China's Battle to Police the Web

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.'"

Comments

Re:SSL? Freenet?

[lamarguy91]

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.

Re:SSL? Freenet?

[CRCulver]

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.