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An Inside Look at the Great Firewall of China
alphadogg writes "An interview with James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, who has experienced 'The Great Firewall of China' firsthand, an experience people from around the world will share this summer when the Olympics comes to that country. Based in Beijing, Fallows has researched the underlying technology that the Chinese use for Internet censorship. One good thing to know: With VPNs and proxies, you can get around it pretty easily." Will these Olympics lead to a more free China, or is it just corporate pandering?
Ha, I can't even get around my blocking software at work with proxies. You think China isn't going to be smart enough to block proxies and proxy lists, or reset odd VPN connections? Shit, even Websense is smart enough to do stuff like that.
Besides, the fear factor is what's REALLY going to scare most Chinese into avoiding "bad" sites. They're probably more afraid of being logged than blocked.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
But, eventually, corporate pandering will lead to greater economic freedom for the Chinese, and then, ultimately, greater political freedom.
I don't mean to sound elitist, but most Chinese people in the USA that I have talked to have basically said that yes, while more human rights and freedom of speech would be nice, the problem is that the Chinese peasant class is so uneducated and so poor that there is a huge risk of total social chaos if China adopts the Glasnost route. They want to avoid a Soviet - collapse style meltdown.
This is my sig.
Will these Olympics lead to a more free China, or is it just corporate pandering?
Ask the international Olypmic commitee what they were thinking. The companies that make money off of the broadcasting and related licensing are going to make money regardless of where the games are held. It would likely be a lot easier, logistically, NOT to have to put up with the Chinese nonsense while moving the media army into place to cover the games. Which corporations are being pandered to, here? The corporation that is China? They (the Chinese) promised all sorts of open access and press freedom as part of the package they pitched while trying to seduce the panel that chooses the venues. They were obviously lying, a lot. How that broadly strokes "corporate" interests enough to refer to it that way in the summary is not clear enough in the summary to warrant that particular bit of editorial spin.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The "Great Firewall of China" was a neato headline when Wired did it over 10 years ago.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
They can put needles in collars of soldiers to force them to stay at attention (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=564629&in_page_id=1811&ct=5)
but they can't figure out how to block the internet from their people.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
China wants the olympics because it makes them a legitimate major nation in the international sphere, not an automatic enemy.
Suddenly we're giving them the olympics but making demands about Tibet.
Why Tibet?
I am serious- of all injustices in the world why has the Western world particularly adopted Tibet? No matter how you look at it, it's a rightful conquest. Do we expect France to come over and tell us to relinquish Puerto Rico? No- imperialist gains are imperialist gains. I don't see why China's dominion is evil while ours is not. Besides, Tibet was a theocratic feudal kingdom before China invaded, where most people were serfs who lived in hovels underneath lords. They revolt out of nationalistic pride, but in reality they are better off with China's modernizations.
What about the great firewall? Why do we even care? I think it has to do with American corporations wanting to profit off of the Chinese populace without hurting their marketing image in the US. "Hey, our company looks like a giant kindergarten at its headquarters, so we'd never want to support censorship!" Maybe China is protecting it political and economic goods. Thanks to the great firewall, Chinese corporations boom within their subset of the internet, PLUS they don't have to worry about their people embracing the American fascist economic policies because their websites are prettier.
We walk a fine line with China. Within China, they have total copyright freedom (something slashdot cares about)- but I think at this point they're working on modernization and keeping their citizens out of poverty instead of becoming a third world nation, exploited for its cheap labor while foreign companies get to start calling the shots in their government. China is in control of China, and I am sure they like it that way.
Little known fact is that the Great Firewall of China is the only slap in the face to freedom that can be seen from outer space.
Excuse me while I gather the virgin sacrifice and assemble the pentagram required to solve your problem
Because across the world governments are tightening their grips, and some are trying to extend their grip well past their own borders. There was this saying about "First remove the beam from your own eye"
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
What does an athletic competition have to do with the internal politics of a country?
At the risk of running afoul of Godwin's law, Nazi Germany hosted the Olympics before the beginning of WWII. They mostly used it as a propaganda opportunity, and it's hard to say that the event led to any more openness or political moderation on the part of the German government.
Corporate Pandas?
Honestly, do questions of this format need to be posed anymore? If there is ever an option for more corporate pandering, it will be taken.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Since when has any Olympic games, even the ancient ones, ever led to to resolution of any conflict? Did the 1936 Summer Olympics get Hitler to mend his ways? Did the 1980 Moscow Olympics get the Soviet Union to mend their ways? Did any of the Olympics held in the US do anything but promote self-importance and exceptionalism amongst Americans? Did the Tokyo Olympics, or the Nagano Olympics get Japan to mend fences with China and Korea over Japanese war crimes in WW2?
