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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."
This sounds like it is a rewriting proxy - you request a page, say www.yahoo.com by using the URL:
o m/
https://psiphonat.myfriend.com/http://www.yahoo.c
and then proxy re-writes all URLs in the document to be of that same form so that clicks will automagically go through the psiphon proxy.
How is this better than Tor: http://tor.eff.org/
I would tell you, but my corporate firewall won't allow access to that website.
or just an HTTP Proxy that supports CONNECT for SSL traffic?
Because people may be forced to use a proxy just to get outside of the firewall. You can't chain proxies, at least not with normal web browsers.
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.
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
I could be wrong, but in a case like this, the Tor system might actually be worse; normal Tor operation says that you only have to trust that most of the nodes are legit onion routers. However, in the case of China, I believe that you need to trust that the first node is legit. Why? Because if that first node is the Chinese embassy or another node owned by China, and your IP is coming from a Chinese netblock, then your secrecy is blown.
At least with this system, you're encouraged to form a relationship of trust with the node you're communicating with.
No comment.
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.
I know if I was in a Chinese citizen's position, I'd love if 'real' information was made available, lawful or not. By simply allowing them choices, we are 'helping them help themselves.' There will always be obedient sheep...but there will also be individuals who want to break free. If some get caught, it sends the government a small message; if those that get caught also encourage others to rebel, the ripple effect could (and I do emphasize could) make a splash. The (open) Internet is a much better place to shout your message than Tianamen Square. ...And who cares if you're breaking the law, if the law is wrong?
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
There's definitely been some kind of purge since February 5th, when many of these were up.
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?
Pretty much inaudible? When was the last time you listened to 8-bit audio? It's hardly "high-quality". I'd say the extra 8 bits are pretty important. Of course if the algorithm was smarter, it would be possible to hide a fair bit of data in there without affecting the audio.
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All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Interesting moral point: Since their whole objective is silencing others, we have the moral high ground in ignoring them? :)
I like that idea.
As a Canadian too, I can see where you're coming from. You essentially have two arguments: 1. Cultural/Political relativism, and 2. the person might be jailed if he/she was found using this type of program to circumvent the great firewall.
For 2, I think people who're going to use this type of program will already know full well what the program's intended purpose is, and what the consequences could be. If they still choose to use it, then it is their freewill, and they (should) fully accept the consequences.
As for point 1, I can understand why people would agree with cultural (and thus, political) relativism. However, we know that what most people consider cultural/political relativism is really just bullshit. We know that treating women like second class citizens, sacrificing people to the gods, and censoring are not right, but the choice between eating your food with chopsticks vs forks+knives is perfectly fine. There is a line between right and wrong vs. culture. Gun control is relative, and so are drugs. But in this case, we know which side of the line censoring is on.
Tiananmen square was not a "popular revolt", try reading more about it. (There were two main groups protesting together: the students, who wanted more and faster reforms, and the workers, who had been harmed by the reforms and wanted less of them; they hung out together in the square and sang the Internationale together before they were shot at. It's not as simple as Western propaganda makes it out to be.) And I can tell you that as a freedom-loving American who lives in China, the vast majority of normal Chinese I speak to are against the free press (unless they work in the press), because they believe that there are some things they're better off not knowing. It's infuriatingly frustrating.
Having said that, I think the reason they believe this is largely due to government propaganda. But the fact remains that they do believe it. The whole mishandling of SARS a few years ago helped some people come around to understanding why a free press is beneficial (it was covered up if you'll recall, resulting in the deaths of many who would have otherwise not died) but the vast majority still feel as though there are things that the government should protect them from.
Freedom of Speech is not as valued in most of the world as it is in the US (and recently it's not very much valued there, either.)
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.
How can the Chinese people have an informed view of whether the censorship is good if they do not know the scope of the suppression of information? And how can they know the scope if that itself is a subject of censorship. Furthermore, censoring information about Tianneman is only "conservative" in the sense that it "conserves" the ruling party's monopoly on power. It isn't conservative in a family values Western sense.
...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 doesn't have to be 8 bits. It doesn't even have to be every sample.
If you just use the least significant bit of every sample, you've still got about 45MB of data, which is still a lot.
Of course if you can't physically get them into the country anyway, you're scuppered with using that particular route.
But the same basic technique can be applyed to images embedded on otherwise 'uninteresting' sites, or you could even embed (admittedly very low rate) data in plain text, through variations of 'take the first letter of each sentence' type ideas.
The fact is that if there's a stream of data coming in, there are lots of ways of hiding extra information in there, as long as the hidden information data rate is substantially lower than the open information rate, it's easy.
Z.
I can understand and appreciate your argument, but it becomes a problem when someone living under the Chinese government *doesn't* want to be nannied. Then the question(s) become: shouldn't this person be allowed to live somewhere else where the government is more in line with their values? why should this person be forced to move from his home when he or she is not harming others? shouldn't the government consider that the free exchange of information and ideas has proven, time and time again, to be beneficial to society? why should these people that "desire to be so nannied" be allowed to say what others are allowed to see and hear?
I believe that in living life, you will be exposed to ideas you are uncomfortable with. You can either choose to ignore these ideas (censor your own exposure), examine these ideas, or die. The first two are what responsible, mature human beings can do. Attempting to limit what others can see is not only futile, but extremely narrow-minded, short-sighted and immature.
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