Is China's Control of the Internet Slipping?

Garp writes "According to the BBC news site the Chinese governments grip on the internet is slipping. Ever since they allowed use of the internet, the Chinese have been monitoring the information that has been flowing (jokingly referred to as the great fire-wall of china), in an attempt to ensure 'bad' philosophies don't infect their people. However, the internet is having a much more profound affect, out of the control of the government ..."

Comments

You Can Never Truly Filter

[unformed]

If you have -any- way access an outside machine that is relatively in your control (ie: shell access, which can be bought for a few dollars a month) then you can get by any protection.

Here's an article I wrote not too long ago about how to do it:
- - - -
Breaking Through Any Firewall or Proxy

There's different reasons for breaking through firewalls/proxies.
1) Get completely unfiltered access to the internet.
2) Get unmonitored, or secure, access to the internet.
3) Access services normally disallowed by the firewall.

The article will demonstrate various ways to get by most implementations of firewalls/proxies. In absolutely no way am I responsible if you do anything you're not supposed to, or even supposed to, be doing. If you get caught and fired, tough shit. If you access illegal information, tough shit. If you open up a hole and somebody breaks into your computer, tough shit. I'm not responsible. (This is for the lawsuit-happy bastards out there.)

Anyways, lets begin:

For all methods, it is expected that you have access to a machine on the other side of the firewall, and that it has access to whatever you need.
Your machine will be the CLIENT, and the machine on the other side of the firewall will be the TUNNEL. The accessed machine will be the SERVER.

Furthermore, this article also assumes you a basic knowledge of your browser's configuration, installing software on your CLIENT and TUNNEL machines, and logging in via SSH.

A Linux/Unix box is preferable for the TUNNEL, but not required by any means. The software is freely available for any system.

1) HTTP Tunneling Through SSH
Often, only some ports will be firewalled (80, 21, etc) for caching, filtering, and monitoring purposes. However, they leave direct access available for other ports (25, 23, etc).

If your browser must use a proxy to access the web, but you don't require a proxy to get mail, this is probably the implementation.

If you have direct access to non-popular ports, you can access almost any service as long as you change the port. Generaly, the main purpose of bypassing this firewall is to have unfiltered and/or unmonitored web access. The method can of course be modified to meet your needs.

Install a proxy server (ie: tinyproxy) on the TUNNEL machine. For security purposes, set the listening port to an odd port (ie: 8999, REMOTE_PROXY_PORT) or set access rights to only localhost. Install an SSH (ie: sshd) server on the TUNNEL. For security purposes, set the listening port to an odd port. Do NOT set access rights to only localhost because you'll access the proxy through ssh.

Install an SSH client on the CLIENT machine. Select a random port (LOCAL_PORT) and then set the browser's proxy to localhost:LOCAL_PORT.

Run SSH with LOCAL_PORT forwarded to REMOTE_HOST:REMOTE_PROXY_PORT.
(CLI ssh: ssh -L LOCAL_PORT:REMOTE_HOST:REMOTE_PROXY_HOST -l USERNAME REMOTE_HOST)

Once connected and logged in, if the proxy and the tunnel are working correctly, you've got completely unfiltered web access.

(NB: Using a SOCKS5-compliant proxy would offer an almost completely unfiltered and unmonitored connection, as long as the application supported SOCKS proxies.)

2) SSH Tunneling Through HTTP
Some implementations allow only HTTP access, while blocking all other ports.
Check out Corkscrew at http://www.agroman.net/corkscrew/

Corkscrew is a tool to allow full SSH access through a strict HTTPS session. Then through the SSH access, you can create another tunnel to allow access to all other programs.

Conclusion)
Hopefully this allows some of the people out there to worry a little less about getting caught doing things they're not supposed to. The reason for using SSH in both cases is because it's encrypted. In the event you are caught, at least you're only caught for breaking teh rules, there's nothing additionally criminalizing.

SSH can also be used for a lot more interesting things. Using Windows, you can instal Cygwin, ssh into a *Nix box and tunnel over X connections, and end up working as if you were actually at the machine.