At the very best, it allows rival groups to fight each other in a less murderous way for a bit (and even that isn't a given, see Munich 1972, Atlanta bombing). That's a good thing, but expecting more than that is ignoring history. The people in the "Olympic movement" that see the games as a tool for peace and understanding are just deluding themselves. Even with the ancient games, wars were only put on hold, not ended, and that was only because it was a religious event.
The only people that ever make money on an Olympics are the ad agencies.
If you read the "SHA-1" article on wikipedia, you'll see it is Chinese scientists that first discovered weak points in the widely used algorithm.
In China, there are state-funded CS projects aimed at cracking SSL, SSH and alike. Apart from military uses, they are mainly used to implement censorship over private, encrypted communications.
China can't ban its citizens use encrytion on the legal level. If so, many business (e.g. online banking, and everything using HTTPS) would not exist. But they are working hard so that when they decide to pwn you they'll be able to make it.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
I got an error 503 the first few times I tried accessing this story, was that supposed to be a joke a or is the great firewall of China watching my every move!? *puts on his tinfoil hat*
I thought it was common knowledge that there was a massive FibreBone coming into an old 486 running Squid and Squidguard?
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Seems funny to interview a magazine author. Why doesn't he just write an article about it?
I find the comment that the firewall is unpredictable to be interesting. Do Slashdoters think that this is on purpose so it can't be studied and subverted or is it just a case of banning the BBC when they have anti-Chinese content or is it just a case of a huge bureaucracy being contradictory (as they often are).
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
... why would we give them firewalls ?
*runs*
Does anyone know if Hong Kong is covered by the great firewall?
standing back and doing nothing while japan raped and pillaged their country
Uh, standing back? Hardly. Even before World War II the USA was sending support to the Chinese Nationalist government. Have you ever heard of the Flying Tigers? Claire Chenault? The gunboat Panay?
There were a long set of instances of USA aiding the Chinese against Japan. These included not only the direct military aid that I mentioned, but also a number of economic tools placed against Japan. Ultimately, prior to World War II, the USA and her allies would cut off Japan from all steel and oil imports, which really cramped their style. In response, the Japanese assembled a fairly powerful navy, and attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor. The idea was to bloody America's nose enough to allow Japan a free hand in China. But, the USA instead built the world's largest navy, largest air force, beat the Japanese back to their little islands, firebombed them and nuked them - twice -, at a loss of hundreds of thousands of American casualties.
If that's not helping China, then I do not know what is.
he thing that sucks about it is that with their system they will totally kill us in the world marketplace, what is better than having a bunch of workers that don't get paid much and don't ask for anything?
Won't happen. People have a knack for wanting to speak their mind when they are economically empowered. If you've got someone who is completely dependent, then they will do anything to eat. But if that person is eating, then he or she will not long tolerate not having his or her opinions matter. Political change will come in China, but it is something only the Chinese people can bring about. The best way to help the Chinese become free, is to help them economically.
This is my sig.
let this be the last article on /. on the subject "can i use a proxy to get around china`s firewall?" for a while. The existance of the thing itself is already annoying enough, but in the end almost noone in China really cares all the much anymore.
Recently the subject seems to be used as a chance to point the finger at bad bad red red China all over again.
-- LP-Research
Honestly, after Iraq, I'm done with dissidents and governments in exile.
That's a pretty ridiculous thing to say. Gandhi, Mandela, and Aung San Suu Kyi were/are all dissidents. During WWII we had governments-in-exile for Norway, the Netherlands, and France, who had popular support and went on to set up stable governments after the war's end.
Yet because the propaganda of some CIA-backed fraudster happened to have been seized upon by Bush et al. to justify an illegal war, then all dissidents and all governments-in-exile are unworthy of recognition or credit?
The problem with Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress was not that it claimed to be a government-in-exile. The problem was that it had no recognition or legitimacy amongst most Iraqis. And I suspect there was no shortage of evidence for that fact available before the invasion if the invading coalition had cared to look hard enough.
Yet because the propaganda of some CIA-backed fraudster happened to have been seized upon by Bush et al. to justify an illegal war, then all dissidents and all governments-in-exile are unworthy of recognition or credit?
Yes.
This is my sig.
By using Tor and a few hacks, you can have a look at Chinese internet censorship by yourself.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
So this guy == this guy in your World view?
Interesting that you criticize Bush while adopting his black and white view of the world. All dissidents are bad, huh?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yes.
Well, believe that if you must. But do realize the implications of the position you're taking: if no government-in-exile is legitimate, then every puppet government set up by a conqueror must be. During World War II this fellow was the legitimate leader of Norway and this fellow the legitimate leader of the Netherlands. Your earlier statements suggest you are opposed to preemptive war, so you presumably oppose the conquest in the first place. But once effected you cannot oppose conquest because the conqueror is the legitimate leader.
