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?"

Comments

Now that everyone is talking about it...

[__aagmrb7289]

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.

Re:Now that everyone is talking about it...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Now that everyone is talking about it...

[MoonBuggy]

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.

duh!

[Lopton]

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

Not long at all

[betterunixthanunix]

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?

I for one...

[saleenS281]

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!

Re:Not long

[causality]

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.

Works for Droid too

[kefler]

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.

Re:Works for Droid too

[xnpu]

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.

This has been possible for years

[xnpu]

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...

[plasticsquirrel]

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.