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China's Battle to Police the Web

Posted by Zonk on from the losing-battle dept.

What_the_deuce writes "For the first time in years, internet browsers are able to visit the BBC's website. In turn, the BBC turns a lens on the Chinese web-browsing experience, exploring one of the government's strongest methods of controlling the communication and information accessible to the public. 'China does not block content or web pages in this way. Instead the technology deployed by the Chinese government, called Golden Shield, scans data flowing across its section of the net for banned words or web addresses. There are five gateways which connect China to the internet and the filtering happens as data is passed through those ports. When the filtering system spots a banned term it sends instructions to the source server and destination PC to stop the flow of data.'"

7 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Can get out with VPN by Big+Frank · · Score: 2, Informative

    Lived in Shanghai for two years until last month. I could always VPN out through the Great Firewall of China to a server outside China (in Japan). It was slow but reliable.

  2. Re:SSL? Freenet? by lamarguy91 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Did you not read the full article? They already are.

    But there have been well-documented ways to by-pass China's firewall. One method involves connecting to a friendly computer outside China and using it as a proxy, to access websites that are banned.
    China cannot block every computer outside its borders so this method has proved popular with citizens wanting unfettered access to the net.


    I would like to know what else they are using. I might learn a thing or two from it.
  3. Re:SSL? Freenet? by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Informative

    However, if it is only scanning for keywords why aren't people bypassing it with encrypted websites, Freenet, etc?

    The expats I've met in China use Firefox with the Tor extension. It slows things down, so they just normally browse, and then active Tor when they want to go to a banned site.

  4. Re:Remind me again, why does China have MFN status by lostokie · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wouldn't other countries pick up the slack if China lost most favored nation status and had to compete more fairly with other industrializing nations? Maybe even some of those jobs would move back to the US. China's advantage is lots of low cost manpower, and an extremely high tolerance for environmental damage. Many other countries have the same advantages. And US corporations may really want to get in on the ground floor of the newly growing markets in China, but currently the Chinese market doesn't matter for crap to the US economy. China is paying for a genocide in Sudan and committing one in Tibet. The US policy of promoting commerce in China in order to cool off Communist mass murder has utterly failed.

  5. Re:Who wrote the software? Supplied the hardware? by Anonymous+Psychopath · · Score: 2, Informative

    Are Cisco for (an obvious) example, supporting this censorship through hardware and/or software? Sadly, yes. As are Microsoft, Nortel, Websense and Sun, among others.

    http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e&id=50A38A55EB758C0C80256C72004773CD
    --

    Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

  6. Re:Remind me again, why does China have MFN status by mjwx · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ah we have yet another person who does not understand M.A.D. Mutually Assured Destruction. If China destroyed our economy, they would also be destroying their own, we are after all by far their largest market
    Sorry but Europe took over as their largest market a while ago. M.A.D doesn't work in this scenario (I'd argue that it doesn't work at all) as china is more than able to lose over 50% of its luxury economy (the goods they export, China is a primary producer just not an exporting primary producer) and keep going. Resource wise Chine is mostly self sufficient and the Chinese people don't cause problems when shortages occur. China is in no way dependent on the US as it purchases very little from the US. China could create huge shortages in the US while only taking minor hits to their economy (ipods and cheap DVD players would gather in warehouses).
    --
    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  7. Re:SSL? Freenet? by Nursie · · Score: 2, Informative

    SSH

    Well, that would be my immediate choice. I do it from work sometimes if I don't their filters catching me.

    You need a cooperative machine outside the firewall. Then you ssh to it. SSH can act as a SOCKS proxy if you give it the "-D" option and a port number.

    Firefox and IE can both be set to browse using the proxy. Firefox even has a setting (in about:config or whatever it is) to do DNS through the proxy as well. Then everything is encrypted and travelling over a tunnel to the friendly box outside.

    Extremely simple.