If dissidents are undeserving of recognition, then dissent is impossible. If both internal dissent and external conquest are forbidden, then all mechanisms for removal of dictators are gone. Everywhere politics is frozen in place, except perhaps in democracies (as long as democratic political opposition is not classed as "dissent"). All in all, your position leads basically to an extreme form of quietism.
Okay, this view isn't new... but then you go and say that it was the Iraq war, alone of all things in history, that pushed you to it? I don't even know what to say. For someone who thought Bush was full of crap from the start and hopes for some improvement in the world, this sort of seamless progression from warmongering triumphalism to world-encompassing defeatism is pretty frickin' hard to take.
Actually, I think the big problem at the moment is the separatist movement within Tibet itself. (It was probably inevitable that one would form sooner or later, given the circumstances.) Also, for better or worse, the government in exile do seem to have both support from Tibetan citizens and an inflow of fresh exiles.
In terms of credibility, yes. Exiles lie. They have always done so and always will. Whether their cause is good or bad is independent of whether they lie.
As for the "Great Firewall" - seeing that it is very easy to circumvent, combined with the fact that the Chinese are no fools, shouldn't that make you think a little about the purpose of it? To me it seems obvious that they are not trying to isolate the people from all information that isn't approved by the government; after all that task would be so tremendous that nobody could seriously contemplate it. But the internet isn't just a place full of useful information and good, innocent fun, it is also full of crap like pedophiles, scams and other things that exploit the inexperienced. I can fully sympathise with the intention to try to protect especially the children, but also the many adults who access the internet for the first time - perhaps a firewall is not really the best way, but I don't really see any other technology that can even attempt to stem the flood of serious crap on the internet.
This is of course not just a question of protecting the morals of the Chinese people, although I am sure that is actually a major part of the motivation; the Chinese are traditionally and culturally very occupied with moral. Another aspect is probably that the number of entirely new internet users in China is growing rapidly. If they all come online and immediately get screwed over by a large number of scams, they are going to want to ask their government "Why didn't you try to protect us?" - though they will probably not put it quite as politely as that - there would be riots and uprisings. So the government tries to avoid that happening. By making it non-trivial to get through the filter they also send out the message that "If you go out there and get cheated, you know who to blame".
Okay, this view isn't new... but then you go and say that it was the Iraq war, alone of all things in history, that pushed you to it? I don't even know what to say. For someone who thought Bush was full of crap from the start and hopes for some improvement in the world, this sort of seamless progression from warmongering triumphalism to world-encompassing defeatism is pretty frickin' hard to take.
I am in favor of total isolation because I believed the Iraqi dissidents. I was in favor of this war and the Bush administration and honestly, the price of this intervention was too high. Knowing the cost of being wrong is so high, I don't even want to risk it again. It's simply not worth it.
So yeah, I'm in favor of withdrawing all USA troops from every country, not just Iraq. I do not want the USA to get itself into any more wars, unless the USA itself, or perhaps a very close ally, like the UK, is attacked.
This is my sig.
So this guy DeGaulle == this guy Chalabi in your World view?
No, but, unless the NAZIs come back, I'm not planning on supporting any US intervention.
Interesting that you criticize Bush while adopting his black and white view of the world. All dissidents are bad, huh?
I support President Bush and voted for him twice. The black and white view of the world is legitimate. Things either work, or they don't.
Just look around the globe. The most credible dissident government is the one that was elected in Burma and then thrown out by the military government. Yet, even in their case, there's a lot of people that would support the military government and so, even if we invaded Burma to reinstall "the Lady", we would wind up risking a major war with China, would enmire ourselves in a long war at the long end of a long logistical chain, where none of our conventional assets such as air and naval power would be of much use, and there's no point.
That's the -best- case, and its bleak, so there's no point in invading anyone anywhere right now. For a time, during the 80s and 90s, we could do it. We did it in Grenada, Haiti, Panama and a few other places. But those days are gone.
I do not support any military action to install a dissident government overthrown by its own internal politics. I don't even like the idea of having US troops stationed as tripwires designed to bring America into some local war. Like, why do I care, about South Korean independence at this point. South Koreans see US troops as an imperial presence anyway, as do many people in many of our allies. So bring them home.
The war in Iraq has had a price that was extremely high. I think we will be successful under the current military leadership, but, the price is simply too high. I just don't want any part of liberation any more. If the USA is attacked, that's one thing, but, I don't see a need for the USA to go and invade people to put in new governments, regardless of the benefits.
This is my sig.
Your isolationist philosophy has been tried before. It failed miserably. Let me just pick one of your statements:
don't even like the idea of having US troops stationed as tripwires designed to bring America into some local war. Like, why do I care, about South Korean independence at this pointWhy do you care about South Korean independence? Maybe you don't. But you do care (or should) about nuclear proliferation. If we were to withdraw from the Western Pacific then Japan would likely feel compelled to obtain her own nuclear deterrent. There's a good chance that South Korea and maybe even Taiwan would as well. Do you think that the Chinese would be all that happy to see Japan obtain nuclear weapons? The country that invaded them 60 years ago and killed millions of their people?
