Slashdot Log In
The Great Firewall Of China
Posted by
jamie
on Sat Mar 11, 2000 04:15 PM
from the bits-need-passports dept.
from the bits-need-passports dept.
iKev writes: "Today's Globe and Mail has an
interesting story
on China's attempt to restrict Internet content available to its citizens. It seems that The New York Times is on the list of 'politically sensitive' sites, but all other U.S. papers are not. ... Porn, however, is free for all 1.3 billion people to view. Go figure. I wonder what kind of setup they have running this firewall."
"Firewall" is the wrong term for blocking political content, but the pun's too good to resist I guess. If anyone has details on the software, please post your comments below or
emailme.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Great Firewall Of China
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 205 comments
(Spill at 50!) | Index Only
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
|
2
(1)
|
2
Bah (Score:3)
Re:Sex and politics (Score:4)
"PNN -- with more hot girl-on-girl action than any other major news network...."
--
Re:Inevitable Collapse (Score:3)
Proof that all statements can and likely will be misinterpreted. The point I was trying to make wasn't that anyone necessarily enjoys or wants a totalitarian state, but that some may find it a lesser evil than anarchy. I don't. If you don't, great. But many people do, and there are strong reasons to believe that one's opinion on this matter, like any other, is heavily influenced by culture and heritage. Get over the idea that I'm a bigot. I'm not. Quite frankly, I'm indifferent on this matter. People get the government they deserve. The "West" is rife with corruption and thinly disguised socialism. The Chinese government is totalitarian. Russia is essentially an anarchy, as is most of Africa. Which of these options appeals to you most or least is not my business or my problem. It's a personal decision, and one that happens to be heavily influenced by the time, place, and circumstances in which you were raised.
But there is no basis for any claim, which is somehow implicit in every argument of this sort, that the subjects or citizens of a nation have no say in the type of government they have. No government can exist without the governed. This is not a principle of democracy, it's an economic fact: bureaucrats and generals aren't productive in any way that helps. Thus if 1.3 billion people, or even a sizable minority of them (see "Taiwan") became genuinely convinced that their current government was more evil than some other, and the associated process necessary to change it, then a revolution would occur and some presumably more desired form of government would be instituted. The existing government simply cannot possibly kill everyone trying to overthrow it, and would be foolish to try. Thus the power to make a change always exists. The question - the important question at the heart of all this - is whether the pain, bloodshed, and anarchy necessary to make that change is worthwhile. It is quite clear historically that most Chinese do not feel that it is. It's not a value judgment; it's a simple observation.
I disagree with the traditional American idea that it's somehow our business what type of governments other nations have. I don't much care what type of government the Chinese choose for themselves, or even their reasons for choosing it. My original post was in rebellion against this idea that we are by definition right about governments. Our successes and failures speak for themselves. If other nations choose to emulate us, we should be honored. If they do not, we should perhaps examine why instead of either going to war in an effort to change that, or blithely asserting that sooner or later, democracy is inevitable. Neither approach properly respects national or individual soverignty and both are flat out wrong.
You are free (living in the US at least) to make whatever statements you like about why the PRC has a totalitarian government. Given your apparent closeness to this matter, you probably have significantly more insight than I do. But that does not imply that my observations are the result of bigotry. It's too complex an issue for such a simple refutation of an important argument.
Re:Inevitable Collapse (Score:5)
You don't seem to know your history very well. In the early times of China, there was great turmoil and strife and - yes - anarchy. Much like the hyperinflation in the Weimar days convinced Germans to give the Bundesbank a stranglehold on their economy, the Chinese, at least traditionally, fear anarchy above all else. Hence the dynastic system, which led to long-lasting, powerful governments. And now, the "evil reds," who are not communist at all but simply totalitarian, are free to exert as much control as they desire. It's a cultural thing. Certainly as recent events have shown this does not apply to everyone in China, but the popular support for "anything but anarchy" is still very strong. Whether this is changing and how fast requires telling by someone a bit closer to Chinese culture than I.
