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Real-Time Testing of China's Internet Filters

Posted by chrisd on from the but-do-they-block-wigu dept.

mrbnsn writes "The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is conducting a study of Internet filtering in countries worldwide. As part of this study, they have put up a web page where you can get a real-time report on whether any URL you submit is blocked by the Great Firewall. Check whether you'd be able to read your favorite web sites in Beijing!" I've also heard that there are some "western" hotels that have non-blocked connections. Anyone from China care to tell us what it's like?

5 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Actually... by olesk · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...it depends. I was in China recently, visiting an old friend who lives there. He signed a document saying he was officially a foreigner and suddenly got CNN on his cable. Seems you can get away from most of it by not being Chinese, even in China.

    I prodded the "Great Firewall" when I was there, and realized some sites were cut off, like the CNN. Besides Yahoo and some other sites have tailor made pages for the Chinese. I made a SSH-tunnel back home to god old Norway though (no restrictions on protocols/ports it seemed, only some IP-adresses), so I had no problems. I don't think it would be much of an obstacle for most slashdotters :)

    1. Re:Actually... by doop · · Score: 3, Informative

      I visited China very recently (to attend a conference which was being held there), and stayed in a pretty Westernized
      hotel with internet access.

      slashdot was accessible, as was google, which IIRC was even nice enough to talk to me in the appropriate language. Some bits of yahoo.com were accessible, but not the webmail or news. CNN and BBC News were both blocked, as were quite a few other news sites, and unsurprising things like Amnesty international.

      I say blocked, but what I mean is that when I tried to access these sites, the connections would always just time out while others were fine. I can't remember what happened when I tried to ping them.

      I had no trouble downloading an SSH client and using it to connect back home.

  2. Re:And so begins... by Raetsel · · Score: 3, Informative

    • Starting testing...

    • Stage one testing complete.
      Stage two testing complete.

      Testing complete for http://google.com. Result:
      Reported as inaccessible in China

    Great. All the sleaze you want, but one of the premier search engines is off limits. Decline of civilization indeed -- perhaps the result will create an interesting test case for future anthropology and psych students.
    --

    "...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
  3. All SourceForge sites blocked by Eloquence · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is the list of sites that have been found to be inaccsesible. A lot of them are the expectable human rights (Amnesty etc.), Tibet and Falun Gong stuff, as well as some news media (Yahoo Asia News, CBS News, BBC news, and many US-based China news sites).

    Geocities appears to be completely blocked.

    The Chinese government doesn't like Playboy or sex.com - hmm, do we see a correlation between repressive government and antisexual morals there? Nah, couldn't be.

    I have no idea why they censor {Insert Something Funny}, an obscure weblog, an anti-tobacco group, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Columbia Earthscape, or Columbia University.

    Google is on their shitlist. No surprise given its cache and large index. The Wayback Machine isn't - I'd expect that to change in the long term. Anonymizer is accessible as well.

    Peek-A-Booty and Freenet are not accessible, of course. It appears that all SourceForge sites are blocked (unless the testing engine is slashdotted and not working properly, but other sites are reported as accessible). I presume this might be because Freenet is hosted at SourceForge.

  4. Re:wrong by billbaggins · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the front page...

    http://slashdot.org - Reported as inaccessible in China
    http://www.slashdot.org - Reported as accessible in China

    Throw your result in (slashdot.org accessible), and what we get is either a filter on the fritz, or else this tester still has some bugs to be worked out of it. According to the FAQ, China's filter is based on IP address. Does slashdot's homepage have multiple IPs? (sorry, too lazy to check).

    For whatever it's worth, it seems that Saudi Arabia is not known to block slashdot.

    --
    "The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
    --Winston Churchill