Tearing Down China's Great Firewall

quadsoft writes to tell us The Toronto Star has a look at three University Toronto computer geeks who are working hard to circumvent the internet censorship problems like those found in China. From the article: "But the computer smarts of Ron Deibert, Nart Villeneuve, and Michael Hull, combined with their passion for politics and free expression, have led them to develop a highly anticipated software program that allows Internet users inside China and other countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Burma, to get around repressive censorship and not get caught."

Comments

nice

[gcnaddict]

Ive got relatives in Iran who i wanted to talk to, but instead of the US censoring my emails (which they do, but its easy to get around), Iran censors more of the emails. They also block my site, but I don't know why.

Anyway, nice find.

Re:nice

[hazem]

It's pretty sad. We've gone from a president who said after an attack, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" to one who wants to nuke another country in a first-strike out of fear that they might attack us. We've become a country of fearful whining crybabies, and it's pretty pathetic.

And what's even more ironic is that while the parent poster is worried about the "hidden imam" coming back to initiate armageddon, we already have a wonder-boy in the white house trying to do the same thing.

Admin's priveledge?

[Wholeflaffer]

I understand the human rights aspect of this situation, but isn't it an administrator's ability to control his/her network and user access that is important to preserve? If outsiders can circumvent the Chinese government's firewall setup and other security measures, aren't all the systems on all the networks in the world potentially vulnerable?

Geek Show?

[foundme]

The article seems to talk more about the developers, geeks and whatnot than how the actual program works. From what I have gathered, it uses third-party computer to do the work yours can't.

However if China's Great Firewall is so great, how do third-parties come to your rescue if the work they helped you to do still cannot get through?

For example, this search-by-email site seems to bypass google.cn censorship, but what if .cn govt blocks all transmissions between this site/domain?

Is this really helping?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering what will happen to any individual in these regimes caught using these circumventions, I sometimes wonder if this is really helpful. In the end, regardless of the good intentions of their creators, these circumventions may just be luring some unfortunates into personal misfortune (prison, perhaps torture and death) at the hands of their governments, while accomplishes very little good.

Because the firewall isn't great

[Sycraft-fu]

The thing is China has taken a reactive approach with it, not a proactive one. That means that they allow access to the net, unless it's something they've decided isn't ok, rather than blocking everything and only permitting what they explicitly approve of. It's easy to see why they did it that way, but it's a weakness. It means that stuff like this will work, espically since the foriegn hosts can shift around.

I'm actually supprised how lax their firewall is in general. For example they allow encrypted traffic out of the country. When my mom went over to China to teach English, she warned everyone not to say anything untoward about the government there. While they'd probably not hassle a foriegner who was there on their invataion for that, you never know. I figured she'd be getting a Chinese e-mail box and thus the worry. Nope, she just used her US one via webmail, which was 256-bit AES encrypted. There is no way they were spying on that, and yet they did nothing to filter it from anywhere.

The reason is, of course, it had never made theri "bad site" list. Why would it? It's a webmail page for a US ISP. I'm sure almost noone visits it. However, she could have been funneling all manner of things through that, had she wanted to, and they never would have been the wiser.

So unless China shuts down crypto out of the country, which they won't do because it would cripple business, they'll be hard pressed to stop those determined to circumvent their firewall.

True but...

[Ironsides]

All you say is true, but there is one thing that makes it easier for censoring over just hiding. It should be possible to detect encrypted communication. What I mean by that is an analysis of the traffic itself and the information being transfered over it should allow one to determine if someone is communicating with encryption or mearly through plain text. It shouldn't take much to just block all encrypted traffic, or forward the users IPs to some who will come knocking wondering what you are talking about. One would have to hide it, such as with steganography, in addition to encrypting it. Sure, some of this might put a damper on retail sales over the internet, but I don't think some countries care about that as much.

Go over the firewall with satellites

[mcostas]

If we provided people in China with satellite internet terminals, like this then the firewall would be completely out of the loop. And since the antennas are directional, it wouldn't be too hard to conceal your RF signals and would be difficult to jam.

Re:They better be 100% sure

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chinese government would arrest them regardless of if the circumvention software came from the U.S. or right from China. The Chinese people understand the risks more than any of us do. They aren't stupid. I'm sure those that want freedom are happy that there is an effort being made to help in their effort and are willing to take the risk. If not, they won't use the software.

