Googling Behind China's Great Firewall

I'm behind the by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-01 06:36 · Score: 5, Funny

And I not noticed any filtered . Life in China is and great, and we talk not blocked. I slashdot!

Re:I'm behind the by winkydink · 2004-09-01 06:40 · Score: 4, Informative

Really? Why is it that I can never access the San Jose Mercury news web site when I am in China, regardless of where the connection originates from?

--
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Re:I'm behind the by AKAImBatman · 2004-09-01 06:42 · Score: 5, Funny

Well that explains the speech of new Chinese immigrants! They're still suffering from post-filtering syndrome!

"I no you! Understand?" ;-P

--
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Re:I'm behind the by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-01 06:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

It seems you lack some sense of humour! You've been staying in China for a too long time...
Re:I'm behind the by winkydink · 2004-09-01 06:47 · Score: 5, Funny

Pidgin English is too similar to filtered English.

--
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Re:I'm behind the by chris_mahan · 2004-09-01 06:49 · Score: 2, Funny

I meme coming.

do think cute?

--
"Piter, too, is dead."
Re:I'm behind the by nkh · 2004-09-01 06:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

Chinese (mandarin) is not the most difficult language to understand in a conversation. The difficult part is to speak it. Japanese is easier to speak (from a french background).
Re:I'm behind the by DNS-and-BIND · 2004-09-01 07:38 · Score: 5, Informative

The BBC is blocked as well.
As an aside, I set up a simple unencrypted squid proxy on a box in the USA, and whenever I encounter "the block", I just hit F12-x in Opera, and reload the site. The simplest of proxies will defeat the Great Firewall.

--
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Re:I'm behind the by xyr0 · 2004-09-01 12:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

im currently behind the Great Firewall and without a proxy i can access most of the sites i usually visit: nytimes, the post, guardian, der spiegel, newsweek, grouphug o.O & co., scmp and of course /. with this story. also, other good things that will get you around the wall (and that i am also normally using at home) are p2p software and freenet. and for your IM needs, use trillian with encryption, nothing will be blocked.
Re:I'm behind the by AKAImBatman · 2004-09-02 02:39 · Score: 2, Funny

'Tis true. Every time I try to speak Mandarin for "Thank you", they just look at me without the slightest clue what I'm saying. That's despite the fact that it sounds exactly the same to me when they say it. :-(

--
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade

They'll never even see this?! by garcia · 2004-09-01 06:37 · Score: 4, Funny

They will never have the freedom to see a bunch of fucking shitty sex that will help them be free to have incest while reading Playboy in the Bermuda Triangle!

Triangle Man beats Firewall man!

Re:They'll never even see this?! by DrLZRDMN · 2004-09-01 07:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

Parent is making a joke that because of his use of filtered words in his post this page will be filtered and will not be seen in china. Its a joke not a troll. Aparently the mods use a similar filter and mod down posts containing obscenities regardles of their pertinence to the discussion.
Re:They'll never even see this?! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-01 07:31 · Score: 2, Funny

Aparently the mods use a similar filter and mod down posts containing obscenities regardles of their pertinence to the discussion.

Or perhaps some people are sick of garcia's continual karmawhoring.
Re:They'll never even see this?! by CristalShandaLear · 2004-09-02 06:57 · Score: 2, Funny

This site has nothing to offer but a bunch of think-they-are-smart geeks whining about Microsoft and whoring themselves for Apple. I don't know about the "whoring themselves for Apple" part, but the Microsoft hatred is very strong. One day, back when I was still using windows and word, word crashed one time too many because I moved a text box from point A to point B. I cried out to the tech gods, "There must be an easier way" and of course I turned to google to find another way. (All hail Linux). This story is too long at this point, and the post doesn't really matter anyway, but I'll speed things along here. In a moment of extreme frustration I typed into the google search bar "Microsft SUX". The very first search result was a post here at slashdot. I joined up and have been here at least once a day ever since. (Penguins are sexy wise beasts, Amen).

tunneling by Raleel · 2004-09-01 06:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

I bet those in the know get a free shell account in another country and ssh tunnel all their web traffic through it.

