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Canadians To Douse Chinese Firewall
FrenchyinOntario writes "Researchers at a University of Toronto lab are getting ready to release a computer program called Psiphon, which will allow Internet users in free countries to help users in more restrictive countries (like China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc.) to access the Internet by getting past the firewalls and getting around "rubber hose cryptoanalysis" which is a drawback of other anti-firewall programs as it reveals a user's tracks if discovered by authorities. Operating through port 443, Psiphon will allow users in monitoring countries the ability to send an encrypted request for certain information, and for users in secure countries to send it back to them. The UofT's Citizen Lab hopes to debut Psiphon at the international congress of the free speech group PEN in May."
How is this better than Tor: http://tor.eff.org/ or just an HTTP Proxy that supports CONNECT for SSL traffic?
It's good to see that human kindness hasn't been completely lost in the internet age.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
Don't worry, once the Conserv...Allia...Reform Party is out, all will be good again up here.
This will probably work for the first week or so. Until the communists wise up and lock it down, not allowing encryption at all, or blocking sites that have high encryption traffic.
Let's see...
access-list 443 deny ip any any
Next?
While it makes me feel good to hear about this... won't the censoring nations have something to say about an organized and publicised effort to help their citizens break the law?
This has already been done: Six/Four
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Private initiatives like this are cool and all (and have proven very effective in the past), but it would be nice to see our governments taking a much stronger stand regarding free-speech. Free speech is the absolute foundation of democracy and freedom.
Eightyford, you're grammar is showing.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
Except that the CRTC has nothing to do with what I can and can't view on the 'net.
which will allow Internet users in free countries to help users in more restrictive countries (like China
Yeah, because I really want to help all those people in China I've been getting constant portscans from.
In related Faux news, a group of freedom loving internet users has been hauled off to Guantanamo after alledgely helping terrorists to relay funding and attack planning information using a tool designed to hide evil communications from your all loving government. That'll teach em
1. Block activity on port 443
2. Opress
"While it makes me feel good to hear about this... won't the censoring nations have something to say about an organized and publicised effort to help their citizens break the law?"
That reminds me. How's that DirectTV working for you guys?
Let's see. While the Chinese are unlikely to block port 443, they could monitor sites for which the percentage of 443 vs. port 80 https requests exceeds a reasonable threshhold.
But, it seems that I need to communicate with someone in China first, and offer my computer up to them, and then we both need to install something on our computers, and I give him a userid and password.
Isn't this just too clunky to work?
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
Yeah. Such actions would be probably called "terrorist acts" or something like that.
All China has to do is to only allow outgoing SSL connections to a hand-picked "whitelist" of servers... (e.g. well-known companies). They probably won't bother until enough people start breaching the firewall.
Of course, then the next untapped way to securely send information would be to embed it in audio CDS. Audio CDS store (digitally) 16-bit audio. But the low 8-bits are pretty much inaudible. Data could easily be encoded there, which would mean 300-400MB of data and still a full 70+minutes of high-quality music on a pure *audio* CD. Compressed/encrypted data won't have much self-correlation -- and neither do the low few bits of images/audio acquired from the real world. Even more sophisticated schemes exist that and would be even much more stealhly.
If I set up a proxy accessible through SSL, with user authentication, isn't it equivalent ?
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
There will always be ways for dedicated and savy people to get through firewalls for purposes such as this. However, on the large scale, it does little to affect the access to censored information by the public in general.
Back in my day if we wanted freedom we had to shoot someone in the face. Twice.
Now sometimes we do it for fun. -DC
Cool! Soon I'll be able to access suicide-related content in Australia!
save the GNUs!
So what happens if the person who you gave access to does something illegal (child porn for example)? Does the host become responsible, legally and/or morally? Unlike a general, open, free for all access, this individual approach appears to shift more of the responsibility onto the host, who may not be in a good position to make such a judgment. The program apparently has some facilities for doing forensics on the traffic, which then shift even more of the responsibility onto the host. I guess when you're trying to fight a repressive regime, you should be prepared to take on some heavy responsibilities. Kudos to those who are willing to do so.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Tor has so much more going for it.
Open source.
Allows hidden services.
Supports any protocol using TCP/IP.
Perfect forward secrecy.
And lots of other stuff that I won't even go on about. A one hop proxy is just a bad idea for being anonymous. Tor is a much better answer.
If you've never heard of Tor then go read up on it at Wikipedia.
Would it be apropos to say, "Up your nose with a rubber hose!" to China now? (Come on you 30-something Slashdotters, surely you remember Welcome Back Kotter? It was a formative experience like JJ Walker's "Dynomite!")
