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A Look Into China's Web Censorship Program

Posted by timothy on from the sorry-if-y'all-can't-read-this dept.

kev0153 writes "MSNBC is offering a good article explaining some of the details behind China's web censorship program. 'Google's face-off with Beijing over censorship may have struck a philosophical blow for free speech and encouraged some Chinese Netizens by its sheer chutzpah, but it doesn't do a thing for Internet users in China. Its more lasting impact may lie in the global exposure it has given to the Chinese government's complex system of censorship – an ever-shifting hodgepodge of restrictions on what information users can access, which Web tools they can use and what ideas they can post.'"

2 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. How to beat the Chinese FW by sebaseba · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A friend has recently been to China, that is PRC. IRC worked normally, although he couldn't access facebook. So I've set up a normal HTTP proxy which was blocked immediately after the first page shown (facebook.com). IIRC it didn't even resolve facebook.com, we've had to put IPs in... but still my point is: they analyze the packets and they've seen the CONNECT in HTTP headers as it worked only on once request. After that I've set an another proxy (on an another IP), this time HTTPS. That worked, although you must route DNS requests somehow outside China or have a local nslookup table ;)

  2. Re:Impact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What is more dangerous?

    1) Knowing that your government censors certain information and that the gov't news is biased, as most Chinese people do?
    or
    2) Having media that act essentially as political arms of the government, and subtly alter what they feed you as "truth" so that the average citizen believes that the news is actually factual?