You cannot apply your own values and experiences to others and expect them to work. The Chinese people have never been governed by anything even resembling democracy. Never. For that matter, neither had the Russians, and look what difficulties they're having with it. You (assuming you live in Western Europe, the US, Oz, etc.) have something like 2500 years of off-and-on democratic heritage of some kind or other. The Greek republican governments, the aristocrat-democracies of Europe, and the post-revolutionary American and French governments have provided plenty of fodder for your inclinations. But these are culturally insignificant to many people, including the Chinese. There is no certain inevitable victory for the forces of democracy in China. Maybe it'll happen, maybe not. Predicting the future is hard. But everyone needs to get this "inevitable triumph of the forces of democracy" out of their heads, because it just ain't so.
At least China is HONEST. (Score:4)
All they have done is move that policy online. Why should they even think about blocking porn ? It has precisely 0 effect on politics if you leave it alone. It's just people looking at pictures and reading pointless stories. If they tried to block porn *that* would become a political issue and one more battle to fight against their own people.
Contrast that which the US where you have legislators trying to impose unworkable censorship on adults in public libraries. Forcing a library to install a piece of software that will essentially block a random list of sites is stupid. When that list includes the whole "geocities.com" domain you are way over into the "you little citizens shouldn't talk to each other" territory.
At least in my country the politicians don't even bother to try. They only keep the onenforced and unenforceable laws against porn, buggy and prostitution as one more way to prosecute rapists and child molesters.
I.e. It's a lot easier to prove he was taking pictures of the little girls privates than that he touched her.
Which of the three is worse is a tough call to make. However China killing it's citizens for trivial things paints them as the worst of this bad lot.
Sex and politics (Score:3)
Here's some proxy software (Score:3)
I'm almost done with a new release, which will support streaming media, HTTP Basic authentication (hopefully!), and much better anonymity (the current 1.2 release has many JavaScript holes). I'll also have an HTTPS-supporting version, but you'll need OpenSSL on your server. If you get a copy of 1.2 now, check back in a couple of weeks.
Looking for testers! In fact, I'm testing it right now by posting this.
Some Great Firewall details (Score:5)
I live in Beijing, and the Firewall blocks:
1. Many western news sites (not just the NYT!) - this includes (from my experience) the New York Times, the Boston Globe, The San Jose Mercury, The Washington Post, and the Australian newspaper that reported on the French suspicions about Windows a while back. Exceptions: The Seattle Times, USA Today, MSNBC, the Globe and Mail, and the BBC.
2. Probably the entire *.gov and *.mil domains - I've never been successful in getting to anything inside those domains. On the other hand, this isn't really surprising.
3. Xoom, Geocities, Fortunecity, Mindspring, AOL user pages - anyplace that has a large number of user pages gets blocked.
4. NOT proxies or anonymizer services (as mentioned in the article). However, even major ones like Anonymizer and Proxymate aren't blocked, so they probably won't start blocking these unless they become a major problem.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that most people here really care enough to go around the Great Firewall and read the NYT (making money is much more important to most of them). But if proxies started becoming popular and getting blocked, I'd appreciate it if someone could point me towards a few backup proxies.
I'm a little surprised by them not blocking porn, since they do try (well, make token efforts) to keep foreign hardcopy pornography from being brought in (I believe).
Re:Hmmm (Score:3)
Made in Israel, made in Finland, made in the UK, now those are possible.
The USA is no longer seen as the dominant force in software development, thanks to some brilliant European programmers, the accent on quality over features, and also the recent inhibitive software legislation, of which UCITA is the latest example.
It is a shame that a project of this kind, which could have some real benefits (scanning email for transmitted viral content, etc.) has been put to such a low purpose as the supression of free speech.
How it works, and why (Score:3)
The technology is pretty simple, actually. There's only one supplier of Internet service in the PRC... The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications [chinatelecom.com.cn] Circa 1997, there were three points of entry into the national network. One which passed through Beijing, one which apparently landed at Shanghai, and one which came in through Guangzhou (presumably from Hong Kong).
