Mike’s ramblings

GigaOM is reporting on the costs of the Chinese firewall for the industry of the country, because the team just noticed how annoying the system can be when one of their co-workers wanted to send a report from inside the country. The problem is well-known and it comes to our attention from time to time when our western companies like Google, Yahoo! or others have the difficult decision of obeying to the censorship laws or not doing any business at all in the country. The answer is not easy nor obvious, but I think the internet giants do the right thing by doing business in these countries anyway. Their presence will help a tiny bit towards the inevitable opening of the firewall (and eventually the whole censorship).

Today there are already several possibilities of going around the firewall that cost the Chinese government millions to develop. These systems are really needed, so the brave activists in the country don’t need to fear for their lives and can continue to do their important work. While Om Malik points out the Tor network developed by the EFF, this option is very often impracticable for the so-called “dissidents”, because it requires a software download.
Swiss TV recently brought my attention to another possibility, which was started by two Swiss artists (as an art project). It is called picidae, which means woodpecker in Latin, and is as simple as it can possibly get. They developed a server that acts as a proxy and translates every webpage into a picture that is then sent through the firewall. Links are mapped through hotspots and forms are overlayed with real form components so that the browsing experience is quite similar to accessing the sites directly.

There is a video online, that shows the two artists actually going to China to test their software. The results were astounding. You can see the two artists in an internet cafe (for which to enter they had to show their identification) how they access the forbidden sites and their attempt is successful. The report also shows Huang Qi, one of China’s most famous cyber dissidents. Qi is shown as he accesses his forbidden site www.64tianwang.com. He goes on to say that the technique could bring a “revolutionary breakthrough”, because it does not require the user to download a program and is therefore suitable for everyone without technical knowledge.

For me it is astonishing to see, that two artists can break the Chinese firewall with such simple means. You can try it out for yourself by going to http://pici.picidae.net and typing in a web address. If you like the project you can help them by porting their server to Linux or Windows or by setting up your own pici proxy.

For the German speaking audience, a small report from the Swiss TV station:

Die grosse Mauer der Zensur – wie zwei Schweizer Künstler die chinesische Firewall durchbrechen
In China wird das Internet stark zensuriert und kontrolliert. Innerhalb der letzten Woche wurden drei Internet-Publizisten Opfer des Regimes: Ein Cyber-Dissident wurde verhaftet, ein anderer zu vier Jahren Gefängnis verurteilt und der dritte wurde kurzum in eine psychiatrische Klinik gesteckt. Die Cyber-Dissidenten erhalten nun unerwartete Hilfe: zwei Schweizer Künstler haben eine Methode entwickelt, mit der weltweit jegliche Internet-Kontrolle umgangen werden kann. Da ist China natürlich das ideale Testfeld für ihre Art die Zensur zu besiegen. «kulturplatz» zeigt exklusiv wie der Test verlief und welche Sprengkraft dahinter steckt.
Bericht: Markus Storrer

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.