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Outrunning China's Web Cops
conq writes "BusinessWeek has an interesting story on an outfit, DIT, that provides people in China access to censored sites. To do this, 'the company distributes software, called FreeGate, which disguises the sites a person visits. In addition, DIT sends out mass e-mails to Chinese Web surfers for clients such as VOA, which is banned in China. The e-mails include a handful of temporary Web addresses that host off-limits content and springboards to other forbidden sites.'"
It's FREEDOM MAIL!
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
OK, I have to go with Communism being more evil than spamming (mainly due to that little "one hundred million people killed by it" problem). On the other hand, Spam has certainly inflicted more personal harm on me than communism in the last ten years...
Crow T. Trollbot
The e-mails include a handful of temporary Web addresses that host off-limits content and springboards to other forbidden sites.
So is this why I keep getting port scans from those chinese IPs?
I wonder how they'll feel when some chinese people end up in jail for using their service.
This is great news, I think. I've often wondered when someone would start an agressive, concerted effort to bypass the Great Firewall of China. Having a native speaker of Chinese working on this is a big asset.
Props to Bill Xia and co! Sounds like his company is doing a lot to promote Internet freedom in China, and for all the right reasons.
My bicyles
While some of these companies offer services aimed towards the people of China and ignoring federal regulation (which combined is generally a good thing), the hammer will be brought down and somebody will have to pay for this!
What I don't understand is why an alternative 'internet' has been setup yet, using encrypted/disguised routes to the western world in a P2P fashion. If there's one niche in which open-source software can prosper it's going to be here.
Anyways, the main point I'm getting at here is that the Chinese government will choose somebody or an organization as an example of what will happen to future law-breakers/benders, but it'll still continue..
How are users in China supposed to be assured that this isn't just a honeypot-style operation, meant to catch users who wish to access content the government there wishes them not to access?
Not that I'm suggesting this is the case, by any means, but one would have to be quite trusting (or at least willing to face the consequences of getting caught) to use such a system.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
There are many way to proxy around firewalls. IMHO the solution would be to stop the censorship, not find other way around it. Although the more ways people can get around the censorship the better.
What if that mime really is trapped in a box?
This clearly is terrorism and new laws must be enacted to prevent this from happening. The government needs more "tools" to monitor people and help keep them safe. These radicals who's only purpose is to destroy the great Chinese empire need to be rounded up, questioned and put to death. They are "cowards" and don't wear a uniform to a sovereign state. They refuse to work within their countries political systems, thus making them criminals.
It is imperative China protects its interests, especially against nondescript criminals who could strike at any time from anywhere. China has rights to protect itself and hopefully they deploy troops to the suspected countries of these people if their governments cannot or won't cooperate.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
"Mr Gates, Tear Down This Wall!"
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
What those people need is an "Independent Satellite Television" broadcasting all over China. There are no firewalls in the air.
:-)
And for internet some sort of low orbit "Satellite Internet".
Who wants to pay for all that?
Mass mailings can be easily abused. Sure, you sign up thinking you'll be getting non-commercial mail regarding a particular subject. That goes on for a while, but soon enough the list administrators realize that they could make a bit of money by letting certain paying business folks push a message through now and then, or perhaps even the system is compromised. Regardless, what could be considered "spam" gets through.
So while you opted in, that is true, there's no guarantee that you still won't received unsolicited commercial email.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
This is one thing which has disuaded me from trying something similar. This is likely to be a serious offense in China and in the future it is actually going to be more difficult to avoid going there for one reason or another.
I can see several chinese cities becoming transport hubs along the lines of Singapore or LAX before long. You don't want to have to spend the rest of your life avoiding places like that.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
...sooner or later the Chinese authorities will come to the realization that internet/computer/information technologies are "hyper-polymorphic" and will forever resist control.
Then they will likely blow up their internet gateways, leaving more internet room for the rest of us.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Where's a +1 Satire when you need it? (Somehow, +1 Funny does not really apply here).
You could've hired me.
should be rounded up and forced to wear a uniform of a sovereign state.
Oh wait.... They already are.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
You do see the difference between China and the US, right? I was hoping you were just a troll, but your comment history suggests otherwise.
