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The Best Way Through the Great Firewall of China
eldavojohn writes "The MIT Technology Review brings news of a new report from Harvard assessing circumvention software. The best tools they tested (and they actually did test them in cybercafes in China) were Ultrareach, Psiphon, and Tor, while Dynaweb and Anonymizer also scored well — of course, the huge downside is the long loading times. The report also includes responses from developers of the tools."
It is worth noting that the report was released in 07 and "Some of the data is now out of date"
They fitted George Orwell's coffin with rollers so he could turn over more easily years ago.
I used rootshell.be in the past. I now can use xs4all.nl. These are obviously outside my country and do not include my own machines, nor my employers.
And although the technical solution might be easy, the way to get that is not as easy. Would you give a Chinese person ssh access to your machine? What about an Iraqi? Afghan? Somebody from the south of France with a nickname of ETA001?
You could be under closer investigation from your own government.
I am even hesitant to give people ssh access that I know personally, let alone somebody I never have seen or heard of.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
of course, the huge downside is the long loading times.
No, the huge downside is that if anyone decides you're a problem, your circumvention methods are illegal and easy to detect.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Like getting arrested, or run over by a tank, or being re-educated.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/06/1717242
if this strikes many of you as too low tech, recall that most of western liberal notions such as freedom of the press and freedom of expression were established BEFORE the internet. obviously! but we in the west have become so addicted and enamored of the permanence and instantaneousness of the internet, we almost can't imagine life before it, or a struggle for freedom without this aid. but the struggle for basic human dignity can and will happen, even without the net
life without a free net retards progress, but doesn't stop it. progress on basic human rights WILL come to china eventually. the grumpy old men in beijing can't hold on forever. they are human, they make mistakes. the best they can do is make the rightful fight for basic human rights in china a painful one for their fellow chinese
to any "faithful" chinese reading this message: i didn't know being a proud chinese meant being a dumb chinese. but if you defend the policies of the grumpy old technocrats to keep the average chinese's media strictly controlled, that's what exactly what you do. the only way to a strong china is a free china. if you think just an authoritarian ultracapitalist china is a strong china, whoa boy, watch what happens as the world economy continues to shrink. china is not immune to the inevitable lessons of history about economic recessions and draconian governemnts. enjoy your defensive posture
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Mod this AC up.
The firewall isn't a technical problem, it's 100% a social one. One person circumventing it is trivial, probably always will be, what's impenetrable is the doublethink force field around almost everyone's head.
If you have a home virtual private networking service setup, or if you have access to a company virtual private networking service, why not just connect to your VPN? Problem is solved, connection is encrypted, and without the potential of tunnel hell or application incompatibility of port forwarding and tunneling.
Having said that, the censors at China are not that concerned of English offending content; it's more that they're worried about the uneducated public being incited by content online since content is so easily spread via the Internet, at the same time, it is also easy to organize protests online. If you already know English or you've been educated overseas, you're no longer someone they are targeting.
In China and Chinese-ruled territories use or possession of encryption technology without permission from the Chinese Communist Party (aka PRC government) is an offense against the State/CCP. For those forms of encryption that the Party does permit to be used, eg. in online shopping, the Party must have the decryption keys.
You have either been misinformed or are deliberately making stuff up for some reason. I have ran sshd and apached (with encryption) on my own computer for years. I use GnuPG to communicate with my friends. But I have NEVER been required to acquire permission from the "Party", nor have I given my decryption keys to anybody.
As much as I despise my communist government, spreading blatant lies like this is not going to help bring about its demise. If anything it only makes more of your "mindless hordes of ultra-nationalists", because your so-obviously-made-up description of china can be translated and circulated on the chinese bulletin boards as "proof" that westerners want nothing but the "down-fall of China", and how "ignorant" they are of "the great achievements made by the Chinese people under the leadership of the Communist party". Yes I know this is very laughable, but that's the sad truth, and it has happened very often in the past few years. Things like this can easily be used to provoke nationalist and anti-western sentiment in China, which will make the work of those brave individuals who tirelessly try to promot the values of human right, freedom, democracy, etc. (the "symbolic" values of the western world) in China more difficult than it already is.
Umm dude, from the traceroute you posted, your data is getting all the way to OTTAWA, Canada from the looks of it. Shit Shaw cable is a Canadian ISP for GDsakes! Doesn't look like china was filtering your traceroute anyhow. Of course, they could be applying the filters at a different level, or only on certain protocols, etc.. But that traceroute doesn't really ... to quote a meme "mean what you think it means"
"This presents an interesting chicken and egg problem with circumvention software. How do you get the software in the first place if it's source of the software package is censored?"
apt-get install tor privoxy
I've been in countries where use of any method to circumvent state censorship is criminal, all known proxies are blocked, all proxifying/anonymising software websites are blocked, tor.eff.org is blocked and so on. But there are Debian mirrors hosted by the state funded university. No more censorship :-)
That implies you have a choice of which OS to use which just isn't the case in China. Most people use a cyber cafe connection running on Windows XP. Most Chinese simply can't afford the cost of a computer of their own. Nor could they afford the cost of an internet connection of their own.
Dont even want to be free from the televsion, because it might break their perfect-image that they are so great. They get taught from birth that they live in the best place on Earth and believe this to the fullest. Say anything bad about the USA towards a US citizen who never left the country and no matter how much evidence you give them and facts you feed them they won't believe it.
I showed some Americans websites about the war in Iraq, video's, the wikipedia, but all they said that is was fake material made by people who hate the USA. Some that did know about it was fully on the side of their government and it was just "keeping order".
Let them take care of it themself if they want to see the truth and not be oppressed but the way it is they want it and like it.
And if you are a foreigner who needs the a unmonitored internet connection, avoid countries like the USA, maybe if all tourism stops they might considering being less oppressive.