I Live in China and hack the firewall every day

[jjn1056]

I don't see the big deal. Most people around here know that you just need to get a secure connection to a proxy server in a non censoring country and then you can access the web without trouble. A guick google search will turn up lots of companies that offer web proxing for a very small charge (avoid all the 'free' proxy lists since many of then are honey pots).

Unless the gov't is specifically spying on you this is more than enough.

Let us look from the perspective of ethnic Chinese

[mapkinase]

Ron Deibert, Nart Villeneuve, and Michael Hull, does not sound Chinese to me. Does anybody know what is the mood among Chinese in US? I have got plenty of Chinese coworkers (hi tech) at my previous job.

You know how many of them were disseidents, that is expressed even slightest dissatisfaction with Chinese government? None. Including Taiwanese.

For me it is clear indication that the weakness of Chinese opposition is a result of genuine destaste of Chinese to all sort of revolutions in favor of a piecemeal balanced development, not information blackout.

May be westerners should get themselves a break for a change and let Chinese decide what to do with the country?

What is with this Kiplingian (Kiplinguesque) "burden of a white man"? It is XXI century already... Stop revolving other peoples lives!

U.S. censorship of private emails to/from Iran?

[Kadin2048]

Can you give any evidence or substantiation to the claim that the U.S. Government is censoring your emails to or from Iran?

I have never heard of the USG actively censoring private email that wasn't to or from a serviceperson or that wasn't directly national security related (e.g., all the email to and from submariners and probably other Navy personnel afloat passes through censors who remove sensitive or geographically revealing information). Even then, they're pretty obvious about it.

If this is actually happening, yours is the first case I've heard of, and while I don't claim to be all-knowning (or even close to it) I consider myself pretty well-read in terms of current events ... so I think it's fair to say most people would also be surprised.

Collateral damage

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes the lab performs tests remotely, taking control of unprotected computers inside the censoring country without permission. This poses an ethical controversy, but Deibert says it's for the greater good: "We don't worry about that too much."

They should be very worried about that! This tactic frames owners of the unprotected computers. How many will be investigated or even arrested because somebody used their computer to access forbidden sites? It is one thing to have willing accomplices who accept the risk of the activities. It is another thing altogether to involve an innocent party without their knowledge or consent.

This tactic is likely to backfire, by eroding the very trust that is essential to the system. When people in the censored countries come to believe that the circumvention software is associated with a company that got somebody arrested, they will (rightly or wrongly) fear everything associated with them. Now that these methods are public, the censors will be motivated to get such stories circulating, whether fact or fabrication. In a trust based system, reputation is everything.

Re:They better be 100% sure

[RelaxedTension]

"Translation: Certainly culture and sovereign interests need to be respected, except when [Person(s)] decide that they shouldn't be."

I will concede that point, with a "but". The problem of course is what is considered a basic human right or not? My point of view is obviously west-biased, where I enjoy a great deal of freedoms and rights, many of which are not available in other countries. This is one of the few topics where I am willing to take a stand and present an opinion that a forward thinking nation should allow unfettered access to information. The reason that they don't is not cultural, it is purely a population control and power retaining method.

Bear in mind that really, I am only advocating that the people have access to information, not that they must do anything or change to suit me in any way.

The example I gave about the psychotic general is an extreme of course to illustrate that a blanket statement of don't interfere, ever, is not always the correct action. Certain actions are repugnent to everyone regardless of culture, like genocide, and need to be addressed.

And if Mexico is going to legalize drugs, I may have to take a trip to, umm, evaluate the situation firsthand before not interfering.

Re:Not to be negative but...

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

In this case the US isn't doing anything. A group of hackers at a university is creating this project on their own. So the comparison isn't exact.

You ask a good question if we refine the example a bit. Imagine citizen activism against a foreign government's unjust laws. Take your drug example, and ask how the US government would react to Chinese citizens creating covert systems for delivering medical marijuana to the US.

There are better ways to do it

[vaceituno]

I think that current approaches to circumvent censorship are wrong.

Proxies try to prevent filters to filter by origin of the info. Crytography tries to prevent the filter to make sense of the info.

