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Ask Slashdot: Ideas and Tools To Get Around the Great Firewall?

Posted by Unknown on from the fire-extinguisher-of-course dept.

New submitter J0n45 writes "I will soon be traveling to mainland China. While I'm only a tourist, I will still be working freelance for a company back home. I know for a fact that a large amount of the websites I need to have access to on a daily basis for business reasons are censored by the Great Firewall of China. I have been using the Tor Browser for a while now for personal purposes. However Tor has been blocked by China. I was wondering if a personal proxy (connected to a computer back home) would do the trick. Would I be too easily traceable? Basically, I'm wondering if I need to try random public proxies until I find one that works or if there are any other options. What does Slashdot think?"

15 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Breaking laws by Mkaks · · Score: 3, Insightful

    - While I'm only a tourist, I will still be working freelance for a company back home.
    - are censored by the Great Firewall of China

    What does Slashdot think?

    That you are
    1) Breaking immigration laws by working while on a tourist visa.
    2) Breaking laws by trying to get around the web censors and doing something not allowed.

    Honestly, if you are just going to China to break their laws, why not just stay at home? If you still want to continue then don't break immigration and other laws in the country you are visiting. It's not only illegal but greatly distasteful towards the host country. They are welcoming you as a visitor and yet you are just going to be breaking laws.

    1. Re:Breaking laws by ottothecow · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Can't he just use a corporate-style VPN?

      I was under the impression that China was perfectly willing to let this go so that American business travelers had no trouble doing business with them. Maybe not some "shady" roll your own linux vpn...but some Cisco product? Why not?

      --
      Bottles.
    2. Re:Breaking laws by Overunderrated · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Honestly, if you are just going to China to break their laws, why not just stay at home? If you still want to continue then don't break immigration and other laws in the country you are visiting. It's not only illegal but greatly distasteful towards the host country. They are welcoming you as a visitor and yet you are just going to be breaking laws.

      “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
        Martin Luther King Jr.

    3. Re:Breaking laws by ThunderBird89 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

        Martin Luther King Jr.

      And one has a vested interest in remaining under the radar of Chinese law enforcement. Or any other country's law enforcement, for that matter, especially a foreign country's.

      --
      Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
    4. Re:Breaking laws by causality · · Score: 3, Insightful

      “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

      Martin Luther King Jr.

      Ah, a very ironic statement, considering there is hardly anything moral about accessing the internet these days...something tells me this statement was for a far loftier purpose than ensuring that porn habits are fed while traveling.

      Porn is much, MUCH loftier than the desire to censor it.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    5. Re:Breaking laws by tapspace · · Score: 3, Informative

      Maybe not some "shady" roll your own linux vpn

      I was in China for 10 months, and I used a "shady" roll my own linux vpn (I mean, I didn't roll my own software, I used OpenVPN), and it worked fine. It was faster and cheaper than my friends' solutions.

      Obviously, it's a good idea to have a backup to access the web for debugging (openvpn.net is blocked in China, go figure!). Ixquick.com or Startpage.com are great for a super simple proxy fallback.

    6. Re:Breaking laws by Creepy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not sure about multiple VPNs, but I have coworkers that were able to connect to my work VPN just fine from their hotels when in China. A proxy would work, as well, but you'd want to use https for an encrypted connection. Either way requires a certificate, and the only free way to do that that I know of is create a self-signed certificate and give your browsers exceptions (I haven't looked into this in years, maybe there are free options).

      Also AFAIK tourist visas don't stop you from doing business at home, you just can't do business in/with the country you are in. If the original poster is correct and I am wrong, I know of hundreds of people that have broken various laws, including me, by replying to business emails on vacation in foreign countries (when you're the first point of contact and nobody else can do what you do, there rarely is a true vacation).

  2. SSH by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 3, Informative

    I hear that the Chinese won't stop you from SSHing to a system outside of the country. You can turn SSH into an ad-hoc VPN if you'd like:

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SSH_VPN

    --
    Palm trees and 8
  3. Hi, I'm visiting the US soon... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And although I will be going as a tourist, I still need to be able to regularly import large quantities of heroin and cocaine. However, this isn't allowed according to US law, so can anyone suggest how I can circumvent this law largely because I don't accept it and want to carry on with my massive heroin and cocaine habits while there...

    Local laws, whether you believe they are right or not, follow them if you want to stay out of jail.

    1. Re:Hi, I'm visiting the US soon... by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In fact, the war on drugs is more ethically questionable than censorship by a government.

      --
      Palm trees and 8
  4. The Parking Garage by FormulaTroll · · Score: 3, Informative

    Personal viewpoints on censorship aside, I'd be hesitant to break any Chinese laws while in China. Why, my dad just returned from a 14-year stint in a red Chinese prison...

  5. Re:Sure - don't go by osu-neko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's be real - China is a Communist dictatorship, period.

    Well, let's be real, then. The Chinese Communist Party is "communist" in the same way the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) is "democratic".

    --
    "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
  6. Re:SSH by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Based on my firewall logs, they not only don't block port 22, they actively encourage it!

  7. Lived in China for years by nhtshot · · Score: 4, Informative

    I used overplay.net's commercial OpenVPN. There's several competing services specifically tailored to bypassing the great firewall. Overplay in particular has a huge list of servers in different countries. Occasionally one would get blocked, but one of the others would always work.

    Best $10/month I spent while I was there.

    Regarding the locals laws, etc.. it's a definite gray area. The laws don't say you're not allowed to post or view certain things. The laws just say that the government is allowed to "normalize" (filter/censor).

    I used a VPN for years and registered for my internet account using my passport. They knew who I was and could obviously see the VPN traffic. I never heard a word from anybody about it.

  8. Re:The Chinese won't arrest an American by DaMattster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As long as you are not telling other Chinese people how to break through the firewall, I doubt that Chinese government will go after you. They do not need to add stress to their relationship with the USA, and they would probably prefer to sneak something onto your laptop so they can get some trade secrets than to stop you from using a corporate VPN. The purpose of the firewall is to control Chinese citizens, not to harass foreigners.

    At best this is an assumption you've made. The Chinese will willingly detain, try, and punish any foreigner that they feel poses a threat to state security. Moreover, it is probably the U.S. is more concerned with it's fragile relationship with China. When it feels threatened, the Chinese Communist Party will react and not care one iota about the world's reaction.