Wednesday, October 4, 2006

The Great Firewall of China

Chinese governmental agencies employ thousands of Web censors, Internet cafe police and computers that constantly screen traffic for forbidden content. All bloggers in China are required to register and may be jailed for violating the rules. Recently China even coerced some US Internet companies to limit the content of search results returned to users based in China.

In response to this crackdown, as well as to bypass the many restrictions in many Middle Eastern countries, a small army has been mustered to defeat them . . .

Hackers to the rescue.
  • Freegate, a tiny software program connects computers inside of China to servers in the free world.
  • Circumventor connects volunteers in the free world with Web users in China and the Middle East who then use the volunteer personal computers to read forbidden sites.
  • Tor, a modified version of a US Naval Research Laboratory project, disguises the identities of Chinese Web surfers by sending messages through several layers of hosts to obscure their path
While applauding the creativity of circumventing governmental restrictions on a free Internet, should we be worried about providing another channel for spending SPAM? Think about it. Let me know your thoughts.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey! Thanks for the tips.

Tor said...

Yeah, I know some services that won't let Chinese IP addresses sign up unless they become paid members, because they're worried about the spam issue. It's a shame to have to isolate a country's internet activity because of the actions of a few.

Anonymous said...

yeah, i agree. but it still sucks, not being free to surf or blog what u want...

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