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-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --

Re:tunneling by secolactico · 2004-09-01 06:46 · Score: 5, Insightful

I bet those in the know get a free shell account in another country and ssh tunnel all their web traffic through it.

... because a high volume of encrypted traffic would never attract the attention of the authorities...

--
No sig
Re:tunneling by t0c · 2004-09-01 06:50 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually if you RTFA you'll see that they filter HTTP GET requests using packet sniffing... then they just send a reset packet effectivily killing access.
Re:tunneling by Shisha · 2004-09-01 07:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

Read the parent please! SSH tunneling means that the even "HTTP GET" will come accros as something totally garbled. Whether they'll come after you, just because of encrypted connection, or whether they found a way of cracking SSH on the fly is another question (unlikely thought).

BUT! They're not bothered. If a few geeks read forbidden stuff, that won't change much. I'm sure there's already dissident minority. What they don't want is some critical mass of people getting the wrong idea. Which won't happen for a while, because most Chineese haven't seen a PC. On the other the peasants never really mattered in China, so maybe they (Chineese government) have a good reason to be paranoid.
Re:tunneling by bfields · 2004-09-01 08:52 · Score: 2, Interesting

Most ssh users here [in the US] don't use it as a way to avoid censorship, because we don't have to.

OK. My only point is just that if I were, say, a Chinese geek setting up a linux box, ssh would probably be one of the first things I'd install and use, for the same reasons it's one of the first things I install here. So there are probably plenty of people using ssh there for the usual stuff--logging into their server to check their mail, encrypting a remote X session, etc.
Thus I'm questioning the claim that Chinese authorities could use the presence of encrypted traffic to find censorship-circumventors. Such traffic could very well be lost in the bulk of everyday VPN and ssh traffic.
Though of course sufficiently sophisticated traffic analysis might still be a threat. (E.g. it might be possible to recognize that a bunch of ssh traffic to an outside site has packets whose size and timing looks like ssh-tunneled http traffic from mozilla).
--Bruce Fields

And the /. effect... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-01 06:39 · Score: 5, Funny

...will essentailly "censor" the report too. Whee!

We're next by MikeMacK · 2004-09-01 06:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

As our tests below indicate, China blocks access to the Google cache and to searches that contain certain keywords

I can't help but wonder how long until this begins to happen in the US, all in the name of fighting terrorism

Re:We're next by garcia · 2004-09-01 06:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

People don't care about viruses, worms, trojans, MPAA/RIAA funded relgulations in the government, political parties, voting/e-voting, wars, etc, but they do care about something...

And that something is the freedom to view porn. Once the US government decides that it is acceptable to expand their reaches to cover the indecency of porn on the net people WILL get pissed off enough to end that bullshit.
Re:We're next by MikeMacK · 2004-09-01 06:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

Maybe when the government stops taking away our rights.
Re:We're next by MikeMacK · 2004-09-01 06:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

Have you read the Patriot Act?
Re:We're next by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-01 06:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

The right to live my life knowing that the government can't detain me indefinitely. I no longer have that right post-9/11/PATRIOT Act.
Re:We're next by nanter · 2004-09-01 06:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

That is not an answer to my question. Name one right.
The right to due process of law as granted in the 5th Amendment.
Want more to be listed, smart guy?
Re:We're next by LoveMuscle · 2004-09-01 07:01 · Score: 4, Informative

Name one right the government has taken away from you in the last 4 years. How about the fourth amendment. Go read the patriot act section 213 for more.
Re:We're next by MikeMacK · 2004-09-01 07:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

OK, since you obviously have not read it (like most members of Congress). How about my right to privacy. The government, for whatever reasons they choose, can wiretap my phone, find out what I read at the library. How about my right to a fair and quick trial - they again can detain me without cause - just because my name is not Abdul does not mean that it won't happen. Wake up.
Re:We're next by DAldredge · 2004-09-01 07:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

1st adm via campaign finance reforms. Look what Bush and Kerry say about 527's.

