Technology finds a way round the Great Firewall of China

FRONT PAGE: "Iranians and Others Outwit Net Censors," by John A. Markoff, New York Times, 1 May 2009.

Description of the Tor Project that offers anticensorship software to those inside countries with substance firewalls (usually political subjects).

Talks about "a disparate alliance of political and religious activists, civil libertarians, Internet entrepreneurs, diplomats and even military officers and intelligence agents" that now comes together to challenge growing Internet censorship.

This arms race is just beginning.

Comments

[Beau]

I was in China a couple of years ago and used TorPark (now XeroBank) to get around the filters. It's a simple web browser that uses extra software to wrap the normal web traffic in encryption. You can put a few files on a USB stick and take it over there.

But most of the computers I used over there were heavily infected with viruses, some of which were for stealing usernames and passwords. There are several viruses which will also monitor all computer activity, from sending emails to writing Word documents. These viruses spread through a variety of means, including through the same USB keys you'd use to get encryption software onto the computers in the first place.

The computers' configurations led me to believe that most of the Internet cafes there used pirated copies of Windows from the same source. If you're paranoid, you might think this was done by the government, but it's more likely that the passwords garnered were only used to loot online gamers' accounts and sell the items on ebay.