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Architect of China's Great Firewall Embarrassed After Needing To Use VPN (shanghaiist.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Fan Binxing, architect of the China's infamous Great Firewall, was put in the embarrassing position of having to use a VPN in front of a live audience when trying to access a blocked web page. Fang Binxing was giving a speech on internet safety at his alma mater, the Harbin Institute Technology. During the speech, he presented a defense for internet sovereignty and used North Korea's own version of the system as a talking point. Things got awkward really fast, however, when he attempted to access blocked web pages hosted in South Korea to demonstrate his point. From there his speech went from being a defense of the Firewall to a demonstration of its stupidity. Unable to access the websites he needed to continue his speech, Fang somewhat unexpectedly resorted to the same illicit tool which all expats in China are all familiar with: the beloved VPN. This raises one question: Is China's Great Firewall that easy to circumvent, or are members of the government treated differently than normal citizens?
He'll be introduced to "The Great Firing Squad of China"
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
So he just happened to have a VPN and an account all ready and set to go or is this a normal thing? I'm guessing it's the latter. I'm not sure why you'd be embarrassed about it. It's not like he just happened to notice while being shown live. He had one already there, installed, and an account configured.
By the way, I've been to China and, as near as I can tell, everyone that I met had a VPN - usually one of the 'free' ones that you load up in your browser as an extension. And no, they didn't seem embarrassed about it. Then again, they weren't live and the person who configured the firewall.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Yes and Yes.
Yes it's that easy to circumvent, and yes they are treated differently.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This raises one question: Is China's Great Firewall that easy to circumvent, or are members of the government treated differently than normal citizens?
If only we had a website the covered this sort of stuff ... oh right, we do! New VPN IP addresses probably take a while for them to identify the traffic on and block. But there are plenty of services like HMA that constantly roll out new ip addresses. So as long as you're a mouse willing to play whackamole with your cat overlords ... Annoying, yes, but that's the definition of the internet in China.
In response to the second part, that is always true regardless of the answer to the first part. Not only are members of the government are treated differently but also their families. The "party" class enjoys many many perks. Unmonitored VPN connections would be laughable compared to their insider trading, disregard for the law and instant attack dogs they routinely utilize.
While you're accepting suggestions, why isn't my aforementioned article linked in the "You may like to read:" section of this page? Those stories seem to have nothing to do with China's firewall yet a simple google search shows a whole slew of those stories on Slashdot. I think you could get timothy's family to help you track that stuff if you would return his body to them. They only want closure, it doesn't matter if it has to be a closed casket funeral!
My work here is dung.
When you have a government VPN catering to about 1/2 of the world's population. You cannot sufficiently lock it down to an ideal settings, as even if you have 1% of the population deserving and exception that is 30 million people who you need to modify. Because of this, it is very easy to find a flaw, as there is a lot of holes to take advantage of.
Also the problem with communism is the idea in order for it to function the entire population will need to be onboard with the communal living. That just can't happen, so we have groups of people who are more connected to the party who gain more advantages and leeway, while others who are not part of the solution receive harsher treatment, as a way to get them to follow the party method.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
When I was there, it was definitely not easy to circumvent. I tried multiple VPNs, dns tricks, all kinds of things, but my internet coverage was spotty at best. If I tried to go to any western news site for any reason, I'd find my phone either throttled to nothing or completely offline for hours or days.
They seemed to be cracking down on VPN usage via deep packet inspection and/or whack-a-mole with overseas endpoints.
I was there in November of 2014, so I can't imagine things have gotten much better.
American with a Chinese wife here, I was in China last year. I set up vpn service before I left, installed the android app, and it worked in china just fine. You won't have as much luck with TOR, it will be slow or unavailable a lot of the time (tried that too just for giggles when I was there). A large number of foreign born Chinese that are there for tourism or business use VPNs, usually with exit nodes in hong kong, korea, or japan. Several people there including at least one Chinese born one happily explained to me what apps to install and what vpn service to get if I wanted facebook, twitter and google. I don't know what the theoretical legal ramifications for using these services are, but enforcement is near zero. I assume the CCP is happy enough that the less tech savvy aren't accidentally exposed to what they see as subversive material through western media, Wikipedia, and twitter. Those that are tech savvy enough to seek it out likely have contacts in other countries and travel abroad anyway.
It really is the same psychological trick that the Communist regimes have been using since the beginning. They've never been able to censor information completely, even in the pre-Internet age it was an impossible technical problem to fully solve. So you play a psychological warfare game instead. So long as the citizens think you have the ability, and that if they read a forbidden book or a forbidden website, that somewhere the vast colossus of state security, a light will flash and a klaxon will go off, and very serious men will appear at your doorstep and you won't be seen again. You reinforce that by making the odd citizen disappear here and there, to build up society's paranoia. The whole point is to make people police themselves.