Anyways, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

--unformed

Re:How is this different from corporate control?

[rhadamanthus]

Thank you for making this very important point. To put numbers to this argument, note that:

Of all the interesting statistics, the most important is that the number of TV stations, magazines, and media outlets over all has increased tremendously, all the while being more consolidated then ever before. This strikes me as surprising. The illusion of diversity in literature and media is rather frightening. In 1947, 80 percent of daily newspapers were independent; in 1989 that number had shrunk to 20 percent. In 1981, the 11,000 or so magazines were owned by 20 companies, but as of 1988 that number had fallen to three. Books are the same, being controlled by seven major firms. This is not to say that no other sources of information exist, just that the concentration shows no sign of slowing down. Which should strike you as disconcerting.

Likewise, music is controlled by 5 large groups, representing 84 percent of the US market. (yes, the RIAA) Radio has 60 percent of its content controlled by 3 broadcast groups. And again in movies: In 1985, the 12 largest theater owners had 25 percent of the screens, as of 1998, that figure was about 61 percent and rapidly increasing. The 6 top firms by this point accounted for 90 percent of overall theater revenue. Not surprisingly, 132 out of the 148 "widely distributed" movies in 1997 had deals with these 6 vendors. This also explains the drop in foreign films, from 10 percent in the mid 1970s to 0.5 percent in the 90s.

Again, in broadcasting, 6 firms control 80 percent of the nations TV and cable, and 75 percent of its content. To summarize, Professor Ben Bagdikian wrote, "despite more than 25,000 outles in the US, 23 corporations control most of the business in newspapers, magazines, books and movies." The top six, FYI, make more revenue than the next 20 combined.

One hardly needs evidence to notice that such heavy concentration of power, (in this case, information) results inherently in bias. Witness the pro-american rhetoric seething from current media and the "anti-terrorist" news reports that for all we know may be made up.

The most saddening thing is that the Internet was specifically designed to prevent concentration of information. It was built to promote the free-flow of any idea or voice. But its being swept away in a tidal wave of corporate lobbying and associated legislation, as well as patriotic/moralist/ideological campaigns to stomp out "opposing" viewpoints. Criticize china all you want for their "information suppresion". We are no better, we just don't see it. Apathy and hypocrisy go hand in hand....

-----------rhad

Triangle Boy

[Artifice_Eternity]

The CIA's venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, has funded a project called Triangle Boy:

http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/02/15/anonym ity.software.idg/

This CNN article from Feb. 2001 talks a little about it. But at that time it supposedly hadn't been deployed. Since then I've heard that Chinese Internet users are using Triangle Boy for secure connections to the outside world, bypassing the government firewalls.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Zeinfeld]

Hate to break it to you - but the ideas of the west provided a source of inspiration to the peoples of Iron Cutain.

If it is ideas that you want to measure then remember that Karl Marx wrote Das Capital in the Reading room of the British Library.

What you appear to be unable to grasp is that whatever was done from the outside had mush less effect than what went on on the inside. The attempt by the idiotic right to claim the credit for destroying the Soviet Union is pure self delusion. The people of Eastern Europe took their own freedom, whatever we did amounted to a small effect on the margins.

That is why there has been little change in the example you cite - Saudi Arabia and Eastern Africa. Those areas have been exposed to Western ideas for far longer than Russia ever was, including the experience of British colonial rule.

The BBC World Service is certainly an effective propaganda tool. I can't say the same for Voice of America which is all propaganda all the time and about as interesting to listen to as Radio Moscow was and for about the same reason.

If you want to effect change then there are much more effective ways to do so than by puffing yourself up with self importance. The US claim to be the torchbearer of human rights is not generally accepted in the rest of the world. The practice of seggragation was only recently abolished in the south, during the cold war the US regularly conived to replace democratically elected regimes with brutal murderers who would do Washington's bidding. It is a great pity that the current administration cheered on the attempted coup in Venezuela rather than condemning it instantly as the rest of the free world did.