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Twitter Developing Technology To Thwart Censorship
SHMG writes "Micro-blogging site Twitter is developing technology that will prevent government censorship, after Iran and China moved to censor its users. Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Twitter CEO and co-founder Evan Williams said the company was working on 'hacks' to stop any blocking by foreign governments. 'We are partially blocked in China and other places and we were in Iran as well,' he said. 'The most productive way to fight that is not by trying to engage China and other governments whose very being is against what we are about.'"
Whenever there was a coup attempt going on in the USSR, the first place to get invaded by supporters of the coup the was the broadcasters, and then they had to get to the newspaper before it published the next issue. If they win over the media, they were effectively in power. If the media reports there's a coup in progress, then that would scramble the defenders of the existing rulers and it would fail. If the media reports the coup was successful, then whoever was reported to be the leader effectively had power.
This is why governments like Iran and China want to control all forms of communications. If people can organize in a way the government can't easily listen in on or censor, then the government is going to fail. As we have seen, a government doesn't need to be good at helping its people as long as its good at controlling them. Squash your opposing people, and you've got an easy time governing the rest.
That Google / Apple / Microsoft / etc. would ever make such a statement...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
My first question would be is peer-to-peer traffic regulated, and if so, how?
Simple... controlling governments route all routes through the choke points. All traffic, even to the house next door, would have to go through the censorship point and then back to the destination.
While the gov't might be able to cut off the main Internet egress points, all it would take is one person with a covert satellite link and a good p2p network.
Simple... controlling governments ban satellite dishes.
Or, maybe, a covert side channel on a bank leased line that runs to Switzerland, for example?
Simple... controlling governments run the banks.
How about packet radio?
Simple... controlling governments don't allow consumer bandwidth. Try transmitting on an unlicensed spectrum here...
Twitter isn't exactly super bandwidth intensive.
Simple... controlling goverment loves things that are low-bandwidth and cleartext because that doesn't take much effort to scan what they've collected.
That's what I keep saying about defending Allah, but they still won't let me fly the airplane!
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
I seriously doubt it's the Twitter users who will start revolution, at least in China. The revolution is still alive in the masses of countryside, like before. Just look at the incidents which have sparked there recently. For example, in one province a slight rise of bus ticket prices resulted in violent demonstrations. I'm 100% sure none of them had ever heard about Twitter. Twitter has maybe ~0.3% reach in China compared to population, that's about less people than Beijing pisses off routinely at once by moving a whole city because of one more dam or railroad every few months. Still, I have to give credit to Beijing as well. China's growth and drive has been nothing but unbelievable. It would not have been possible without making strong and fast decisions without asking much from the people. It's very easy to build a railroad if you just relocate the people by sending them a letter with two weeks notice time. China is run more like a company than western countries, and western companies generally love it. At least as long as it doesn't cross their interests.
While noone in China uses twitter enough to care even if Twitter found a way to "uncensor itself", if they could succesfully find a technical workaround that required no effort from end-users, it might be worth talking about (if my reading of TFA is right, any site could use such hacks to unblock itself, even google or dissident websites). However, if it forces end-users to install software to route around firewalls (a la Freedomgate and other already available software), the sites will remain unaccessible to the majority of users, who just don't care enough to bother.
I'm honestly very curious as to what technical methods are out there for opening access through government firewalls that would not involve illegal and nearly impossible invasions into foreign computer networks. The Chinese and Iranian governments control the "pipes"; what software solutions could twitter possible be thinking of? Nice goal, but technically possible, beyond current "hacks/proxies"?
Sorry, I had to stop reading your post when you wrote that 'the entire point of having more than one government' - as if this were a design decision.
"Yes, we considered a global government but decided against such because of a...b.. and c..." and this is how we have the system we have today.