That's why the Great Firewall, and the versions that other countries, even some so-called "liberal" democracies are creating, are as much a form of security theater as an actual control on reading forbidden content. These firewalls are like a polygraph test, they are effective because people believe they are effective, so they don't need to actually get anywhere near 100% success rate in blocking content and recording attempts. Heck, I doubt they even have to approach 50%.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"... but some are more equal than others."
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
In graduate school, I asked a Chinese student about this. He said that anyone can get past the filters in China. He did it all the time. He also said, no one cared. The Chinese government didn't care if you did, but they cared if you talked about it. If you start posting things, blocked links or discussing politics in public forums in China, you can expect a knock on your door, fines, jail or worse. But as long as you don't talk about it, you can view whatever the fuck you want.
Blocking 99% is good enough. China is not trying to totally block outside information. They are just trying to keep a lid on organized dissent. Western news publications are commonly available at newsstands, although an occasional story on Tibet, or Xinjiang, or Xi Jinping's offshore bank accounts, will be torn out. Most urban Chinese are better informed about what is going on in the world than typical Americans. China is actually more worried about social networks, where people can organize outside of party control. So Facebook is blocked, and instead they have WeChat and QQ, which are monitored and controlled.
Also, the Chinese Firewall is not "stupid". It may be evil, but it is not stupid. It is very effective at accomplishing its goals.
China has never even tried to implement a classless society. In fact, they did the opposite, by strengthening feudalism and binding the poor to the land. Everyone in China is issued a Hukou identification card at birth, that has their hereditary class printed on it. If you have the "wrong" class, as 80% of the population does, then you can be deprived of public education, housing, and even food. 99% of the 30 million people that starved to death during the Great Leap Forward had low class (rural) hukous. Today, about half the children in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, have no right to attend public school, or go to a public hospital.
One reason that the Chinese and outsiders see the Tiananmen Square incident very differently, is that the protesters never called for reform of the Hukou system. Outsiders see the protesters as heroes standing against oppression. Many Chinese see them as spoiled offspring of the urban elite trying to preserve their privileges.
I just got back from Beijing last week and used a VPN on my phone without much trouble. Mobile data was quite fast and reliable there. Combined with the VPN, it worked just fine. It was so easy to bypass, it almost makes me wonder why they bother.
are members of the government treated differently than normal citizens
Name me country where this is not so?
Or, asked a different way, do you REALLY think Hillary is going to prison? Even if convicted?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
A VPN is a must living in China for technical research. Even Baidu's Chinese language result list is bad. I know they have the same information as google,( I see the bot searching my sites), but the order is terrible. Most of the world advance research in computers is in English. but Baidu English sorting algorithm is very much like the funny Chinglish signs. For an engineer and other professionals to have access to the full internet will be required for China to advance and integrate into today's world, BUT.
I do understand why there is the firewall. From Men in Black, Kay:" A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." Social order is very important. The amount of people in China is unbelievable until you live there. There is a different between rural and city education. A VPN is like a test, If a person is smart enough to setup a a VPN they are smart enough to handle information for the "outside", The 2015 riots in Baltimore caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. The population density in China is many times that of Baltimore. so any large scale social unrest would cause billions of dollar the amount of problems.
Even with Chinese characteristic, I believe knowledge and information is required for making wise decisions and to progress humankind. That is why I rented a Linux Virtual Private Sever(VPS) in Hong Kong and used that as my VPN.
somewhere the vast colossus of state security, a light will flash and a klaxon will go off, and very serious men will appear at your doorstep and you won't be seen again
What first hand stories do you have to support this?
As someone grew up in China in the 80's, we listened to Voice of America for 10 years and not a single serious man or woman ever appeared at our doorstep. What you said would be true in the Cultural Revolution period in the 70's, and I have first hand story too: when I, as a 5 year old, tried to fold a piece newspaper into a boat, my sister who was 5 years older stopped me because there was a picture of Chairman Mao.
Today, I also have friend there doing VPN every day for years and he's moving around freely still.
No, they don't care the shit what an individual sees or says. They care what the mass see or say in some cases.
thanks. Learnt something today. I never realized this was the basis of effectively a new class system
The main reason you haven't heard more about it, is because 99% of Chinese that are able to obtain visas and travel to the West belong to the privileged class, and have no reason to criticize a system that benefits themselves and their families.
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