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
What's ironic is that I go to this school, and I'm probably one of the last Slashdotters to hear of this. Oh well.
The US keeps making laws I have problems with, like the Patriot Act, but then I see the polls which show that most people support them.
So what's stopping perverts uses this to cloak their kiddie porn downloading?
Nice attempt at a troll. Did you even read the article? The port it uses is also heavily used for financial transactions around the world. They'd be insane just to block it.
Anyone else read "Canadians To Douche Chinese Firewall" at first glance?
:)
Seriously, I need sleep. Moving sucks. Was good for a double take though
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
and its available at http://www.peacefire.org/
devide is spelled as divide...
Just thought you might like the reference...
Paul B.
I swear officer, I didn't know she was 8
Suddenly it seems like a pretty good argument, no?
Slash-for-Thought
I'd just like to say that I would mod samzenpus funny for the best Slashdot department in recent memory, if I were able.
:)
Thanks for the chuckle
8: Canada - Polar Bear
You're not a very bright Canadian, are you?
Sure we do! Or perhaps the correct tense is DID... The Bricklin
:)
http://bricklin.org/BI_AboutTheBricklin.htm
Although I don't think the Bricklin could be considered a source of pride in any country
Jason
How do you make something like that public without the Chinese censoring it out? The project name is "Psiphon". The only thing the commies have to do is just filter out "Psiphon" and voila! How exactly are you going to get this software to the people with a blindfold on their head?
Air drop thousands of USB flash drives?
i realize that this work done by a Canadian university has little to do with coordinated government policy.
but it's worth mentioning that Canada has been a supporter of Cuba with all kinds of aid, assisting a dictatorial regime to circumvent international restrictions and generally propping up an untenable and oppressive system.
If China is moving away from Marxist ideology, now effectively "only" a police state with money and the budding evils of capitalism, then Cuba is a old-school police state with general poverty. makes you wonder how technology could be used to shake the stagnation out of that situation.
Have you ever considered that it's a bit ethnocentric to try to "save" Chinese from their own conservative culture? Christ, you may as well be invading them! The fact is that most Chinese support censorship.
My complaint with this scheme, and Tor, is that they are essentially open proxies. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to pooch the acl lines on a Squid and leave it running a bit will know what happens next. One day you notice your bandwidth pegged at max and you scramble to fix it.
Democrat delenda est
I believe the point he is trying to make is that the CRTC still does regulate content, which is of course a form of censorship.
I recall hearing from Canadian relatives that the CRTC at one time failed to renew the license of a particular radio station because of "offensive" behavior of some of the station's jockeys.
I also remember hearing about how they approved Al Jazeera, but requested that instances of "hate speech" had to be edited out by broadcasters.
Between "hate speech" legislation (itself a very anti-democratic and anti-freedom of expression principle) and the CRTC, we see that the Canadian government does partake in the censorship of various media. The censorship is still prevalent, even if the Internet is not yet particularly affected.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Freedom has little to do with popular support. It's one of the few things in the world where there is no grey zone. Either you have freedom, or you do not. Even the censorship of a single word means that you are not truly free to say that word. Hence you do not have true freedom of expression, even if you can say every other word in existence.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
-1 troll
Those Canadians are a bunch of hosers, eh?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
As a Canadian, although I do sympathize with those in China trying to get around their censorship, I am concerned with one country developing a tool with the explicit stated goal of trying to undermine an internal regulation of another country. In effect, it provides the user with information which is not allowed in their own country.
What would the Canadian government think if people in countries with different drug laws started intentionally mailing their drugs, which they consider legal, into Canada? Better yet, what would Canada think if such an action was sponsored by the government of the offending country (Psiphon is coming out of a publicly funded university in Canada).
As another example, currently a hot topic up here is gun violence. Many of the guns get into Canada from the US, where the gun laws are not as strict. Certainly, and rightfully so, the Canadian government would be offended if the US government funded a program with the goal of getting more guns into Canada.
I agree both drugs and guns *can* be much more harmful than information, but if the consequence of having that information is jail sentence in a Chinese prison, then enabling them to access it is something that should not be taken lightly.
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
Canada is the country that considers any art with sexual depictions of children to be child porn, punishable by 5 to 10 years in the clink. And they're going to be the protectors of "freedom of speech"...
Heck, half of Lewis Carrol's artwork could be considered illegal under Canadian law...
Not to mention the fact that the CRTC is government run, whereas the UofT is rather not.
So, how is the CRTC's actions relevant to this discussion again?
