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Kindle Allowing Chinese Unfettered Access To Web
jcl-xen0n writes "Apparently, some Chinese Kindle owners have discovered that they are able to access banned sites such as Twitter and Facebook without a problem. The article speculates that Amazon may be operating a local equivalent to Amazon Whispernet with a Chinese 3G provider. Professor Lawrence Yeung Kwan, of the University of Hong Kong's electrical and electronic engineering department, told the paper that mainland internet patrols might have overlooked the gadget (perhaps because they consider it solely a tool to purchase books). How long before Kindle traffic is locked down?"
I'd guess it won't be long. Is there any reason that people needed to publish this information? Is this stuff that people "must know" - to the point where it's worth getting it shut down? This seems pretty dumb to me.
so lets blow their chance at accessing the internet freely by advertising it on every site known to man
It's almost too bad this information has been released. On the plus side there could be many people that could grab some information, now that it's public, before it gets blocked. On the other hand, if they don't already know about this workaround they might not ever find out since the normal access to the internet is censored.
Giving myself a headache I am!
Here before all but 8486 of you.
China has discovered that some kindle-owners had accessed forbidden sites. They have kindlied been dealt with. China is safe once again.
How long before Kindle traffic is locked down?
Well that depends on how much popular Slashdot is among Chinese officials, but not very long I suppose. Maybe a new saying will get popularized there: They were slashdotted before they could enjoy their freedom
Censorship of the few (and uninvolved) for the good of the many.
just kill this story here, ok?
Now that you mentioned it here, it probably won't take long at all.
It will happen like this:
Chinese Government: If you want to do business in our country, you need to prevent people from accessing certain websites on their Kindles
Amazon: Oh, yes, that is already a feature, we just have not used it yet. Are there any books that we should delete from Kindles in China?
Palm trees and 8
i find it hilarious that slashdot documents all these major breaches of the firewall, and subsequent "ha ha china has a stupid oppressive government, praise capitalism" type comments, but is not blocked by the firewall itself.
Will USA soon have a Great Firewall of its own?
http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/
...So don't make a bloody article about it, ya bastards!
It's a catch 22. How else are people going to learn about it if nobody talks about it and if people talk about it it's gonna get yanked. Wow. I read that sentence and realized how depressingly accurately it describes truth in American politics.
am glad this professor was so kind as to point out this loophole to the communist rulers. Had he not mentioned the *loophole*, it may have been months, years, or even DECADES before communications of the unfiltered kind could've been shutdown with the outside world!
"How long before Kindle traffic is locked down?" Naturally, reporting it really helped the Chinese people. Fair and balanced. Alive but in a prison camp.
"How long before Kindle traffic is locked down?"
Done.
Was just in China last week. Own a CDMA Droid 1, which was on international roaming (1x speed). I noticed I could access facebook, so I tried a few other things. Long story short, I was able to access the wikipedia article on Tienamen square while IN tienamen square. Well, briefly then I put the phone away and got out of sight.
YOU! Are a BLAAAAAABBERMOUTH! A Blab-ber-mouuuth! You - BLABBERMOUTH!!1!
This was meant to be, as with the advent and the use of better technology and gadgets the security or the arrangements needs to be beefed up to have some good benefits or stop them from accessing the sites banned in China for the people there. The technology has been moving ahead at such a rate that by the time the people get accustomed and used to one the new one on the block might have already been waiting for them. designer girls shoes
So should Australians consider purchasing Kindles in the near future?
This has nothing to do with the kindle and everything with foreign simcards.
Foreign simcards have always been able to access the uncensored Internet in China, simply due to how roaming works. (Likewise a Chinese simcard in a western country will still find the Internet in it's censored form.) European pre-paid simcards have been traded in China for years now.
Of course an article about a 'belgian simcard' isn't nearly as internesting as the Kindle or i-Anything, but this is non-news nontheless.
