Internet censorship exists in several of the countries we work in, ranging from the Maldives to Sri Lanka. While censorship is not our focus, our readers may find this story on how Chinese Internet users tunnel through the great firewall of interest.
The Great Firewall of China is hardly impregnable.
Just as Mongol invaders could not be stopped by the Great Wall, Chinese citizens have found ways to circumvent the sophisticated Internet censorship systems designed to restrict them.
They are using a variety of tools to evade government filters and to reach the wide-open Web that the Chinese government deems dangerous — sites like YouTube, Facebook and, if Google makes good on its threat to withdraw from China, Google.cn.
2 Comments
waidyanatha
Yeah kind’a like finding roads to avoid check points in Colombo. The technology to evade the wall is simple called “secure shell” commonly termed as ssh and setting up a proxy outside of PRC then directing your browser proxy to that one. Without that I couldn’t access my Google documents and read the interesting occasional TVEAP wordpress blogs. I’m not doing anything illegal here like talking bad about PRC, which is my home now but just doing my routine LIRNEasia work.
The problem is with those people who don’t even live here but talk trash about PRC or CCP because of them the rest have to suffer. No government is perfect but as an non-citizen I have come to greatly admire this nation, it’s outstanding! Especially the way they spend money on infrastructure, including communication. Each time I return from a four week visit to LK there’s a new 4 lane road with camera, lights, the works. I haven’t seen any other country build infrastructure so fast.