Corps paying for the convention and all the closed door parties at it is OK but if normal people spend their personal money it's a crime.

Tell me how that makes sense.
Re:We're next by MikeMacK · 2004-09-01 07:38 · Score: 2, Funny

I didn't know Herr Ashcroft was a regular /. reader? I've almost been modded down to TROLL. I hope Guantanomo has internet access, I'll miss /.
Re:We're next by psidon · 2004-09-01 07:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

The proper thing for the government to do is to allow its citizens access to the content... and to log all the traffic instead. You're free to read whatever you want. Most people Googling for sensitive topics are merely researching them. If your clickstream indicates otherwise, then it's time for the hammer to come down.

And what would you use to define a "clickstream" that should trigger the hammer to come down?? That's still invasion of privacy if you ask me. What I look at is my own business. If it's criminal, that's one thing, but tracking what everyone does all the time and then waiting to pounce is ridiculously invasive IMO.
Re:We're next by plover · 2004-09-01 08:09 · Score: 2, Informative

rifled air-pressure-powered pellet guns are considered firearms in Michigan
Most people who hear the words "air rifle" remember the lever action Daisy B-B guns, and they remember B-B gun battles with their friends. The worst anyone ever went home with was a stinging bruise, (no, Mom, nobody put their eye out) and everyone had a great time.
Modern air rifles are nothing like those B-B guns. Compare the Daisy to my rifled RWS Diana 350 which fires a pellet at 1250 fps. You can even buy actual rimfire .22 caliber ammo that isn't that fast. Believe me when I say that I would NOT want to get shot by this springer. It's a great varmint gun -- very quiet and powerful enough to kill small game. But don't confuse it with the toys of your childhood.
I can certainly understand why Michigan would consider it to be in the same class as a firearm. It performs substantially the same tasks.

--
John
Re:We're next by RWerp · 2004-09-01 08:18 · Score: 2, Informative

and I can read /. sans all the conspiracy theories and communist America predictions....

s/communist/fascist

--
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Re:We're next by Peyna · 2004-09-01 09:09 · Score: 2, Funny

1250 fps? Talk about overkill, I'm usually happy with about 40-60.

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What?

This is insane by savagedome · 2004-09-01 06:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

The keywords include 'paper', 'triangle' and 'simple'??
Talk about censorship going out of control.

Well, atleast they can search for 'cthulhu' ;)

--

Free XBox, PS2

Re:This is insane by bobbozzo · 2004-09-01 07:08 · Score: 3, Informative

The keywords include 'paper', 'triangle' and 'simple'??
Talk about censorship going out of control.
Triangle Boy is/was a anonymous, encrypted proxy system that had a distributed structure. Anyone could run one, and publish it's IP. I think you can understand why the Chinese gov't would want to block people from finding it.
I don't know if it still exists, but Google brings up lots of (old) links.
Personally, I use SSH to tunnel to a remove private Squid proxy to get around evil corporate firewalls/filtering. I don't know if SSH would work from within China or not though. It would probably be dreadfully slow though.

--
Nothing to see here; Move along.
Re:This is insane by Dun+Malg · 2004-09-01 08:08 · Score: 2, Funny

Well, atleast they can search for 'cthulhu' ;)
heh. Everyone deserves the opportunity to be devoured first.

--
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Re:This is insane by Dun+Malg · 2004-09-01 08:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

How would you know? Did you try it? I dare you.
I used to work in intelligence for the US Army. The first thing you do is filter out the crap (e.g. random losers saying "bearded middle east man") so you don't waste limited resources chasing dead ends. Believe it or not, intelligence professionals look at context. In fact, context often gives produces better intelligence than the initial flag. Contrary to the beliefs evinced by their paranoid rantings, most people will never warrant a second look, no matter what they say in email, on the phone, etc. Like most of us, they're not that fuckin' important because they're just another random slob. The best defense against government poking its nose into your business is to be boring and lame. Fortunately, most of us here already qualify in that regard.

--
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Re:This is insane by jbrax · 2004-09-01 12:24 · Score: 2, Funny

Unbelievable but true: TriangleBoy e.g. SafeWeb is CIA funded project.

