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Google Scales the Great Firewall, Falls Off 105 Minutes Later (techinasia.com)

Posted by msmash on from the breaking-the-wall dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Citizens of mainland China unexpectedly found themselves with unfettered access to Google search late last night, commencing a golden age of censorship-free searching that lasted all of 105 minutes. For the duration of the film Edward Scissorhands, lasting from 11:30pm on Sunday to 1:15am on Monday morning, Google's search -- but not other services like Gmail or YouTube -- was unblocked

71 comments

  1. Just wait until next week by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You think this is impressive? The next peroid of unfettered internet access will last for the entire duration of Gone With the Wind.

    1. Re: Just wait until next week by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So unfettered access from now until the the sun rises in the west, the rivers run dry and the mountains are ground down to dust?

  2. Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What does Edward Scissor-hands have to do with this? :/

    1. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also 105 minus 105 is the EXACT number of fucks I give that Edward Scissorhands is 105 minutes long.

    2. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Submitter was trying for a unit of measure like Libraries-of-Congress for time but chose poorly

    3. Re:Huh? by OzPeter · · Score: 2

      Submitter was trying for a unit of measure like Libraries-of-Congress for time but chose poorly

      especially when he could have chosen from a list of 178 movies of that length

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    4. Re:Huh? by avandesande · · Score: 1

      Maybe he was trying to imply that the Chinese were extremely bored?

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    5. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Edward Scissorhands is a fucking awesome movie. So Fuck You.

    6. Re:Huh? by avandesande · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It was sort of interesting at the time, but now it just another 'Johnny Depp Acting Weird Movie'

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    7. Re:Huh? by Zocalo · · Score: 1

      Apparently that's probably all there is to it. From the summary I was assuming that the outage of the firewall corresponded with the times that the movie was actually airing in China and was expecting there to be some bizarre theories in TFA to explain the correlation as that would almost certainly have been far more entertaining (albeit highly improbable) reading than a story about a brief outage of the Great Firewall. Nope, it appears to be just a unit of measure for 1h 45m and/or clickbait.

      Unless one of those bizarre theories was actually correct and the now operational GFW has filtered out that part, of course...

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    8. Re:Huh? by Sax+Russell+5449D29A · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ironically there's a film on that list called Firewall.

      --
      -SR
    9. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It sounded like he gave a lot of fucks though.

      But I'm kind of assuming that the weight value of One Fuck is at least "somewhat substantial", I'm no expert.

    10. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Isn't EVERY Johnny Depp movie a "Johnny Depp Acting Weird" movie?

    11. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... weight value of One Fuck is at least "somewhat substantial", I'm no expert

      You're touring Slashdot. The fact that you're no expert on the weight of a fuck goes without saying.

    12. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I didn't say it wasn't, I said I don't give a shit about it's length and it's pointless to use it as a unit of measurement. So fuck you right back.

    13. Re:Huh? by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Wasn't that what they were saying?

    14. Re:Huh? by magarity · · Score: 1

      Isn't EVERY Johnny Depp movie a "Johnny Depp Acting Weird" movie?

      Was he "acting weird" or "channelling" in Ed Wood?

    15. Re:Huh? by operagost · · Score: 1

      It's only unremarkable because he's so good at it.

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    16. Re:Huh? by Nidi62 · · Score: 2

      Isn't EVERY Johnny Depp movie a "Johnny Depp Acting Weird" movie?

      He was actually one of the few normal characters in Platoon. Also interesting to hear him speak in Vietnamese.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    17. Re:Huh? by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      What does Edward Scissor-hands have to do with this? :/

      No search results got cut during that period of time?

    18. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The weight of one fuck is not an established value but rather a variable value that adjusts based on the combined weight of yourself and all of your partners during the fuck.

      Of course, since this is Slashdot it's safe to say that the weight of one fuck is your weight.

    19. Re:Huh? by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      We're supposed to understand to be kind to the submitter because they are Special.

    20. Re:Huh? by CaptnCrud · · Score: 1

      Yea, for all of the 20 seconds he's in it. I love it when movies show actors names on the front of the box (or give other undue credit) when they are nothing but a cameo (or as with this, a no-body at the time extra).