What on Earth does the CRTC (and by indirect reference, Cancon) have to do with mass censorship of Internet sites in China?
McLaughlin Motors along with Buick formed General Motors in 1908. Wikipedia knows more.
DeLorean
Send them pro freedom political spam? No one has come up with an effective method to completely beat spam yet, so how about using it for some good instead of knock off rolexes and viagra? It also gives the recipient plausible deniability, they just got spammed, it's not their fault.
Few of us really comprehend how restrictive the government there is. Its so restrictive that everyone who leaves the country must leave family members behind - literally as hostages. I am not just saying this because of BushCo propaganda about NK "They make US look good..." the level of government control there is unlike anything else anywhere on the planet. Its like China during the Cultural Revolution, and until just a few years ago, this represented total information control. Say the wrong thing, and you disappear, forever.. Often, your family (children, spouse, parents - whoever lives with you) - does too. Seriously.. Its ths stuff of nightmares.. The only North Koreans who surf the net from inside North Korea are very high-level KWP VIPs like Kim Jong-Il himself.. and maybe his immediate family and inner circle.. And I doubt if *any* of them besides the Fear Leader himself is surfing 'dissident' sites. And if he does surf your site, you wont be able to tell it from the IP address... North Korean net surfers use Internet connectivity that they buy from China and Japan..
Good point. On a related note, what's to stop someone from committing a crime in the privacy of their own home? Someone should be monitoring these "private homes", otherwise people could be using them to shelter all sorts of illegal activity.
No. "Majority rules" does not make for a free country; prior restraint of government power and a judiciary willing to enforce it do.
Popular support for a bad law does not make it any more Constitutional. (Short of amending the Constitution itself, which wisely not only takes a supermajority but has many procedural hurdles.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
ski-doo
A free country is a country with a strong constitution, in our case, the first ten ammendments to our constitution.
Peek-a-booty is also aimed at helping those in speech-embattled nations avoid censoring firewalls.
It's no longer safe to move to Canada to avoid getting nuked by China in the upcoming WW3!
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
There's definitely been some kind of purge since February 5th, when many of these were up.
3: Italy - FIAT I wouldn't call FIAT a neither a national or a "national" pride ...
I could be wrong, but I would bet that most, if not all industrialized nations partake in some form of censorship.
/.). My attitude of this may change a little when/if I ever have children (where I will have to censor what they input).
c an_duo) . To a minor's benefit, they should not be held completely accountable for their actions, unless proven to require disipline (repeat violent offenders...).
The issue arises is if people on average think that various instances of censorship is a feature rather than a bug. Now, I would prefer individual-induced boycotts against any stations that a person finds offensive. This could coerce regulation by media companies (monitarily-influenced). A customer should also be able to make a station forbidden unless permitted.
That is what I like about the internet, I can choose what I want to see, hear and read (that begs the question of what is wrong with me to visit such sites as
I also think that some technologies do need to be censored more than others. Any child can attain a radio without parental involvement. On the other side of the spectrum, books should not be controlled for content at all, because they are easily regulated.
*I should note that I believe minors are protected citizens, and as such certain rights and freedoms do not apply to them, and cannot be trumped even with parental consent. For more details why please see the extreme side of the spectrum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_Blue_(Ameri
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Don't you think that one person's freedom to slander, incite hatred against or provoke murder of a person infringes on the other person's freedom from all that just a little?
Good luck sometimes arrives disguised as bad
Yes, but Canada still leads the world in attempts to censor the internet. You don't have to look further than Erwin Cotler (who thankfully lost power in the recent elections), the banning of the zundelsite from Canada, and regular legal action against so-called "hate" sites. Judging by their content it seems to me that they are more often sites that certain groups (e.g. B'nai Brith, Simon Wiesenthal Center) just hate to see.
Many people are asking, "How is this any better than somesite.com, a normal anonymizing proxy?"
The difference is that this is a piece of software which runs on an individual person's computer.
This is more like peer-to-peer than it is like 50,000 people using a well know proxy.
The Chinese government can easily go to google and search for well known anonymizing proxies
and block access to them. What the govt can't do, is find out every IP address on the internet
running this software and block it. The downside of this software is that Chinese users must have
a friend on the outside to run the software, but the upside is that it's vastly less likely that the
Chinese government will be capable of blocking access to it.
It's not a government initiative, and it's in Canada, not the US.
They are truly defenders of truth, justice, and the Ameri...
Oh, wait. we might have to revise this.
ok?
Canada now has Zap cars, which are rebranded Smart cars. Good job Canada!
Some guys wrote a joe-sixpack friendly http proxy with ssl.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
I guess they are not Canadian. Mod me, not so smart.