And that anonymous-surfing technology turns out not to be very safe after all.

Did you know? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-01 06:41 · Score: 5, Funny

China's great firewall is the only router visible from space.

Re:Did you know? by darth_MALL · 2004-09-01 06:46 · Score: 4, Funny

Apparently some of the original designers who died while working on it are embedded IN the hardware!
Re:Did you know? by darth_MALL · 2004-09-01 06:49 · Score: 4, Informative

FYI:
"Can You See The Great Wall of China from The Moon?
For some reason, some urban legends tend to get stated and never disappear. This legend even appears as a erroneous Trivial Pursuit question. The legend? Many are familiar with the claim that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from space or from the moon with the naked eye. This is simply not true. From a low orbit of the earth, many artificial objects are visible on the earth, such as highways, ships in the sea, railroads, cities, fields of crops, and even some individual buildings. While at a low orbit, the Great Wall of China can certainly be seen from space but it is not unique in that regard. However, when leaving the earth's orbit and acquiring an altitude of more than a few thousand miles, no man-made objects are visible at all. NASA says, "The Great Wall can barely be seen from the Shuttle, so it would not be possible to see it from the Moon with the naked eye." Thus, it'd be tough to spot the Great Wall of China or any other object from the moon. Furthermore, from the moon, even the continents are barely visible."
Re:Did you know? by Donny+Smith · 2004-09-01 07:08 · Score: 2, Informative

Of course - after all, how would they know when they've never been to the Moon ;-)

Joking aside - to quote a China-friendly source, their first astronaut said it indeed wasn't visible when he was up in the space.

Incest banned, Pedophilia OK? by winkydink · 2004-09-01 06:42 · Score: 4, Funny

I guess the Chinese govt has problems with big words.

--

"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

A sample list by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-01 06:42 · Score: 4, Funny

- Cisco IOS
- DVD license
- Human Rights
- Tibet
- Taiwan
- "fall of communism"
- "Cuba" and "Fidel Castro"
- "funky cold medina"
- "Fragglerock"

Re:Proxy by so-logical · 2004-09-01 06:44 · Score: 2, Interesting

The fear of punishment? Tanks?

Re:Proxy by hasdikarlsam · 2004-09-01 06:44 · Score: 2, Informative

A private shell account isn't an open proxy, and you can't search SSH connections.

It's encrypted, you know.

Brutal! by eigerface · 2004-09-01 06:44 · Score: 5, Funny

I work behind my company's firewall.

I live off of Google's cache. ;-)

Re:Brutal! by rworne · 2004-09-01 07:04 · Score: 2, Informative

I do to. A squid proxy running on port 8080 back home is a worker's best friend.

--
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit

Re:s.e.x is filtered out... by winkydink · 2004-09-01 06:45 · Score: 5, Funny

Suuuuure... The country has, what, 1.6 bln people and claims that table tennis is their biggest indoor sport?

--

"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2004-09-01 06:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Impressive by Rude+Turnip · 2004-09-01 06:47 · Score: 2, Informative

"There are already some laws in place that prevent US citizens from viewing foreign content, concerning security patches etc. on some foreign software."

Wow, that's news to me. Sources please?

--
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!

workaround by superstick58 · 2004-09-01 06:49 · Score: 2, Funny

The bulletin offers some solutions as a way around the filters. All the Chinese have to do is search on google for "google filter circumvent".

No wait.. nevermind.

easy to get around? by nizo · 2004-09-01 06:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

Certainly this isn't hard to get around, do they filter out images for example? Rot-13, images containing text (or even with the text tacked on the end of the image), or any number of other ways that data could slip through, isn't the Chinese govt fighting a serious uphill battle here? Though one must wonder what the penalty for circumventing the firewall must be.

--
I Am My Own Worst Enemy

Re:easy to get around? by DNS-and-BIND · 2004-09-01 07:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

No, google image search is fully-functional. Only the cache and "google groups" are filtered. NNTP access is OK, but google groups web interface is not there. Weird.