I think it would be better to simply reduce the rate of byte per letter/character. Right now it is roughly 1 byte / 1 character. If there was a way of turning any web page into jpegs, and still interact with it using some AJAX trickery, the web page would be nearly impossible to filter automatically. If you force human intervention to filter content, the effort to do it would be so great they would have to give it up or close the internet connection to the rest of the world.

You could call the technique "captching", as any web page would be readable only to humans, not to machines (whithout intensive carachter recognition software)

Methinks

Re:Not to be negative but...

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you feel if China actively was fighting against law in the US ?

Only slightly more uneasy than if Canada was actively fighting against law in China, which is what is really happening here...

I'll say it again: This software is being developed *IN* Canada *BY* Canadians. (I knew you guys were good for something ;))

Wow, I never really believed that anti-American sentiments were so strong that people would start attributing things to us that we never even lied about in the first place!
Is it just plain hatred at this point, or has everyone else caught up to our stereotyping capabilities?

Re: Tearing Down? Act of War?

[davidsyes]

At what point could China consider this an act of war?

Suppose China uses its wide snooping infrastructure to log who's circumventing, who's funding them, and (aside from the citizens of China who want knowledge for information and not for overthrow purposes) who's benefitting from this (namely, the US government), then suddenly and capriciously says: "You, you, and you... you're the assholes behind this; effective IMMEDIATELY, your permit to conduct business here is revoked. You have one WEEK to pack up and get OUT. Not just you, but the FIRST FIVE levels of any subsidiaries and first THREE extensions of business partners. If you can't get your hardware out, then auction it off. Oh, and leave the buildings intact. You can't leave until we've inspected them for bombs, sabotage, or similar Saddam-shoots-the-horse-rather-than-returning-it-a live tactic..."

Personally, I am disappointed that coarse, harsh, and such penetrative domestic means are used against the population. But, you've GOT to see it China's way: They've been FUCKED WITH by the west (US and Europeans) as far back as 580 years: Opium, colonialization, subjugation, exploitation and more. I dare say that had not Commodore Peary showed up with some politicians' writ: "You will do business with us OR ELSE", Japan might not have had yet another reason to sprawl all over and do what it did to much of Asia. (However, how many people know that Korea actually invaded Japan, not once, but at least TWICE, in 1281 and 1284? Memories of a nation can span hundreds of years, and paranoid countries can be wary and vengeful, even if it takes 641 years to effect vengeance...).

But, I also feel that forcibly punching through and digging under a countries virtual customs borders to be tantamount to waging a stateless if not de facto war against various organs of a government.

Now, don't get me wrong: I do realize that China has a effective (how effective I don't know...) apparatus which is aiming computer resources at various governments around the world. It in itself is not a nice act, but unless and until anyone PROVES that China is actively knocking off US power grids or using proxies to do so, then PLEASE don't pull punches and equate military-military/government-to-government probes and studies to commercial/private venture proxy wars in the name of "democracy". (OTOH, how many have heard that the US CIA pressure on Vietnam to root out Communists was so intense that the VN actually rounded up and murdered some 1,800 innocent (and maybe a few dozen bona fide anti-US types) people PER MONTH for a few years? Talk about BAD KARMA. Obviouisly, that pressure is immensely worse than funding a business-to-government action like rending firewalls, but it's an historical wound many prefer to leave salved over...)

Whatever you think of China, Communism, oppression, and other things, look at your own back yards, too. Virtually EVERY country has bones in the closet and enough bad karma to warrant an occasional kick in the gut, smack in the face, or public humiliation, and the US is CERTAINLY not immune, not matter HOW MUCH "contribution" it makes internationally. NO country makes contributions without first scheming and then codifying a "hook-in-your-ass-to-control-you" tactic. IOW, NOTHING IS DONE FOR FREE.

I DON'T like censorship (unless it is to prevent a DIRE, GENUINE release of REAL/EXISTING national secrets, not some trumped up bullshit charges or to prevent embarassment...) or oppression (unless it's being carried out by publicly-routed corrupt politicians or power mongers), but I don't condone rambunctious or strategized abuse of the values of a country. The Chinese deal with their cultural, their local issues their OWN way. It may take another 25 years, but at SOME point, China's government of today will be somewhat if not a great degree different from what it is today. The US and its friends just need to quit being control freaks and have to accept that it IS NOT RIGHT for a junior land of some 325M to dictate or monk