What was done was a simple (apparently) IP-based firewall. Any attempts to contact such subversive websites as cnn.com, chinatimes.com, or icrt.com.tw (old Taiwan hands will chuckle at this one) would resolve all right, you would just wait forever for the connection to be established.
Many hackers, including a few who post to Slashdot, make use of proxy servers to work around this. Better-known proxy servers are blocked, and new proxy addresses get propagated. Nobody who really WANTS information is deprived of it.
Why is all of this done? Well, I don't play golf with Jiang Zemin, but I can take a guess. China is not monolithic in it's politics. There are a few moderates in the government, and a few extremely conservative troglodytes as well. The firewall is (IMNSHO) a way to appease the more conservative members of the government that letting people have access to the Internet is OK. Does it work? Nope. Does it have to? Well... Only well enough to fool a few not-very-technical 70 year-old Politburo members.
Cheers!
J.
Re:Why they *really* allow Porn... (Score:3)
Probably Chinese culture isn't so deranged as U.S. culture over the issue of sex, it's difficult to imagine another country with a culture as guiltily obsessed as this one (but then there's Afghanistan, of course) but whether or not that happens to be the case, the main reason they don't block porn is because they don't have politicians running for office who think they can get elected by making a big noisy fuss over porn.
In Tampa, Florida where I live, there is a well-known nude-dancing club with the absurd name "Mons Venus". The Mayor of Tampa, Dick Greco, used to take his business associates and clients to the "Mons Venus" in person. Despite that fact, he recently signed a bill criminlaizing nude dancing, such as that which he himself used to pay to see, in the city limits. Why? This jerk Greco is plainly grubbing for votes by presenting the public with a transparently phony display of outraged morality, of course. Votes from whom? I think William Gibson put it well in his novel "Idoru":
"...Do it and you've got yourself a job."
Laney looked at the tweaked Hillman on his screen. "You haven't told me what I'm looking for."
"Anything that might be of interest to Slitscan. Which is to say, Laney, anything that might be of interest to Slitscan's audience. Which is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections."
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:Inevitable Collapse (Score:4)
But it completely refutes the claim of cultural affinity for totalitarian rule.
Also, a lot of the major candidates in that race are talking about a 'reunification' china of some sort.
You've being naive. Talk of reunification is intended to placate China, which is currently making beligerent noises. The Taiwanese people elected the independent minded Lee Teng Hui, and even his simple statment that relations with China would be on a "state to state" basis outraged China.
Re:Inevitable Collapse (Score:5)
You're an idiot and a bigot hiding under the guise of an elightened speaker. It's not a cultural thing.
There exist strong Chinese democracies - i.e. Taiwan. The fact the Communists currently rule China is an outcome of history rather than any cultural affinity for totalitarianism - the Communists were most succesful at organizing the people and repelling the Japanese invaders during the war, and they naturally assumed leadership after the war.
China has had a long history of good government - the dynastic system persisted for so long because it was highly successful; China was one of the cultural capitals of the world before civilisation even arose in many parts of the West, and was intellectually freer than most of the world. Success led to stagnation of the system perhaps, but the long run of the dynasties was due to its success, not because the Chinese people have no love of freedom.
Why they *really* allow Porn... (Score:4)
Just imagine being in the US Gov't.'s shoes:
You represent a country that claims to be for freedom and whatnot, and your main beef with the Chinese gov't. is that they censor what you don't want censored and they don't censor what you do want censored!
Now, your challenge as a Patriotic Puritan Bureaucrat is to convince a hostile nation (i.e. one that doesn't always kowtow to the Inherent Might-Makes-Right Moral Superiority of Uncle Sam) that censoring some things is wrong, while censoring other things is somehow acceptable or even commendable!
Frankly, I don't see how we can convince other nations to embrace liberty until we drop our masks of pretension and hypocrisy and embrace it ourselves.
--
NY Times (Score:3)