Our staying in South Korea was regional benefits that go far beyond protecting the Independence of South Korea. The United States would gain nothing from an Asian arms race that would destabilize an important part of the World. You could make the same case for our presence in Europe and the ongoing expansion of NATO.
I'm not the biggest fan of an interventionist foreign policy but I think it's foolhardy to argue that the United States should become an isolationist nation again.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm not the biggest fan of an interventionist foreign policy but I think it's foolhardy to argue that the United States should become an isolationist nation again.
If we are going to extend Pax Americana into the next century, then we are going to have to have a significant and long term expansion of the US armed forces. Iraq has shown that we do not have the strength of fight a long term projected war and right now our alliances demand we may have to fight several of them.
We are going to need:
a) an army sufficient to have a long term deployment of 500,000 men, if not 1,000,000.
b) ever more F-22s. Probably looking at more like 1000, rather than 100.
c) more carriers / some future surface combatant (rail gun battleships?)
d) more submarines
e) arming of space, strategic missile defense,
You could look at the current US military budget of some 500-600 billion and think its a lot, but the dollar has shrank by 50% in Bush's term. In real dollars Bush is probably fighting the war in Iraq with an army that is actually less well funded than Bill Clinton's.
So what we're really talking about is a trillion dollar military budget, and that sort of an investment requires a national consensus that we simply do not have. While I could be coaxed into supporting it, there are just as many Republicans who would rather be isolationists as there are Democrats who would be appalled at this sort of an expansion.
And, the thing is, if we built this juggernaut of a military, where would we get the money to pay for it? And, we can't even communicate to these supposed allies of ours that we are trying to save that yes, if they run us out of South Korea and Japan and any other place, that means they are inviting certain disaster, but, maybe that is what they want? We can't stop people from stupidity.
The alternative is to keep a low profile, disengage ourselves from various trouble spots in the world, invest in ourselves, and, if they nuke each other, its really their problem, not ours.
This is my sig.
Except that history tells us that wars involving "them" have a nasty habit of sucking us in sooner or later. If we withdrew from the World and adopted your attitude then sooner or later some aggressor country would threaten our interests (ala Japanese actions in China before Pearl Harbor) somewhere and force us to get involved. Even if they didn't directly threaten our interests would you really want the United States sitting idly by if a Democratic nation was threatened? If Germany was threatened? The UK? Japan?
Iraq has shown that we do not have the strength of fight a long term projected war"...of occupation", there, fixed that for you. Iraq (like Vietnam) has taught us that it's impossible for a Democracy to forcibly occupy a nation for a long period of time. Public opinion just won't support it. I don't see how you take that lesson and come up with the 'sky is falling' attitude and claim that we can't meet our treaty commitments. I want us out of Iraq ASAP but I don't want to see the end of our role in NATO, of the UKUSA community or our alliances with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines or Australia. I just don't see any benefit to ending those alliances -- lots could go wrong and you don't seem to have even considered that possibility.
right now our alliances demand we may have to fight several of themSo your solution is to withdraw from those alliances and abandon our treaty commitments to our Allies? I'm still looking for some rationalization for why that wouldn't blow up in our face like it has every other time we've withdrawn from the global community.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If we withdrew from the World and adopted your attitude then sooner or later some aggressor country would threaten our interests (ala Japanese actions in China before Pearl Harbor)
At some point, you have to ask the question, just what the hell were our interests in China prior to World War II? I mean, whatever it was, everything we did for China during World War II didn't buy us a damn thing - 5 years after World War II ended, we were fighting the Chinese in Korea.
Except that history tells us that wars involving "them" have a nasty habit of sucking us in sooner or later
No, we just opportunistically jump into them.
I don't see how you take that lesson and come up with the 'sky is falling' attitude and claim that we can't meet our treaty commitments.
How do you justify to the American people that we should defend these countries? If North Korea invades South Korea, what exactly is the real threat to the United States?
So your solution is to withdraw from those alliances and abandon our treaty commitments to our Allies? I'm still looking for some rationalization for why that wouldn't blow up in our face like it has every other time we've withdrawn from the global community.
Check this out. We can completely withdraw from the global military community without having to abandon any treaty commitments. Even NATO only binds member states to "give aid". It does NOT demand a military response. So, nobody in our alliances is actually obligated to engage in any sort of military response in the event a member is attacked. All of the US military alliance treaties were written to allow the USA to selectively attack some other rival on the theory that they are attacking an ally. But there's nothing that obligates our allies to help us, and they either. So, if an ally of ours is attacked, we could send them a bucket of guns or something, and be off of the legal hook.
This is my sig.