Is this where I point out that Jefferson was both a slave owner, and one of the authors of the Constitution?
Programs and mechanisms to bypass the firewall and ease the flow of information already exist in abundance. The problem is that each of these mechanisms fail due to net congestion, because there aren't enough servers to assist in the liberation of internet users in the filter regimes.
So called freedom nations could easily assist in this, if they really had the will to combat the filter regimes. But they won't. Because that would escalate into a foreign policy crisis, since these regimes would consider such actions interference in their internal affairs.
If it travels over port 443, the ports need to be configurable!
You can be certain the Chinese firewalls will just start to block 443 and ban encrypted http... What have they got to lose!?
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
it is to my understanding that the "firewall" in saudi arabia is
1. a proxy
2. a community driven black list
yes, you heard me, its the internet users in saudi arabia that wants to have these sites black listed and i applaud them, i dont want my kid to suddenly stumble upon a pop up of a naked woman in an indecent position.
why should i set up my own proxy + black list when the government can and should do so? after all open source has proven more eyes kills more bugs. the bugs here are porn sites.
furthermore, this is not the only example of a community driven black list. if i remember correctly, the christian church of philipines has an isp that offers family-safe browsing.
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
but I think the motion is awesome. There have been many complaints about one government undermining another. I say fuck the Chinese government. We all (even the former Communist Party propaganda minister) agree that China's censorship laws are way out of line. The government isn't democratic, and the only reason the US government should care about upsetting them is that it will weaken trade, which will slow China's economic and social progress. But why the fuck should individuals all around the world not help out the Chinese? What is their govt. gonna do? "Um... you guys are nice and all with these trade deals, but it seems your citizens are helping undermine us." "Oh, sorry about that. You know how it is, can't keep those damn hackers away from illegal activity. First it's stealing music, then movies, then software, then company secrets, and well, you just can't stop them. It's like moths to a flame. Besides, your guys keep stealing Windows from us." "..."
I don't know how well it works in China (it is Chinese, so it should work) because I haven't been to China in a long time, but my favorite proxy is https://beijing999.com/ . Just scroll down and hit the google link or put the url in the box.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
before we police the world, lets see how americans themselves sometimes ask for censorship - though be it self-censorship - as it is written here.
I see this report as America admitting that sometimes, censorship is a prerequisite to peace. And not all news is acceptable in all places at all times.
In relations to this project however, my worry is how this would affect diplomacy.
I love humanity, it is people I hate
The following anonymous comment currently sits at -1, Troll: "Have you ever considered that it's a bit ethnocentric to try to 'save' Chinese from their own conservative culture? ... The fact is that most Chinese support censorship."
I didn't write the above (though feel free to disbelieve me), but I know I've struggled with the same question. It's quite true that the CCP's efforts to protect China's conservative values, through censorship, enjoy wide support among the population--just as a majority of French and German citizens support their governments' suppression of Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial, and arguably rightly so.
Certainly I personally wouldn't want to live under such a government, but then, apparently a majority of Chinese wouldn't want to live under ours. Who are we to say they're wrong in their desire to be so nannied?
Thoughts?
As you seem to imply, it's hard to construe censorship as an intrinsic bad. Laws against libel and slander are probably the form of censorship most universally accepted, across all cultures and regimes, as helpful. Suppression of political speech, meanwhile, is usually considered harmful. The issue is really just where to draw the line.
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
Rubber-hose cryptoanalysis in The Jargon Wiki
Help us build a better map!
Operating through port 443 ... Blocking port 443.
Never could figure out why my girl liked my bitch tits, then I found out she was a lesbian.
The leafer's are kicking our eagle's ass up and down the constitution.
It also happens to be a great way for anonymous pedophiles to surf kiddie porn without having their IP exposed. All they have to do is impersonate web-deprived Chinese surfers.
/. discussion on privacy and/or free speech will degrade to the point where someone will invoke 'The Pedophile Threat' - i.e. 'pedophiles can use this to evade detection' or similar.
This is quickly turning out to be a new twist on Godwin's Law on usenet discussions always degrading into namecalling and nazi references: Any
Come on and face it. Pedophiles are not the greatest threat to mankind. They've always been around and as long as they keep to the net, no children are physically harmed. Stop limiting everybodys freedom on the net in order to make some often rather futile moves against online pedophiles. Use all those misspent efforts to go after the real life pedophiles and those helping them (sleezeball photographers making kiddie porn etc.). This will do much more in preventing harm to children and it will cut off the feed of kiddie porn at the source.
