and then they'll do something else.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why are you censoring yourself with fucking asterisks?
Re: (Score:2)
The term "50-centers" is of wide enough currency in the English-language popular media that I don't think we need it explained to us, but thanks for playing.
And it's wumaodang [google.com] if you want to get pedantic about it
Re: (Score:2)
no, ask most english speakers what 50 cents means and they think Curtis James Jackson III born July 6, 1975
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5... [wikipedia.org]
you really do have to spread the word about astroturfers paid by the chinese government to vomit propaganda on social media, most english speakers really are not aware of them
Re: (Score:2)
IOW you don't read?
About internal Chinese politics?
Nope.
I'm actually better able to explain the internal politics of several obscure, non-anglophone, African states then China.
Re: (Score:2)
No shit. All of a sudden /. readers are anti-freedom of speech? Right.
Re: (Score:2)
What? You seem to be anti-free speech; the difference is that you label anything you don't like as Not True Free Speech, and then any restrictions you place on people don't count as restrictions on free speech.
Re: (Score:3)
like what? child porn? incitement to murder? sure. i live in the West and i support suppression of that
like political criticism? religious satire? no. i do not support that
the country that limits a few vicious topics is not at all like the country that locks down all political speech threatening the political status quo
the former is very much a free country, the latter very much not a free country, and the difference is substantive and real and very serious
if you think a country that censors child porn is e
Re: (Score:2)
if you think a country that censors child porn is exactly the same as one that censors political speech, you're only announcing yourself as a moron who doesn't understand the topic
Actually, I didn't say they're exactly the same, since they're different types of speech being censored. However, government censorship is always wrong, so I oppose it.
And I'm already well aware that you're an incurable authoritarian much like cold fjord, so you're in good company.
Re: (Score:3)
so you're ok with child porn and death threats?
can i take photos of you having sex with your significant other and put it on a billboard in your hometown? it's just free speech dude
everything has limits. including free speech. not because i say so, but because of simple logic and reason: it ends where it impinges on the freedoms of others. classic example: yelling fire in a crowded theatre
the fact that i recognize that freedoms are not boundless, but logically constrained by other people's freedoms, does no
Re: (Score:2)
so you're ok with child porn and death threats?
What part of my position is not clear? Yes.
can i take photos of you having sex with your significant other and put it on a billboard in your hometown? it's just free speech dude
Yes, it is. You'd have to trespass on private property to do that, though, which would be a crime.
everything has limits. including free speech.
Only if we decide to limit it. There goes your "logic."
classic example: yelling fire in a crowded theatre
If you choose to panic and hurt others, that's your fault, not the speaker's.
it just makes me smarter than you
But apparently you're not smart enough to understand the difference between action and speech.
Re: (Score:3)
so you're ok with child porn and death threats?
What part of my position is not clear? Yes.
i stopped reading there. you're a hopeless moron
Re: (Score:2)
Just use VPNGate [vpngate.net]. It designed specifically for Great Firewall of China, it is extremely easy to use, and works every time. No one needs an hour for this.
Re: (Score:2)
"Your country -- Norway" inspires confidence, definitely.
(In case you don't get the joke, I live in Stockholm.)
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, getting the GeoIP 100% right is the corner stone of any good VPN software provider. /s
Note that it is not a japanese software without much thought into UX and it doesnt look polished (in western standards atleast). You cant get a better throughput using any other VPN tech though. The research (publications) and their throughput are their main motivators, the software/UX do take a bit of backseat.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, lets build on their firewall and let them go back to being communist and keep that crap on their side of the pond. Maybe our side will wise up not having a cheap manufacturing alternative and creating sweat shops in China, all while lowering the US unemployment rate.
The noob is you (Score:5, Informative)
You don't have to look at much of a packet to see if it belongs to one of the common VPN implementations. You may not even have to go that far, a lot of volume on a port that doesn't belong to expected traffic is a bit of a giveaway.
Yes you could do something weird and roll your own VPN protocol, based on email traffic or whatever way you hide, but that's a lot harder than just changing ports.
Then think of the mindset of who you are dealing with. It's not so hard to deny everything you don't recognise so long as you don't care about blocking legit traffic by mistake.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
although for a slightly different reason, this is exactly how i run our openvpn network. whenever somebody from our company went on a trip to a country where SIP telephony was blocked (yes, it's you UAE!), they took a small raspberrypi-like box (dreamplug) with them whose only purpose was to create an openvpn tunnel via port 443.
i analysed the first couple of packets captured in wireshark and there's pretty much no difference between this and https.
Re: (Score:2)
Western governments would like to do this too but unlike the Chinese they have to worry about innocent bystanders getting upset.
Yes, there's other ways, but just hiding among https traffic is only going to work w
Re: (Score:2)
I would think that traffic heuristics -- volume of packets, frequency of packets, persistence of TCP sessions, volume of data transferred, types of TCP connectivity would provide some hints of a VPN session versus other kinds of encrypted traffic -- would possibly provide a way to compare it to known types of encrypted traffic and see VPNs. It's not like the Chinese don't have terabytes or even petabytes of real-world wild sample traffic to compare against.
I wonder if there would be some way to beat it by
Re: (Score:2)
See point 2 - it's China FFS.
Re: (Score:2)
Their logging policy says the opposite.
Re: (Score:2)
i am sure, you have some sources, reviews or opionions from users to back this?
Re: (Score:2)
In your scenario, where does the economic relationship of the parties fit in?
Re: (Score:2)
If you're in China, I hope you use a VPN to get your message out and stuff.