A repressive, unelected government has no legitimate authority, so one can hardly fault people for rebelling against the Chinese government.
"All in All it's just another Brick in The Wall"
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
After all, knowledge is power. China wouldn't want the citizens of the "People's Republic" to have the power, would they?
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Here's another site which may help Chinese users receiving censored Google results via email.
Seen from Space
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Well done you just failed at it all.
Heres a hint : If you want to by pass laws and help people, don't scream and shout abut it. The more news you make the easier it is to get heard..
So nice try, but next time keep it under hat and print off copies of sites and nail them to walls. You'll be harder to catch and spreading the news beyond the few in your group.
I like muppets.
they might start arresting people, but they can't arrest them all!!!
oh wait it's china...
Gov. Press Relase: General Population? What general population? We never had one, honest.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE
MOVE ALONG. NOTHING HAPPEND.
i don't care
Traditional spam e-mail is all "v1agra" ads and so forth, or it's virus-driven (hell, sometimes both). So arguably the implicit definition of spam is e-mails sent for the interests of the spammer. Here, the intent and surrounding circumstances are quite different; it's a rather selfless act (indeed, instead of financial benefits, here the "spammer" is putting himself at significant risk).
So yeah, you could say that arguably political issues often revolve around commercial and economic issues . . . but, uhh, I would still argue that the situations here are markedly different. Maybe they both boil down to spamming people, but imagine an analogy: killing people. A bit of an extreme analogy, but work with me here. On one hand we might have someone who goes into someone's house to rob and murder them; on the other hand we have someone fighting a war. Now, if you disagree with the war, or believe that killing people is always wrong no matter what, well then you might call the soldier fighting in the war a murderer. However, many people would see the situation of the soldier in most wars (I shall avoid any present-day examples that I might not agree with myself. . . let's say, WWII for the Allies, that should go over relatively well) as at worst a grey area, at best an actually laudable goal. True, it's sad that it comes to those measures, but sometimes it has to be done, right?
Obviously spam isn't nearly as serious as killing people. However, if you think about that for a minute and realize that this guy's family back in China could suffer punishment of that level if he's found out . . . well, that's exactly the kind of problem he's trying to fight against with his "spam".
So I would argue that sometimes small evils are worth it if they're fighting against much larger evils, especially considering that many societies condone greater evils for the same alleged ends.
Even just think of it this way. He's redirecting one of the more questionable sides of freedom on the internet to fight the enemies of that freedom. That's like, I dunno, maybe using beef products to save the amazon rainforest! It's a bit crazy, but if this kind of thing is out there already and one can redirect it towards something good . .
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
It has been said by an old Russian general that there really is no difference between the United States and Russia. The only distinction is that in Russia, citizens know they're not free.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
with all of these chinese censorship stories appearing on slashdot.org, how long before slashdot.org is blocked in china?
that's not a call to "play nice" with the autocrats in beijing, that's a call to show everyone else exactly what we are dealing with in today's world. slashdot has been a wonderfully successful site for open disucssion by anyone about anything
from fundamentalists who threaten death and destruction because of cartoons, to regimes that will jail you for simply saying "democracy should be the way", to western governments who want to snoop and sniff your communications, freedom of expression is under attack in this world like never before
we, in the west, in the moslem world, and in china, must work, and work together, to defeat forces who wish to tell us what we can and cannot talk about
religious fundamentalism, despotism, and just plain arrogance are alive and well and very much wish us to shut up
we won't shut up, and we must make this plain and clear
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Heres a hint : If you want to by pass laws and help people, don't scream and shout abut it. The more news you make the easier it is to get heard..
...because, the mean faced, souless communist thugs that moniter internal subversive communications surf slashdot for leads in their free time...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Yahoo, Google & MS should be fined for providing services that assist governments in censoring basic human rights. Since these companies are based in the US, and the US currently still honors some form of human rights (although maybe not signing the UN resolution), the US government should take action against these companies and in particular the companies that cause the arrest or detainment of an individual or group.