      Fun fact, charlie sheen already got a first hand experience on a vietnam movie when his dad took with him when on the shoot for apocalypse now. The then teenage charlie sheen hated being there so much, that he got in a fist fight with his dad off set and marlon brando had to break it up.

    21. Re:Huh? by avandesande · · Score: 1

      Definitely my favorite Depp movie also Martin Landau was brilliant as Bela Lugosi.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    22. Re:Huh? by Aqualung812 · · Score: 1

      Ironically there's a film on that list called Firewall.

      Which is less realistic than Edward Scissorhands, sadly.

      --
      Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
    23. Re: Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless Edward Scissorhands happens to be the most sought-after and difficult-to-get movie in China.

  3. I wonder by mdsolar · · Score: 2

    How popular were searches on organ harvesting of Falun Gong members?

    1. Re:I wonder by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Why would Falun Gong members search for organ harvesting?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think that they should send all of them to Falun instead.

    3. Re: I wonder by Frankzy · · Score: 1

      Yeah, as a Swede this confused me greatly

    4. Re: I wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, as a Swede this confused me greatly

      And as a non-Swede (but one who occasionally travels to Falun, Sweden), this troubled me also.

  4. That's nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    According to industry insiders, June will see a period of unfettered internet access lasting for the entire duration of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

  5. Great another unit of mesure by avandesande · · Score: 2

    It takes 3.5 edward scissorhandses for a library of congress to copy across the network a distance of 321 football fields.

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
    1. Re:Great another unit of mesure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Congratulations on your 952.380952 MBps. The 35222.688 meters shouldn't be a problem with fiber.

    2. Re:Great another unit of mesure by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      I'm sorry, I come from the US. Can you put that in terms of drams per fortnight, please?

  6. Nothing to see here by mdsolar · · Score: 4, Informative

    Move along. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

    1. Re:Nothing to see here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is interesting how this is presented, with the first organ harvesting claims around 2006? I first heard internet rumours of this closer to 1998. But, it was not specific to Falun Gong, but to any of a variety of disciplines providing a path to "enlightenment" outside of the state sanctioned channels (which were also inhumane and brutal(ly effective[?])

    2. Re:Nothing to see here by mdsolar · · Score: 1

      And, they'd criminalize yoga so the donors would healthy, very efficient, very efficient. You sir, should be in a Trump cabinet.

  7. Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Will look at logs and jail people who used it?

    1. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by sittingnut · · Score: 0

      or what will the NSA do with data from all the searches from china during that time, faithfully handed over as usual, by almighty goog.

    2. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably

    3. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by shawn2772 · · Score: 1

      faithfully handed over as usual, by almighty goog.

      Cite?

    4. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by avandesande · · Score: 1

      They will be forced to watch Edward Scissorhands 100 times.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    5. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by sittingnut · · Score: 0

      maybe i should have said "eagerly handed over" given state department tool's at google,(ie current jared cohens ) desire to please usa gov even before asked.

      this was forwarded to hillary then secretary of state in 2012,
      "
      From: Jared Cohen [mailto
      Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 1:21 PM
      To: Burns, William J; Sullivan, Jacob J; alec.ross
      Subject: Syria

      Deputy Secretary Burns, Jake, Alec,

      Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool on Sunday that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from. Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition. Given how hard it is to get information into Syria right now, we are partnering with Al-Jazeera who will take primary ownership over the tool we have built, track the data, verify it, and broadcast it back into Syria.

      I've attached a few visuals that show what the tool will look like. Please keep this very close hold and let me know if there is anything eke
      you think we need to account for or think about before we launch. We believe this can have an important

      impact.

      Thanks,
      Jared

      Jared Cohen
      "

      https://wikileaks.org/clinton-...
      https://wikileaks.org/google-i...

    6. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For persons of interest (read: targets) perhaps. It depends how easily the logs translate into people and places, a gap that usually takes effort and has do be done case by case, but their system might be particularly invasive, seamless (China tho.), or refined over iterations.

    7. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by shawn2772 · · Score: 2

      I won't comment on that project, though I've heard Jared Cohen's side of the story and it's quite different from how it's being painted, but that has absolutely nothing to do with providing Google logs to the US government. That project just collected and mapped publicly-available information, nothing whatsoever from inside Google.