Anyone who cares about free access to the Internet has some method around the Great Firewall. VPN services are even advertised quite freely in China for foreigners over there (maybe because the officials can't read them). Anyways, despite what many westerners would expect, the Chinese themselves often support the government's general ability to block access to websites. Much like in America, these things are framed as actions taken for the good of the nation, and just like the Americans, the majority will accept that. I had a discussion about this when I was in China, and I was the only one who disagreed with the firewall. Nobody really seemed to miss anything, and they asked me which sites are blocked. I rattled off a few like YouTube and Blogger, but they hadn't heard of them. For video sites, they use Youku and Tudou. For blogs and the like, QQ's services are popular. Perhaps the only exception to any of this is that some younger people like to get around the firewall so they can use Facebook as well (FB is blocked in China), but the Chinese have their own social networking site that is more popular there (RenRen). China is a whole different animal.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
In 3, 2, 1...
The government and internal security forces of the Peoples' Republic of China wish to thank all of you for your help. Much appreciated.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I don't know... how long would it take to write new filter rules and reconfigure a few handfuls of firewalls? Probably about the same time it took to post this article!!!!
Would any of you Americans complain or even care if the US gov. blocked Chinas most popular social networking site through the Great Iron Curtain Firewall? Didn't think so... China has more than 1.3 BILLION citizens. They manage.
> How long before Kindle traffic is locked down?
Thanks to OP, not long. I really don't see the need to publicise underground information like this given they know it will lead to it being shutdown. OP is basically daring the Chinese authorities to do just that. And so I award him the Jeff Young Award for Stupidity on Slashdot.
Yes; Demonstrating Stupidity ahead of his time, jryoung@gmail.com posted this story telling all any sundry where you could get free textbooks on the net. Within days of his post the site was shutdown. What exactly did he think would happen? Cookies and Candy and a Party in the Street? http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/01/1838205 http://www.jeffyoung.net/
Sadly in this case the price isn't textbooks but a peoples' freedom. Well done, Sir!
This should have remained an unknown unknown by the world and the Chinese authorities. Now it's become a known known for them. Or something like that. My head hurts. Good bye, free access through Kindle. We barely knew ye.
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
Well now that some genius reported it in slashdot, I'd say not very long before they put the lid on it.
Facepalm
Almost as much as reporting the bittorrent app that slipped through onto the applestore.
What this says to me is that Amazon is routing/tunneling the traffic from the web browser on the Kindle through their servers. If the browser on the Kindle (WiFi/3G) were to access banned sites directly, they'd be hitting the Chinese content firewall.
Chip H.
I returned to Shanghai from the US and Tokyo recently and was shocked to discover that not only did the 3G China networks bypass the great firewall, but the kindle 3G access fired up easily in all three countries with absolutely no cost to me! . . . FREE 3G . . . Worldwide . . . as far as I can tell. The kindle has already paid for itself. w00t!
The broad point is a valid one, that a large part of the purpose of the great firewall is keeping the rest-of-world from being able to see what's going on IN china, blocking their citizens uploading pictures to sites like twitpic prevents the rest-of-world from seeing mobile phone photos of things that make the chinese gov't look bad, for example
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
So that raises another question, maybe the reasons for blocking are protectionist rather than censorist? They don't mind the idea of "Facebook" but want their own running instead (because its Chinese, but also because it's probably easier to control). Maybe some of both.
A huge problem with the Kindle in China is that it does not handle Unicode. There are no Unicode fonts on the device. And all of the font hacks have been disabled with the latest software.
So, as long as they are reading in English the Kindle is fine. Non-English? Well, that language they speak in the UK is probably OK. Italian probably works mostly. Maybe French. But Cyrillic is a no-go. As is Japanese and Chinese.
Web pages aren't going to display very well that way in China.
The organized crime outfit that currently rules China does so because its people lack the political power that comes from the barrel of a gun.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
There's probably a proxy for Amazon G3 services in other countries too. Amazon can therefore watch what you do on the web with a kindle, and censor/edit/inject ads if they want to as well.
When you look at all the claims of this and that poll showing majority don't care or support it, you have to think about how they are conducted. Unless in a sufficiently anonymous setting they are very careful about what they say, particularly to foreigners, partly due to saving face and partly due to the potential of having your secret method to access banned websites plastered all over creation. Censorship is so prevalent that the most popular IM client over there actively prohibits you from saying certain key words and posting links it deems dangerous. People still get the point across by using a wide variety of puns or pictures. They put up with it because for most it's not enough to risk life and limb over, YET.
This just in: China also doesn't block SSH, allowing people with servers out of the country unfettered access to the web!
you know, some things just don't need god damned reporting to help them along. fucking yellow journalism.
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