The only way I see that this censoring activity may be tolerated would be if the companies involved are wholly owned and operated by citizens of that country and without assistance by companies in foreign countries. For example - a Chinese company gets created that just happens to be named after a company in the US. The Chinese version of the US company is involved in human rights violations. As long as the US company is not in any way involved with the Chinese version, then all is fine. In the US company is involved then the US government should impose large fines against the US company for its involvement in human right violations.
No entity, or artificial entity, based wholly or partially, or doing business with any entity, artificial or otherwise, within the US should be tolerated having any part with the restriction, censorship or elimination of human rights (minimally defined by UN resolutions). The US government should work toward preserving human rights as well as democracy throughout the world.
The page links in the emailed page are automagically morphed into email links so the user can continue browsing in email-slow-motion.
Zen tips: Pay attention. Don't take it personally. Believe nothing.
Want to know some truth about Falun Gong? Go to their official website, ask any of your Chinese friends you trust to translate a ramdomly selected article on it. I'm sure you will enjoy the stories from the practitioners about how much they worship their "higher than any god" master Li, Hongzhi. You will know what they have achieved by practicing the so called "gong", including the ability to communicate with their printers and defeat the evils attached on the printer to prevent them from printing the quotation of their master Li. Chinese people are not stupid. While they are fighting for their right against the government, they fight against the evil cult as well.
only a simpleminded extremist, ironically, would see being anticensorship as prochildporn
when i say "censorship" it is assumed i am talking about common sense identifiers of censorship: things a normal human being should have the right to do/ say: political criticism, religious criticism, and freedom of simple human expression
child porn has nothing to do with any of these things, so nice try troll, but you lose
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually I agree with the anonymous coward, you can not support censorship against child porn, but also againt censorship in general. You have to take your pick. Otherwise you are just against political censorship, aren't you? There is technically no difference between some U.S. States censoring child porn and China censoring political comments. They are both perfectly legal in the respective country.
Any word on if this program is available for ppl in the US. China is not the only country with privacy, eavesdroppong issues.
It seems that there solution "will provide a regularly changing URL that users can access to open the doors to unfettered access of the World Wide Web. In addition, users' identities will be protected from online tracking and monitoring by the Chinese government." http://anonymizer.com/consumer/media/press_release s/02012006.html
political commentary is words amongst equals
child pornography has to do with words/ images where one party is a child, who is not mentally aware enough yet to consent sexually, and therefore not capable of contributing as an equal
censorship of your equal is one thing
censorship of words/ images when it has to do with children is about raising children
as soon as you involve pictures/ words involving children in sexual settings, or you involve chilren as the audience of pictures/ words of sex/ violence, censorship isn't really the appropriate way to describe what you are doing
parenting is the appropriate word
it is entirely normal, appropriate and in fact expected of adults to shield children from sexuality and violence until they are mature enough, as determined by the parent, to be exposed to this material, whether in creation or consumption
but when you wish to limit adults participation in creation or distribution or consumption of words/ images, censorship is what you are talking about
welcome to reality: there are nuances and complexities to the issue you are talking about, your hamfisted brute force approach to the issue, without taking any obvious modifications into account that even the most simpleminded fool could easily appreciate, renders you pointless to the subject matter you are talking about
your simpleminded understanding of what "censorship" is does not accurately describe the world and the way it really works
your entire way of thinking about what censorship is is malformed, inaccurate and therefore ultimately useless
you need to understand your terms before you use them
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually I agree with the anonymous coward, you can not support censorship against child porn, but also againt censorship in general. You have to take your pick.
The difference, of course, being that the process of creating a newspaper or an opinion doesn't involve violence against a child.
Give me a break.
The age of consent in certain countries are as low as 12, if the material were made in such countries and are legal, why should censorship keep Americans from viewing the material? Now remember this could be a website in another country and is a legal website.
if you call censorship denying anyone any material, then limiting child pornogrpahy is censorship
but if you limit the definition of censorship to the creation of consumption of material among equals, then limiting child pornography is not censorship
because you need children to create the material, and they are not capable of consenting
but even if you call limiting access to child porn a form of censorship, you cannot be considered seriously if you consider it to be the same as limiting access to political commentary
any way you define censorship, limiting political material and limiting child pornography are completely different things, and to consider them the same, for any type of reasonable rational discussion, is utterly retarded
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You comment reminds me of a college classmate back in '79. He figured that the Middle East had the oil, we needed it, so we had to dance to their tune. Jesus, I couldn't believe he was conceding to being such a pussy.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Why not create a VPN Railroad? It worked to get American Slaves to Canada.