    8. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by sittingnut · · Score: 0

      "That project just collected and mapped publicly-available information"
      everything above board and clean huh? that is why "keep this very close hold ", and let dictatorial but western client qatar royals owned " Al-Jazeera ... will take primary ownership"(al-jazeera that is famous for its pro sunni islamist militant coverage of news). huh?

      and why did google, "believed" "in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition"? against a legitimate government under international law, and for an opposition that turned out to consist, in terms of actual substance, in mainly of islamic state and al nusra front (al-qaeda 's syrian arm)? well usa gov(state department and intelligence agencies that come with it ) believed the same goals.

      how many other similar interests and goals and people(like jared cohen) does google and usa government share ? and how far will they go conceal the illegality and guilty blood ?

      "do no evil", my foot!

    9. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by edtice1559 · · Score: 1

      There was a time when the NSA handing the data over to China would have been a crackpot conspiracy theory and the only citations would have been some sort of circular conspiracy theorist references. But given some of the well-documented behavior of our three-letter agencies, this is a suspicion that a rational person can hold. That's what's troubling here.

    10. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, aggregate google search results data by arbitrarily-specific-location is "public" like the Vogon plans to demolish Earth to create a galactic superhighway were public.

    11. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by shawn2772 · · Score: 1

      There was a time when the NSA handing the data over to China would have been a crackpot conspiracy theory and the only citations would have been some sort of circular conspiracy theorist references. But given some of the well-documented behavior of our three-letter agencies, this is a suspicion that a rational person can hold. That's what's troubling here.

      Absolutely. What I'm questioning is the assertion that Google hands the data over. Google has consistently maintained that they only provide information in response to proper legal processes and only after careful review to determine that the response is required by law.

    12. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by shawn2772 · · Score: 1

      "That project just collected and mapped publicly-available information" everything above board and clean huh? that is why "keep this very close hold "

      Because people freak out, I'm guessing. Case in point.

      why did google, "believed" "in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition"?

      Because the Syrian government was (and is) an oppressive regime? There's really no debate about that.

      for an opposition that turned out to consist, in terms of actual substance, in mainly of islamic state and al nusra front (al-qaeda 's syrian arm)?

      "Opposition" is a catchall term. Cohen obviously wasn't referring to IS or Al Nusra, and lots of people defected from Syria to escape it, rather than to join the terrorists. In fact, I don't think the app would have tracked those who did, because they didn't leave Syria and ask for asylum elsewhere.

      how far will they go conceal the illegality and guilty blood ?

      WTF are you talking about? What illegality, what blood? How did an app tracking the number of defectors from an oppressive regime cause "illegality and guilty blood"?

    13. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by shawn2772 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, aggregate google search results data by arbitrarily-specific-location is "public" like the Vogon plans to demolish Earth to create a galactic superhighway were public.

      The data in question wasn't from Google search results. It was a tool which Al Jazeera could use to visually map publicly-available data.

    14. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by sittingnut · · Score: 1

      do continue to live in fantasy world.
      do ignore facts and see no evil.
      be a sheep!
      and blood on cohen's hands are virtual ink. right!

    15. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by sittingnut · · Score: 1

      you "think" any fanatsay, but we read what jared cohen actually wrote in his email about "in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition".

      the opposition then and now mainly consisted in islamic state and al nusra front. how do you "think" them out of the opposition?

      since you work at google, where is the google/jared cohen app supporting opponents of saudi arabia /isreal/turkey etc? what about opponents of qatar that owns al-jazeera used to cover google's involvement ? after all they are oppressive regimes too? or do you "think" they aren't?

      and what do you "think" make people "freak out" when they get to know that google, (with likes of jared cohen basically working in both state department and google,) was eager to please state department to achieve its illegal regime change goals in syria by "helping and encouraging an opposition" that consisted of people who go around cutting people head off ( or crucifying them hear the news today ?)and suicide bombs?

      if google want make people trust it, and start proving it is not just another arm of usa state department, pubic separation from likes of jared cohan (and his defenders) would be a start .

    16. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by edtice1559 · · Score: 1

      I see what you mean and have to concede that you are most likely right. The data is how Google makes their money so they are likely only to hand it over when pried from their (cold, dead) fingers!