A much bigger threat to mankind are the repressive regimes bent on controlling how people think. Making it possible for free thought and expression to spread and flourish and thus paving the way for those regimes to fall, are far more important than preventing a few pedophiles from sharing their filth.
This is why software like this is nessesary and why the risk of abuse by pedophiles, nazis and other 'undesirables' is an acceptable risk.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
As much as I am a friend of free speech, I don't forget that we live in countries that had a few centuries to adapt to the concept, and it was far from painless. From the french revolution to the american independence war, and a hundred smaller clashes.
We forget so often that the chinese government isn't stupid, and maybe not even evil. They have reasons for why they do what they do. You may disagree with the reasons, of course. But let's not forget that preventing large-scale civil unrest is among them. Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong. But are you ready to gamble a few million lives on that?
The french revolution took maybe 100,000 lives (40k alone went to the guillotine), in a country of about 40 mio. people. Now imagine the body count in a 1200 mio. people country. Add modern firearms and tanks. 3 mio.? 4 mio.? maybe 5 mio. people could die during an all-china civil unrest.
If the chinese leaders are wrong, they are oppressive tyrants who've killed thousands. But if the free speech advocates are wrong, they are rebellion initiators with millions of dead on their consciousness.
China is moving towards more freedom, though at glacial speeds. That is probably too slow. But the demands of the western world for essentially immediate total freedom are very certainly too much, too fast. Change needs time, and a look into our own history books would tell us what the stakes are.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
How dare we try and enable chinese people to think for themselves. I mean, it would be better if people just obeyed authority all the time everywhere and then we would not have any problems. I believe if this was the case, the little USA would have never existed, and a little further down the line, we'd all be speaking german and have the same problem as the chinese.
pull your head out of your ass and think about the long term freedoms of chinese people instead of the short term "let's all stay happy and non-confrontational" about things. These sorts of things have to happen in China for real reform. And if people get killed, well they've already been killed there and this battle will cost a few lives. But the rewards are infinitely greater. Ask your founding fathers if you don't believe me.
Ever seen a North Korean satellite image at night? It's scary, no lights. You can't tell the sea from the country, yet Seoul is lit up like an artificial sun.
j pg (those bright lighst off the coast are fishing boats)
http://www.whyy.org/tv12/franklinfacts/apr0402_4.
They don't have electricity there -- let alone computers.
HJ
"i dont want my kid to suddenly stumble upon a pop up of a naked woman in an indecent position." Dude, this is slashdot, man. Most of us can't imagine what an "indecent position" would be. All positions look pretty good to us. Now I gotta go find how to enable those popups you were talking about...
This is only tangentially related, but I'm learning Mandarin and would like to find Chinese IRC channels but haven't found any. Although channels inside China might try to keep a low profile, I'd guess there are some channels created by communities outside of China.
While this effort is bold, it's stupid. I would really like to know how do you think the authorities of each slashdot-poster country would feel if one sunny day someone came up with something similar that would promote what in the country is considered a violation of rights, public offense, you name it. The easiest example that comes to mind is: "This device will help the citizens of the US to escape the generation long social engineering and find all the censored information and the real truth about topics such as the Holocaust or Kennedy's death."
I'm not here to troll, but who are these device-makers to decide what's good and bad and self righteously take action "because we're helping them though they still don't know it". Wasn't Iraq "helped" and "liberated" too on the same principles?
All of it is good willed but idiotically futile and only seed for international friction. From where? Canada! And then Chavez is the enemy too, "they" say.
Either people are stupid and fail to see that China is not of those that need help, either arrogance has become a virtue.
In the meanwile, let's chop the heads of all those who promote evolution!
No government is going to come out openly and say "let's help the oppressed masses in China evade government censorship." It's too bad for business. It's sickening to see how every value fades away once confronted with the prospect of an incredibly rich potential market.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
This guy's from the country in question
World Changing - News for Humans, Stuff about our planet
No, RTFA:
"A drawback to Psiphon is that the person behind the firewall has to be given a user name and password by the person offering up the computer. With this kind of setup, Mr. Villeneuve said, activists may end up working with specific dissidents and people in repressive countries may rely on relatives abroad to help them get connected."
This is not far from a Friend-to-Friend network (F2F P2P):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend-to-friend
...do we think the Chinese Government are stupid?
/. folks: You and I know that systems can be hacked, and you can be sure that there are fair few Chinese doing that right now - breaking through the censorship and reading what the rest of the world is at; and you can be damn sure that the Chinese Government is fully aware of this - they're not stupid.