Using strategically placed vpn points, it may be possible to access an "internal" Chinese server that actually has a tunnel to a northern/European internet portal. From there, the world is open...
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
a child must be help to different considerations of justice as well
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When Israelis shoot Palestinian children, it always makes headlines and sells lots of print. Therefore, we should censor this violence against children, lest we encourage more of it.
I don't know why I'm still playing along, but what the hell.
The difference is causation. The newspaper publishers don't say "Well, time for a new issue, let's go kill some children!" This is so blindingly obvious that I am going to assume you are trolling.
The world is not a dichotomy, take the posterizing filter off your eyes. No matter how much you might want it to be, it is not as simple as choosing 'total censorship of everything' or 'I support kiddie porn.' There is a spectrum of how wrong or offensive something is, and somewhere along there you draw a line for things which are so wrong and offensive they should be suppressed. I draw this line at sexually exploiting children (who cannot consent) and I draw it at actions which knowingly and intentionally threaten life.
That is setting the bar for censorship and supression almost as low as it can get. I believe that child porn is so wrong that it should be suppressed and it's creators and consumers locked up forever. I believe that inciting a riot, committing a hate crime, conspiring to kill people in God's name, or yelling 'FIRE' in the theater should also be suppressed because if you do them you knowingly and intentionally harm others.
PS: If you truly support freedom of speech, you must support my right to yell 'FIRE' in a crowded theater. If you are against me saying this, you are anti-free speech, so stop being a hypocrite. Take your pick.
In a sense, Falun Dafa is very revolutionary, just not in the way the CCP claims it is. Likewise, true Christianity is very revolutionary, and activities of christian groups are heavily restricted in China...
Falun Dafa is also like Linux. Certain recent leaders of the CCP claimed that it had some sort of secret, central backbone, because that's how the CCP itself was for many years. However, it doesn't, no more that Linux has a secret backbone. Anyone who's studied Falun Dafa could go teach a new science based on it at any moment.
I repeat, I am not associated with Falun Gong, but I think your statement that "Anyone associated with falungong seems a little bit shady" is misinformed or disingenuous. Certain elements in the Chinese government (who, we hope, will be corrected by the Chinese people) are a little bit shady, or perhaps very corrupt; however, I'll avoid making blanket statements because I haven't yet been physically present in any part of China.
Oh fuck off. That's not what I mean and you know it perfectly damn well.
Yep, this is bad. I'd still count it as basic spam.
More importantly, it's bad for China and the Chinese people. This is kind of like invading Iraq to spread democracy. The problem is, that until people understand and WANT democracy on their own enough to revolt and make it happen, then they're not ready for it. Likewise, it would be better to let Chinese citizens slowly become more aware of what freedom means and what the government is actually keeping from them. When they all really get that, the government will be forced to change. But, if we try to force change the people aren't really ready for, then the whole thing will blow up: the Chinese government will be outraged rather than understanding that it's inevitable, and the Chinese people will only take up the offer in tiny groups, meaning that they're vastly outnumbered by "normal" citizens, and therefore seen as a weird subculture to be rightly imprisoned.
Sadly, the situation isn't much different in the west. We all have options like GnuPG or Mixmaster and Tor for privacy, but most don't see the need, so the ones that do are left to seem like weirdos with something to hide.
Loudly proclaiming that you bypass the system is a demonstration against the system. This may look like a way for tech-savvy Chinese to bypass the great firewall, but in reality it's a demonstration against said firewall.
Well, for sheer humour's sake, I'll go with a modification of one of the above posts: "The way communism has been implemented in the world has caused a huge amount of suffuring, but it hasn't caused me any harm. Spam, on the other hand has." - Mental anguish, if nothing else.