--
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!

Re:Freedom by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-01 06:49 · Score: 2, Funny

So how will I search for Freedom Fry recipes now?

Forbidden Chinese sentence by MyShinyMetalAss · 2004-09-01 06:49 · Score: 3, Funny

"Bignews: This hypermart bitch is making a naive paper triangle on my simple boxun."

--
This is not an automated signature. I type this in to the bottom of every message.

For those who dont Speak Chinese by hamlet2600 · 2004-09-01 06:52 · Score: 2, Informative

Took a bunch of the chinese and ran it through babel fish ( i know no chinese so i cant verify any of this ): Noteable Names: Huang Liman Jiang Zemin Jia Qinglin Words/Phrases: Overthrows, Buddha, Chinese and Russian boundary, student movement, Tibet not to be independent, communize, Japan, Pakistan, smuggling, Wise, judicial, police officer, sex abuse, democracy, masturbation, Traitor to China

--
Sometimes I wish computers were less friendly.

Pig Latin by BarryNorton · 2004-09-01 06:54 · Score: 3, Interesting

Insofar as instant/SMS messaging in English is also concerned (also discussed in the article), surely nothing more advanced than Pig Latin (known to confuse many poor parents... for a while) would be necessary to circumvent this.

(I'd thought this was a novel idea, but I understand from a quick Google that it's been done for similar reasons...)

What they're gonna do with Gmail? by Donny+Smith · 2004-09-01 06:56 · Score: 2, Interesting

I wonder what they're going to do with Gmail users - say you are a Chinese user, someone sends you pr0n spam (keyword: fuck) or some travel spam (keyword: Tibet) and there you go - sex and independence ads instantly appear on the side!

If they can block those from HTML content (shouldn't be too hard to eliminate contents of that table cell with ads), perhaps they can commercialize the technology :-)

On the other hand it's going to be fun to see how Google reacts to this type of control - if it weren't for their don't be evil stuff, they'd still want to protect revenue from ads - even now, if only 3% of searches time out, they lose some advertising money. And the visitors get the idea that "Google sucks".

The list of blocked words is really funny - "naive" is considered dangerous, but "biatch" is not on the list...
I wonder if it makes any sense - it's only 1000 words...

Re:What they're gonna do with Gmail? by DNS-and-BIND · 2004-09-01 07:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think they only block the search terms. Otherwise, I wouldn't be seeing this page now (221.136.x.x).

--
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!

elgooG by phreakv6 · 2004-09-01 06:58 · Score: 4, Informative

this is the site which shows the mirror image of corresponding Google page.This gets u thru the great chinese firewall :))

--
fifteen jugglers, five believers

Re:tunneling by the authorities by John_Sauter · 2004-09-01 07:03 · Score: 3, Interesting

I bet those in the know get a free shell account in another country and ssh tunnel all their web traffic through it.

... because a high volume of encrypted traffic would never attract the attention of the authorities...

I took the parent's "bet" to refer to those who are the authorities.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)

wiki by phreakv6 · 2004-09-01 07:03 · Score: 4, Informative

Here is a wiki which discusses abt the Internet censorship in China

--
fifteen jugglers, five believers

My Own Experience by Effugas · 2004-09-01 07:05 · Score: 5, Interesting

So, a couple years ago I put together a patch for OpenSSH that added what I referred to as "Dynamic Forwarding" -- put simply, it turned SSH into a sort of "poor man's VPN". You could (and in fact, I do) access almost all Internet services, tunnelled and encrypted, over an SSH session.

After I first presented this hack, I had these three Chinese guys walk up to me, and start asking quite literally the most detailed questions about my architecture that I had ever heard. It quickly became clear that, for the rest of the world, censorship avoidance is a sort of "first step" that anyone who's serious about network access learns to master. The whole line about censorship being damage that the Internet routes around is astonishingly true; the level to which complete non-geeks participate in proxy bouncing, encrypted tunnelling, and whatever else it takes to get out is quite astonishing.