    17. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by shawn2772 · · Score: 1

      I see what you mean and have to concede that you are most likely right. The data is how Google makes their money so they are likely only to hand it over when pried from their (cold, dead) fingers!

      Plus it would just be a bad idea. Bad for customer relations and bad for the world -- which is actually something that the people involved at Google think about quite a bit.

    18. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by shawn2772 · · Score: 1

      and what do you "think" make people "freak out" when they get to know that google, (with likes of jared cohen basically working in both state department and google,) was eager to please state department to achieve its illegal regime change goals in syria by "helping and encouraging an opposition" that consisted of people who go around cutting people head off ( or crucifying them hear the news today ?)and suicide bombs?

      Your'e completely mischaracterizing the whole thing. Cohen thought it would be cool, and useful, to help visualize high-level defectors from one oppressive regime that he (for whatever reason) cared about. The state department didn't ask for it. It was probably someone's 20% project, which Google management saw no reason to oppose. ISIS wasn't in the picture yet so the "cutting people [sic] head off" opposition wasn't considered.

    19. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by shawn2772 · · Score: 1

      Dude, you should consider seeing someone. Seriously.

    20. Re:Will look at logs and jail people who used it? by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      His homeopath thinks the treatment is progressing as expected.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  8. Edward Scissorhands angst by Slagothor · · Score: 1

    Edward Scissorhands has exactly nothing to to with this other than having a run time length of 105 minutes. I find their use of this as a perfect analogy to the Library of Congress, only in a matter that some will actually comprehend. One of the best headlines I've seen on Slashdot as of late.

    1. Re:Edward Scissorhands angst by buck-yar · · Score: 2

      Perfect, if their goal was confusion.

  9. 105 minutes? Where did he pull that from? by Slagothor · · Score: 1

    I hope it goes down for at least 142 minutes. They can then see "The Shawshank Redemption". But back to my point, I did not see any search that revealed movies by run time. Interesting...

  10. Full access to all Apple services continues... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... because Apple collaborates with the Chinese government by censoring content and preventing Chinese people from storing data offshore. Funny how in the USA Apple is all gung ho about fighting the government for its end users' rights but here in China they bend over backwards to make the government happy.

    1. Re:Full access to all Apple services continues... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's because Apple and Foxconn want to continue to have access to China's lucrative slave labor market to build their iPhones in the most profitable way.

  11. "unfettered access" by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

    Is it really that easy to block? I would like to hear more about successes in circumvention, and prevention of future obstructions.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:"unfettered access" by kinko · · Score: 1

      Is it really that easy to block? I would like to hear more about successes in circumvention, and prevention of future obstructions.

      When I was in China for several months, most popular Western websites were blocked - social networking sites because people can organise/talk freely, and news websites for obvious reasons.

      However different ISPs (or different regional divisions of the same large national ISP) would block different sites at different times, so it's not like all of China's traffic goes through 1 single firewalling router :). Presumably they have independent implementations of a vague set of rules. Many sites are blocked via DNS spoofing (using a public DNS server instead of the ISP's server was good enough for most of these but some sites had the DNS requests intercepted even when doing this), some pages get blocked due to the content (if not encrypted). Presumably they have more rules for content written in Chinese than in English.

      I often browsed by proxying everything via SSH to my machine in my home country. Sometimes my SSH connections would time out and I couldn't use my proxy. After getting back home I discovered several thousand automated brute force password attempts on SSH, coming from a range of IP addresses assigned to the same city in China where I was staying.

  12. When I read edward scissorhands... by CaptnCrud · · Score: 1

    for some reason I read as edward "snowden"-hands

  13. Re:105 minutes? Where did he pull that from? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

    Gotta pull out Billy Shakespeare - Branagh's Hamlet goes for just over 4 hours.

  14. I'm not sure I see why this is news by dingleberrie · · Score: 1

    Having lived in China, it's somewhat pointless, if not frustrating, to have a search engine return results but upon clicking on the link you get a site inaccessible message. Depending on the status of crackdowns, whoever wants access to Google search in China can use a VPN and see the pages from the search as well.

  15. For what it's worth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google search engine was only recently blocked in China. A couple years ago you could get pages and pages of links to blocked websites with a quick google search. No one got much closer to reading Falun Gong propoganda in that 105 minutes.