Over the past number of years we have seen a liberalisation of trade and a continuing move towards a free market economy - China style.
We have seen with the fall of the Soviet Union, democracy and free market economics overnight is extremely painful and possible dangerous - at times it was touch and go there (maybe still is).
China is a really big place with lots of people, a similar shift would probably be catastrophic for China and for the world at large. It takes a long time to turn a big ship.
Same must be true for the application of democratic principles.
Tiananmen Square etc was a wake-up call for the Chinese government. Yes, it was 15 years ago, but that's a blink of an eye in geopolitics.
The writing is sort of on the wall - 'democracy' is really inevitable. And slowly the ship will turn. It will probably turn to its own course, and Chinese style democracy will be the very interesting outcome (if you think the democracy you live in is the only kind then you are well wrong).
To the
This kind of access might only be available to a small few - but it will be available. It's like a dam with a small leak - a huge crack would be disasterous, and the dam would crumble. But a small leak - that works.
Watch this space...
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
It's shame, the free world was bought by developing countries because it was sold by commercial companies.
Products like this will help but it never solve the problem. The solution is to force the companies from the "free" world to not to censor information to "conform to local law". This will never happen because the voice of companies is stronger then voice of us (80-20 rule?: 80% of decisions is made by 20% of people - those 20% are usually people who are successful in business). "Free speech" is for free so it is not a good article for the commercial companies and never will be.
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
Top 10 Reasons My Land Rover Discovery Sucks
Can you end our corrupt war and kick the thieves out of our government too, while you're at it?
>Free speech is the absolute foundation of democracy and freedom.
I like what you say, so just interested, what are your views on the publishing of offensive material to Muslims (cartoons, films, books) and the "glorification" of Islamic terrorism?
Right now, the first can get you shot eight times and stabbed in the street. And the second is as subjective as
"I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall (not Voltaire)
That the person you give access to does something illigal PER DEFAULT.
The real question is just: Does he do a crime i agree with (violating cencorship, warezing, ect), or does he do a crime i dont like (childporn).
Thats just a difference in semantics, as your moral milage may vary.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
...where "the all knowing, central planning, central government" of the Soviet Union engaged in a program of economic liberalisation, initiated (according to most observers) based on a recognition of the inevitability of democracy and free market economics.
If they don't start it - no one else will.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Do uninformed people have the right to have their opinions heard, on the same level as informed ones?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
http://www.peek-a-booty.org/
Good thing the Chinese government doesn't read Slashdot. Now they'll never know about this software.
Can I bum a sig?
Tor requires that you install software on your local machine. As such, it's inappropriate for many people to use. I'd imagine that possession of the software in a place like China or Iran is considered prima facie evidence of seditious behavior and would probably land you in the re-education center regardless of what you were doing with it.
As is explained in TFA, "Mr. Villeneuve built a system that won't leave dangerous footprints on computers." As you can read here, the client machine doesn't require anything besides a regular web browser in order to operate, and you only need a secure channel once in order to set it up (to distribute the IP address, username and password) which can be pretty easily disguised. Also, you can use it from a computer on which you're not allowed to install software -- e.g., a netcafe. This provides an additional level of physical security: with a number of proxies and by moving from one cafe to the next, a user could make it very difficult to be picked out due to traffic analysis or usage patterns.
What we really need though, is something which combines the automatic routing of Tor and the ease of use of Psiphon: really, Tor without the barrier to entry that is a required software download.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
download plink (command line putty)
plink me@my.friend.with.a.server -D 6000
then set your browser to use a socks server at 127.0.0.1 on port 6000
I am afraid I guess I don't know enough about how bad their situation is. ....as for google, they could just download vnc software,
Could someone teach them to put an american dns server ip address on
their network card for name resolution....4.4.4.4 or something like that
( forget which is the verisign one....)
that way when they could actually bypass the block they have
and join a vnc club to use someone's computer in canada to allow traffic ,
or maybe even psTools would be a way to go.....but that is without someone's consent....
: )
a life that isn't free isn't worth living
whatever the cost in human lives, the freedom that is gained is still worth it
if someone would listen to your assertion, than you could basically say that we should let kidnappers get off the hook: what is the cost of saving a kidnap victim? the kidnap victim may die in a rescue attempt, so better pay the ransom
this is of course unacceptable, and such a point of view makes kidnapping is a profitable business to get into
likewise, you are saying autocratic governments should have carte blanche to do what they want: no one can oppose them, because of the chaos that may ensue
what i say is, no matter what the risk of bloody revolution, free speech is always preferable, no matter what the risk or cost involved
viewed another way: a few years of chaos is equal, at some point, to the suffering under decades of oppression. therefore, throwing off the yoke of oppression, no matter how much chaos is involved, always represents less suffering than continuing under oppression: all you have to do is figure out how many decades of oppression the chaos equals, and you wind up with a compelling reason to revolt
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What the govt can't do, is find out every IP address on the internet
running this software and block it.