--Dan

Re:My Own Experience by iantri · 2004-09-01 07:40 · Score: 3, Interesting

This has been implemented in PuTTY for Windows, for anyone who is interested. Sets up a local SOCKS proxy.. pretty neat.
Re:My Own Experience by Effugas · 2004-09-01 08:01 · Score: 2, Informative

Yeah, I was pretty stoked when they finally ported it over. Here's the latest build of PuTTY hosted off a web page -- quite convenient for Internet Cafes. (If ActiveX is going to be insecure, we can at least make it useful.)

--Dan

What diffrence does it make? by Viceice · 2004-09-01 07:06 · Score: 3, Informative

All the chinese goverment is doing is fooling themselves.

People will notice in the course of daily conversation that certain words when typed won't go through and they will improvise. Soon a whole sub-language will develop and the goverment will be back at square 1.

I'd ask my housemate from China about it, but i can't articulate this sort of topics very well in Chinese.

--
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.

Man-searchian Candidate by slumpy · 2004-09-01 07:06 · Score: 3, Funny

They should've just listed the words you can search for, would've saves some space.

--
http://www.commaecho.com

missing the whole point by circletimessquare · 2004-09-01 07:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

attacking the west all the time is not intelligent

i would have thought that this slashdot story would have served as an object lesson of something to be thankful for in the west: a tradition of adherence to free expression not found in other areas of the world

this is of course a right we must always be vigilant of encroachment upon and something we must always fight for

but how you can still find reason to attack the west is laughable to me in the context of this censorship by the chinese government, a lesson in how rights of free expression don't exist in other places, and must be fought for in those places

silly me, the real lesson here is for me, not you: some people are just hell bent on attacking the west for whatever it does, whether it is an intelligent criticism or not, simply because, apparently, that is all they know how to do

how about you fight the real fight for free expression: not on hypersensitive esoteric issues like security patches for software, but instead on real, fundamental issues like some of the words you find in the censorship list on the link in the story

i will of course get angry replies to this diatribe of mine if this gets modded up

proof that those who obsess over molehills, while missing the mountains, need a heated rhetorical approach to maintain their pov

always attacking the west is simplistic and navel gazing

there are great fights, much more important fights, going on outside the borders of the western democracies for rights most of us take for granted, and that is a shame, as real good can be done if the children of the western democracies took up ideological and rhetorical arms in that fight, rather than obsessing over comparatively much more minor issues in their home countries

--
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it

Re:missing the whole point by Idarubicin · 2004-09-01 08:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

Dude, calm down, take a deep breath, and meditate on the value of punctuation and SHIFT keys.
The grandparent poster was pointing out, quite correctly, that there are individuals in public office and private business who would like to see some 'objectionable' content on the Internet filtered. (What precisely constitutes such objectionable content is the subject of heated debate, of course.) Internet access in the United States is often screened for content in certain contexts--many public schools, workplaces, and public libraries.
The grandparent also observed that the Chinese firewall is a very solidly executed proof-of-concept, that demonstrates that such large-scale filtering is technically possible and at least reasonably effective, though it may have a few holes that the technically adept can slip through.
The grandparent did not presume that politicians in the West would automatically abuse such technology now that it is available and amply demonstrated. On the other hand, the grandparent poster quite correctly observed that there were individual politicians, political organizations, and lobbyists who would be more than happy to push for its adoption...and that it behooves us to watch that we don't slip into hypocrisy.
there are great fights, much more important fights, going on outside the borders of the western democracies for rights most of us take for granted, and that is a shame, as real good can be done if the children of the western democracies took up ideological and rhetorical arms in that fight, rather than obsessing over comparatively much more minor issues in their home countries
The reason why things are 'better' and freer in the West is because of the vigilance of people like the grandparent poster. The notion that encroachments on civil liberties in the West should be tolerated or just not spoken of because things are much worse elsewhere is...decidedly unpalatable. Why should it be impossible to take up 'ideological and rhetorical arms' to support freedom of expression and conscience everywhere, locally and abroad? "It could be worse"--the rallying cry of the indifferent and downtrodden.

