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Kindle Allowing Chinese Unfettered Access To Web

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-for-long dept.

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?"

23 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Now that everyone is talking about it... by __aagmrb7289 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Now that everyone is talking about it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      The Chinese government isn't too web savy. They've quoted The Onion in the past as a news source. They probably think Slashdot has typing tutorials.

    2. Re:Now that everyone is talking about it... by MoonBuggy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Here's a Wired article talking about the mistake. That said, suggesting that a government with an (apparently) moderately effective web filter "isn't too web savy" on the basis of a newspaper's screw up 8 years ago might be taking things a little far.

    3. Re:Now that everyone is talking about it... by contra_mundi · · Score: 2, Funny

      Wait. So we would should censor ourselves about how they could get around their censorship?

      I think the room is spinning.

    4. Re:Now that everyone is talking about it... by causality · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Tor still exists, Slashdot didn't ruin the interwebs in China. Keep posting on stories you don't understand.

      I'm not so sure how secure Tor would be against a state government large and powerful enough to monitor large portions of the Internet at once. Its real-time nature leaves it open to timing attacks among other things like compromised (primarily exit) nodes.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    5. Re:Now that everyone is talking about it... by Homburg · · Score: 2, Informative

      The report linked to here is based on an article in the South China Morning Post - I think it's a fair bet that if a Hong Kong newspaper knows, the Chinese government also knows.

    6. Re:Now that everyone is talking about it... by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I have a feeling the people who decide what will be banned in china will only decide what is banned for OTHER Chinese people. They will have all the "Free Tibet" sites available for themselves.

      --
      Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
    7. Re:Now that everyone is talking about it... by AHuxley · · Score: 2, Funny

      In Soviet Russia Bezos deletes you.
      In State Capitalist China Kindle reports you.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    8. Re:Now that everyone is talking about it... by xnpu · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Some holes aren't to be closed. Foreign simcards roaming to an uncensored Internet is not a new thing. Neither are VPN services. With the exception of some politically funded organizations who offered these services for free, these routes have _never_ been blocked. (I've been using them in China since 1997.)

      The idea of censorship is not to restrict information from everybody. It's to prevent the masses from rebelling against the government. Those are two very different objectives.

      The government wants to prevent bad news in Chinese from spreading like wildfire and upsetting a billion people. But they don't care about a few million relatively educated people with money to spend to bypass the GFW. It's the same group of people who can afford to travel abroad, etc. Why bother restricting them.

  2. duh! by Lopton · · Score: 4, Insightful

    so lets blow their chance at accessing the internet freely by advertising it on every site known to man

  3. Not long by Gregg+Alan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Not long by causality · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      Censorship is the least of their problems. Information that is blocked because it is censored can also have attempts to access it logged. That's more than feasible with such a powerful state. Then those who attempt to access it can be located, interrogated, "re-educated", "disappeared", etc. A message stating "this has been blocked" or an artificial error accessing a perfectly functional site is pretty damned tame by comparison to what could happen.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  4. No time at all by gbrandt · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Now that you mentioned it here, it probably won't take long at all.

    1. Re:No time at all by pspahn · · Score: 3, Funny

      and a URL like Kindle-Allowing-Chinese-Unfettered-Access-To-Web is bound to catch someone's attention

      I am eager to see their translation of "unfettered". Maybe they'll just think it means "not for feet" or something, and that the kindle just lets people use the web while laying on a sofa. That should be okay with them, right?

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
  5. Not long at all by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Not long at all by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, let's see. The United States does business with Saudi Arabia, despite the abysmal human rights record of that country. The United States has installed several cruel dictators in South America, to help protect corporate interests there. The list of cruel, tyrannical governments that the United States has provided direct aid to or has kept open trade with is long. Why should China be any different, I wonder? What interest does the USA have in free speech or free press, or dismantling firewalls?

      --
      Palm trees and 8
  6. This hole is a good thing by QuantumBeep · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...So don't make a bloody article about it, ya bastards!

  7. I for one... by saleenS281 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!

  8. Works for Droid too by kefler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Works for Droid too by xnpu · · Score: 5, Informative

      Like I said in my other post. Anyone using any device with a non-Chinese simcard has full Internet access.

      You don't have to put your phone out of sight - it's fully legal as long as you do not share your device or the content retrieved with a Chinese national.

  9. This has been possible for years by xnpu · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  10. Anyone who cares about free access... by plasticsquirrel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  11. Worldwide 3G access and more by _critic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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!