Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
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
An elegant wrinkle is that the data will enter users' machines through computer port 443. Relied on for the secure transfer of data, this port is the one through whichreams of financial data stream constantly around the world.
"Unless a country wanted to cut off all connections for any financial transactions they wouldn't be able to cut off these transmissions," said Professor Ronald Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab.
rtfa kthnx
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
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.
There is no need to fragment support for these projects when excellent ones are already in place.
The more there are, the better. No single point of failure, no single point for governments to attack. Fragment away.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
As a Canadian myself, I would like to note that the parent poster is patent product of our paternal sociopolitical society.
So much so, in fact, that he can't tell the difference between free speech and free drugs (that is to say, basic rights and freebasing). Which worries me.
It's not enough simply to excercise your own increasingly limited rights in such a beautifully softspoken manner, while being careful not to tread on the feet of oppressive regimes around the world.
If you stand for freedom--not the flag-waving, foaming-at-the-mouth Americanised version, but actual speech-in-the-wind freedom--you stand for it everywhere, and you aid it everywhere, governments and institutions be damned.
[ think ]