What if the chinese had a cluster of machines running NMAP or other such portscanner on large ip blocks looking for this specific open port and update the Great Firewall list of blocked IPs if they come back positive? Granted it could never get them all, but I'd imagine it would make a dent after a while.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
He doesn't need to install anything on his computer. Only you do. (At least this is my understanding of how it works.) One of the mentioned goals of this project is to avoid leaving incriminating traces on the client.
That's what makes this system better than Tor or some of the other anonymizing systems -- there's no client download. Plus it's HTTP-only, so it can't be abused by people who just want a way to download music, which might encourage people to actually set up clients.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You could, but you would only appear pedantic. Very few of the founding fathers were not slave owners, but conservatives only seem to point this out for Jefferson, presumably because his philosophy is so anti-Federalist, and therefore does not support a strong executive.
It is a mark of intelligence to be able to hold two competing ideas in the mind at the same time. Jefferson certainly knew of his hypocrisy, and it troubled him all of his life. And by the way, Jefferson didn't only author the Declaration of Independence and large portions of the Constitution, but he was also the architect of the Bill of Rights. So what exactly was your point again?
So, we don't want the Chinese government doing things like snooping and blocking internet access, because this is a bad thing. .... ?
... you give me file space on your computer to store my data, and I give you access to blocked internet sites.
On the other hand, it is ok for the UK government to want a backdoor into peoples home computers because
I don't mean to belittle the efforts of the group in Canada, I think they are providing a useful service.
On the other hand, I'm wondering how long before people in other countries start offering secure file store services to people in the UK and the US ?
Perhaps we could trade
Is Canada the last bastion for freedom on this planet! Eh?!? It's good to see Captain Cannuck (in his canoe) freeing the oppressed everywhere. But as usual any Canadian with any brains/balls leaves the country. Will Captain Cannuck reuturn to Canada and free the "Indians" and middle class voters. Eh! :0
Wrong.
A "free" country is a country that promotes freedom for its people.
freedom of speach, association, religion, etc.
Where people are given liberty to follow their own hearts and dreams; as long as they take responsibility for not hurting others.
It has absolutely nothing to do with governments taking away freedoms.
I certainly has nothing to do with "polls" "showing" that most people agree.
Popular oppinion is irrelevant.
Freedom is not a whim.
All this talk about helping the Chinese punch through their firewall is nice, but why can't these people stand up to their government and make things happen ? If enough people over there stand up for their freedoms eventually they will overpower their government, no ? I don't know much about the country unfortunately, but it seems to me they have the population to get the ball rolling and dig themselves out of this federally mandated mindf*ck.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I'm not slandering Jefferson, I'm simply observing that slaves lived under a strong constitution but had no personal liberty.
Here I think my definition of freedom as collective self-determination is more explanitory: America at the time was a less free country than it is now, because more of the population can now vote.
Ah, but are you willing to kill everyone who is willing to die to stop you from saying it?
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I am not a lawyer. However, I am pretty sure that:
1) If you load a program onto your PC intending to give access to the program to total strangers in another country, AND
2) those strangers use your computer to do illegal things, AND
3) your government finds evidence of those illegal things on your computer,
THEN, you will find that you are guilty of crimes yourself and not protected by your naive wish to help the poor repressed masses of (fill in the dictatorship). Look up "due diligence" along with "personal responsibility" for an eye-opening revelation.
Set up several of these servers and advertise them. Arrest anyone who requests access.
Sorry, I had to. Go Canada! :)
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
Pedophilic behavior increases with exposure to child pornography. In other words, we aren't "safe as long as they keep to the net". A frightening percentage will seek actual human victims as their pedophilic behavior escalates.
> Operating through port 443...
Bad idea.
It should operate on any port.
If it relies on port 443 in any way, the Chinese government will simply block that port.
Funny how substituting Native American for Tibetan and US for Chinese gives a pretty accurate account of american history 140 odd years ago.
It certainly didn't do the US any harm, so why shouldn't China follow that shining example?
...after all, wont this help terrorists and paedophiles to evade the surveillance we have in our free nations?
If this were really happening, what would you think?
Is this where I point out that Jefferson was both a slave owner, and one of the authors of the Constitution?
