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China Does U-Turn, Lifts Ban On Websites
krou sends in a Guardian (UK) article reporting that overnight talks with the International Olympic Committee have resulted in the Chinese government lifting a ban on websites such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the BBC Chinese language service "in Beijing, Shanghai and possibly further afield." Websites with information on the Falun Gong, Chinese dissidents, the Tibetan government in exile, and the 1989 military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests are still inaccessible. (We've been discussing Chinese Olympic censorship right along.) Quoting: "A spokesman for Amnesty International said: 'It's good news that our site has been unblocked in Olympic venues and perhaps elsewhere in Beijing, but it is still a long way from the "complete media freedom" promised. It seems public outrage has succeeded where the IOC's "quiet diplomacy" had failed.' Chinese engineers quoted in an article in the Atlantic Monthly said they had been told to prepare to unblock access for a list of specific internet protocol addresses to used by foreign visitors. But Andrew Lih, a new media author in Beijing, said it seemed the authorities might have simply decided it was easier to lift blocks for everyone. 'It's possible [to block individual locations] but would be very complicated,' he said."
That's no U-turn. At best, it's a hard left.
What better way to nail subversives ?
Let them convict themselves by allowing that whicvh is is deemed illegal in China ?
The Historical approach..
Didn't they say they were going to spy on visitors' traffic too? Nothing about that here, maybe they're hoping we'll forget.
If I was going, I'd take tor with me on my laptop. Also I'd buy a laptop first.
The Chinese firewall doesn't block encrypted traffic. A far superior solution is to simply VPN to somewhere. That's what I do when traveling if I am in any location that I don't completely trust (airport or hotel network for example). I SSH to a server I have at home and tunnel traffic through the connection. It is then as though I was surfing at my house.
Because they are new to the cryptography game and don't have the computing resources of many other countries. It seems extremely unlikely that even the NSA can break AES (given that they've certified it for top secret data) and when it comes to crypto, they are the best in the business. They are to information espionage what the KGB was to physical espionage. If I'd bet on anyone being able to figure out how to break a cryptosystem without anyone else knowing, the NSA would be my bet.
Regardless, my primary point is I find it extremely unlikely AES has been broken. It is an open algorithm that underwent an exceedingly rigorous selection process. Because of that, it was scrutinized. Once it was selected and made the official AES standard, it then underwent even more. As I said, it's the most tested cryptosystem out there. Thus far, it has held up wonderfully. So basically for a break to happen, there'd have to be a new field of math developed that would allow for some new way of attacking it. That seems very unlikely to happen, and I find it unlikely the MSS have already done so.