--
~Idarubicin
Re:missing the whole point by l4m3z0r · 2004-09-01 08:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

It would seem you would rather I pay no attention to the domestic workings of the country in which I reside. Would you also suggest that if your faucet has a leak it should not be fixed until the neighbor of yours has a cracked foundation fixed? That you should abandon your concern with your leaky faucet and instead use your money and time to fix his foundation? Without any concern at all for the business of your own household?
You may find this analogy simple but I do believe its accurate. Furthermore how can you suggest that western children should take up "arms" in order to help other countries when they don't vote or care about their own country enough to be informed about the things that affect them on a daily basis?
On the contrary it is you who have attacked the west by saying western children have acted improperly and should instead help the rest of the world. It is you who are suggesting that the west is currently committing some great evil act(that of apathy). I on the other hand only sought to make sure we are ever mindful that freedoms can be taken away all the time. You can never sit back and enjoy your freedom you must struggle constantly to keep it and to use it.
Whether it be a molehill or a mountain its still a blemish that should be dealt with, I for one advocate the removal of said blemish by that countries native inhabitants. Of course there are exceptions such as when lethal force is being used against a population in order to keep it in check. But to suggest that it is imperitive that I act to help china is rediculous. Times change and perhaps in 20-50 years that government will fall and the possibility for a more free one will arise.
Also when the west does act to help free a people we generally cause more damage than if we had left them to their own devices(I will not use Iraq as an example of this but Cuba is a perfect example, the US blockade and restrictions has done nothing besides starve and deprive Cubans of necessary goods like medicine).
The point in all this is that its not true that freedoms are granted by governments. The people grant governments specific powers and this is just one of the many places where a government has over stepped its boundaries. West, East, South it doesn't matter we need to be mindful of this all the time.

Re:Or Copyrights? by Macrat · 2004-09-01 07:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

Don't forget about copyrights, mp3 files, and other 'bad' things the corporation backed government doesn't want us to have access to.

Re:Freedom by Ender+Ryan · 2004-09-01 07:16 · Score: 2, Funny

It seems that in the USA, the word Moore is filtered.

Sure, except that it's not.

Can we draw conclusions from that?

See above.

--
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden

Except that.. by lazyl · 2004-09-01 07:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

The Chinese don't use Kanji. That's a Japanese thing.

But, regardless, how would google be able to find anything using a search query 'encoded' in leet-speek anyway? We're not talking about person to person communications here. These are google searches they're filtering.

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Aw crap, ninjas!

Re:What the ... ! by Rude+Turnip · 2004-09-01 07:18 · Score: 2, Funny

I suppose if I mentioned "HP Lovecraft," you would think it has to do with inkjet printers?

--
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!

Uncensor@home by Odonian · 2004-09-01 07:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

Given that the list of filtered words is available, couldn't someone design a mini-web server that processes pages and converts offending words into readable but unfilterable variants? eg: human rights -> h.u.m.a.n. r1ghts etc. I'm sure a single site offering this would be blocked, but if it were some distributed thing like SETI that a bunch of people could run around the world, it would be very difficult to block or filter.

No Problem? by SlickMcSly · 2004-09-01 07:42 · Score: 2, Interesting

The word "freedom" is blocked. It seems quite "s*mple" to me that there won't be a "fr**china" for a long time to come.

I wonder if the chinese propaganda ministry has /. accounts.

The "banned" mathematics problem... by mikael · 2004-09-01 07:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

Looking at the list of banned words, the following mathematics question is also banned:

How do I calculate the GCD of the sides of a simple triangle that is drawn out on a sheet of paper?

--
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads

re: the list of English words by prell · 2004-09-01 07:50 · Score: 2, Funny

I noticed that the blacklist of English words includes "shit" twice.

China also requires its citizens to wipe twice after excreting.

I can't resist by Tairnyn · 2004-09-01 07:53 · Score: 4, Funny

In mother China, Google filters you

--
"Don't waste your time or time will waste you" -MUSE

If only they turned that blocking . . . by base3 · 2004-09-01 08:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

. . . to limiting the tidal wave of spam coming from China.