This is where I point out that you are incorrect. Jefferson was a slave owner, but was NOT one of the authors of the Constitution. In fact he was opposed to it until the Bill of Rights was added.
From my sibling post (pnuema's):
And by the way, Jefferson didn't only author the Declaration of Independence and large portions of the Constitution, but he was also the architect of the Bill of Rights.
As I pointed out, Jefferson wrote no part of the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Perhaps pnuema was confusing Jefferson with James Madison, who wrote those two documents. The BOR was based on Virginia's, written by George Mason, who opposed the Constitution because it didn't ban slavery.
Incidentally, have you seen Theo Van Gogh's "Submission"? I've got a copy of it, just waiting for me to get some friends together for viewing-party. I think everyone needs to see it on principal, to defy those who wanted to silence it's release.
Suffice to say, a good liberal should defend free speech at every opportunity.
"What? They torture people? Why hasn't anyone DONE anything about this?"
"Because they torture people."
China is living on investments, from swell investors in the "free" world. China will do as much as they can without annoying their investors to the point where they will grow a soul and pull out their funds. It's amazing how people don't see the connection between China and those who help support it's continued growth.
Let's hear it for greedy assholes looking to make a quick buck!
No, that was the "Auto Pact" which predates NAFTA by a very wide margin. You sell our cars and we'll let you make some of them. Like Prescription Drugs. We won't permit generic knock offs if you do a portion of the research here.
It went along the lines of Canada was building cars then America used the two FTAs with Canada & Mexico to ship Mexican built cars into Canada undercutting the domestic product. So it sounds like a combination of Autopact and the FTA that hosed it...
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
It is not about the content of the material, but the intent with which it was produced. This is one thing that the legal system spends a lot of time considering and is, for example, the distinction between homicide and murder. And despite the usual character witnesses wheeled out by high-profile defendents, the only person who truly knows the intent is the person who actually did the act.
Publishing offensive material is a time-honoured means of increasing circulation. Certain radio hosts are notorious for pushing the limits of decency - all the while building their reputation among the dissatisfied and disaffected. Neither is blocked by law, since the intention has never been proven to divide or offend, but simply to improve commercial returns.
In repressive countries, many acts are automatically deemed to harm the national interest. In the West, there will always be someone who pushes the envelope too far. In the past, those pushing have had the aggressives on their side.
In this battle, the aggressives find themselves on opposing teams - both of which are being encouraged against the other. We softies in the middle are the easy target - and our greatest weapon is to just hold our ground, point out the double-standards and fallacies they insist upon, and risk being shot eight times and stabbed in the street.
That, my friend, is freedom of speech. Stand up and risk everything, don't just lie down and take it. It is what Jesus recommended when he said to "turn the other cheek" - ie: tell your oppressors that they missed a bit, and have another go.
So, would I choose to publish the cartoons? In the interests of informed debate, you bet I would! The claimed intents of solidarity and free speech reek of dishonesty to my nose, as it appears to have purely been a fame-grab.
Do I agree with the glorification Islamic terrorism? No, because the intent is only to drive a wedge between two groups who are still trying to work out who each other really are.
With each breath in, a flower somewhere opens; with each breath out, a flower withers away. In between lies beauty.
The difference is that this is a piece of software which runs on an individual person's computer.
"How is this any better than somesite.com, a normal anonymizing proxy?" This is nothing new.
What the govt can't do, is find out every IP address on the internet
running this software and block it.
They've done it with Tor, making it very difficult to find open nodes.
The open port is 443, the same port used by every https server out there.
NMAP wouldn't be able to distinguish between this software and an
e-commerce website.
albertan scum
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
To play devil's advocate -- what right do foreigners have to facilitate Chinese citizens breaking the laws of their country?
Whether the law is right or wrong is irrelevent -- the law of a soverign nation is the law that their citizens must live within.
How would Americans feel for some foreign nation to develop some technology that allowed US citizens to break US laws indiscriminately?
Technologically, breaking the law of ANY country is EASY -- what is more difficult is balancing both the moral and legal responsibility for the result.
How would YOU feel about Al-Kaida operatives working in the USA receiving help to encrypt and send and receive communications from foreign citizens?
It's a slippery slope when you start interfereing with the laws of other countries -- and one that can quickly have global consequences.
There is a cold war going on between China and the West. China is preparing for a war that we aren't instigating. Why shouldn't the West do its part in the prewar buildup to spread propaganda and interfere with their Communist activities? I suspect this might be more for travelers than the residents of China anyways. I say undermine the Chinese government any chance we get. Our greatest weapon would be their own huge population against them. Interfere on!
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
Is it too dry?
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