That being said, I agree with those pointing out that these govts aren't actually communist. They call themselves that, and in certain ways they follow it's teachings, but fundementally, there has not yet been a true communist nation. Like another form of govt, Monarchy, it can accomplish a lot and do great things for it's people/nation, but it is far too easy to get an incompetant/selfserving monarch/council in charge. If there was some way to guarantee that it was actually governed by one or more individuals who actually do have the best intrests of the country and/or people at heart (and aren't incompetant or blind in the intelectual sense), then it could and would truly accomplish wonders.
Unfortuntaly, while I do believe that human beings *can* be better than they appear, we (as a society) seem to be heading the opposite way. Humans are probably worse overall than many of us would like to believe, but they're a lot nicer than the general average of what we see in the media. (remember: Our news is heavily slanted towards the negative. Most media would rather print the article on how suicide bomber X blew themselves up in suchandsuch than run a news item on how government official Soandso figured out how to provide fast, effective, universal health care for everyone without increasing taxes. The later is deffinitly the more important, and benefits society as a whole, but it'll be the bomber that gets the front page.)
Oh, and back to the main point of all this, the article on someone helping the chinese citizens. It's great that they're out there doing this, but don't articles like this hinder? What are the chances that *someone* in the cencorship bureaucracy is reading slashdot? We're not exactly a small site here. It would save them a lot of the effort of trying to find the holes in their system, since they can just watch for it to appear on the news here, then they just have to go looking for things once they know where it is. Or at least that it's there. Sort of doing their own work for them.
Which raises another point: How much are we willing to be less informed about subjects of intrest to us in order to benefit those who are actually involved in said subjects?
Z
Google announces improved spam filtering for GMail.
to turn this into a kind of open source P2P(roxy) movement?
Think about it. This guy is spending a lot of resources to help people in China get the one thing that will help - free access to the exchange of information and ideas.
While Yahoo! cannot (openly) flout Chinese law, there's nothing illegal about Joe Geek installing an open source P2P application that allows him to share a small chunk of his bandwidth at home to provide access to content that the Chinese gov't has banned.
Personally, I'd sign right up. In fact, I might even volunteer a little time to work on development of the utility.
It would certainly add more "freedom value" to the presence of companies like Yahoo! and Google.
Of course, anyone openly doing so would have to pretty much avoid China for a good long time.
Comparing Falun Gong/Falun Dafa to olympic karate and tae kwon do is clearly absurd. I believe you are confused because you are applying western categories to a non-western culture. In the west, "political groups" and "martial arts disciplines" are completely different and non-overlapping entities. Asia, in contrast, has a long history of political uprisings and dissent arising from martial arts cults. Do you remember reading about the "Boxer Rebellion" in your world history class? What do you think the "boxers" were? And why do you think the Japanese occupation government would bother to ban things like Tae Kwon Do if they didn't see them as a political threat?
If you look into Falun Gong/Falun Dafa literature, even superficially, you would see that it clearly IS a movement with dissident political aims. (And more power to them, IMO.) It certainly isn't just a "sport" or a spiritual self-help group. The current Chinese government is understandably wary of it.
I would also take issue with your characterization of falun gong as a kind of loose-knit network of like-minded individuals that is "spread informally". Whether or not they have a "secret, central backbone", it is a fact that they are highly organized, with an active international publishing network. Not only do they publish a glossy magazine, "Compassion" with international distribution, but their weekly newspaper, "The Epoch Times" is available at newstands in many American cities, as well as in several other countries. (I know about this because it was deliverd to my door, just a few weeks ago.) Not to mention their presence on the web. They may not be as hierarchical as, say, the Catholic church, but they certainly are organized, and they certainly not "spread informally."
Now, I don't agree with everything in that tract either; for instance, I don't see how persecution of Falun Gong practitioners constitutes "genocide" (since members do not, and have not, constituted any particular ethnic group). Still, it's hypocritical for the Chinese Communist Party to claim it's fighting a cult when it has such a track-record of violence and secrecy itself.
The few examples of self-immolation were probably not specifically the result of Falun Dafa teaching, but rather a possible response in a world made completely illogical by the actions of the police and CCP agents.
Before the crackdown, there were 10,000 children in China who said "The Emperor has no clothes" and a hundred million who looked for themselves.