Seriously, the people at Yahoo and Cisco that helped them implement this filtering regime (custom firmware for routers and consulting services), along with the executvies, should be tried for crimes against humanity and hanged. Slowly (the hanging, not the trial).

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One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.

i am of the belief... by circletimessquare · 2004-09-01 08:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

that the fight for uplifting the rights outside of the west to very basic levels is of greater import than the fight against esoteric threats to rights within the west

call me crazy, but i think the mountain is more important than the molehill

to say that, as a citizen of the west, you don't have control over things outside your country, is wrong on 2 counts:

1. then you are guilty of navel gazing and selfishness, thinking basic rights end at the rio grande, a sin of xenophobia more commonly used as a criticism of conservative westerners but perfectly appropriate to liberals who are hypersensitive to minor abuses within the west but deaf and dumb to outrageous abuses outside the west (it is a grand liberal tradition i might add to have a global, rather than a provincial outlook)

2. as one can plainly see by the text in the slashdot article above, it is entirely possible to fight evil happening outside of the west from the vantage point of the west: "The OpenNet Initiative, a joint project of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, and the Advanced Network Research Group at Cambridge, have released a bulletin regarding the type of filtering applied to Google by the Chinese government."

so by all means, continue obsessing over your molehills, and ignore mountains of evil, but don't expect me to respect you for continuing to do so after i have brought this discrepancy to your attention

all i ask for is intelligence, and i see none in the obsession over the minor intrawestern threats, and the ignoring of the major extrawestern threats, by all measures of what is a minor and major threat to a person's basic human rights

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intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it

Does not work on XP SP2 by Henk+Poley · 2004-09-01 08:31 · Score: 2, Informative

...as since the ActiveX thingy is not propperly signed.

hyperbole by circletimessquare · 2004-09-01 09:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

look up the word "hyperbole" in the dictionary of your choice

As of now, I AM treated like the people in China.

this is patently false, and reveals in you an ignorance of the rest of the world, and perhaps even the country you live in

We need the voters to take action...

reason number one why you are not treated like the people in China

you are full of some major hyperbole

and a good dose of fear, uncertainty and denial as well

what i am looking for you to have instead is wisdom, and intelligence

you have not demonstrated any of that

--
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it

Re:Freedom by dustmite · 2004-09-01 11:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

China is friends with the US, foreign-policy-wise, in spite of being a massive aggressive communist country with ongoing gross human rights violations and a stated desire to invade other democratic countries. The US government seemingly has no pro-democracy agenda whatsoever, nor are they 'defenders of democracy and human rights' in any sense, in spite of what they claim are amongst the main reasons for spending billions of dollars of tax-payer money, sending thousands of Americans to die, and killing many thousands more innocent foreign civilians.

They filter by RESULTS, not KEYWORDS by r6144 · 2004-09-01 14:31 · Score: 2, Informative

I'm Chinese and in China and can RTFA, and my friends here mostly agree that the google filter works on search results, not keywords (if you search for FaLunGong, you will certainly have some FaLunGong-related sites in the result, so the filter works in this simple case). If the search results contain unapproved sites, it will be filtered however "innocuous" the keyword may be. That's the reason why some keywords seem to be filtered for no reason --- heck, even searching for DengXiaoPing (in Chinese) fails sometimes. Of course, since this is result-dependent, whether or not a keyword seems to be blocks changes randomly with time without Chinese authorities changing anything, and it is IMHO pointless to compile a list of banned keywords.

BTW, the government is cracking down on porn sites by asking ordinary people to help, and this action is quite popular among most people. Personally I'm indifferent to this, since although I don't visit porn sites, such cracking-downs may well extend to sites disagreeing with the Party, some of the information in which can be quite instructive to a Chinese student (even for someone who mostly supports the Party!). The ironic thing is that although hardcore porn sites are not easy to find in China, and porn is indeed illegal, it is still hard to find a news site that porn-paranoid parents can allow their children to roam freely... you need to be really careful not to stumble onto some pornographic material (or things that are obviously very unsuitable for children) on the biggest news sites.

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