China's Cyber Crackdown

Newsweek International ^ | December 16, 2002 | Paul Mooney

[Paul Ross]

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        ......HE HOPES TO do it by developing a program—he calls it Peek-a-Booty—that will enable Chinese Internet users to browse the Web without fear of detection. “It’s a very slow process,” says Baranowski, who works on the program with a roommate “whenever we have time.” The two have no outside financial support, says the computer engineer, who quit his job last year to devote himself to the project. “It’s purely about Internet freedom.”
        But Baranowski and other hacker activists, or hacktivists, opposed to government control of the Internet may just be banging their heads against the Great Firewall. In recent months, Beijing—using state-of-the-art technology—has significantly stepped up its efforts to control the country’s cyberspace, delaying dreams that the Internet would channel new ideas and freedom of expression in China. Some even wonder if the government hasn’t already turned the technology to its own advantage as a tool of repression. “The bad guys have had a victory of sorts,” says a Western diplomat in Beijing. “My friends who were cocky 18 months ago about the Internet are not so cocky now. There’s a lot more to be worried about.”
        No one knows exactly how big China’s Internet police force is these days, although estimates run as high as 40,000. But whatever its size, its sophistication is greater than ever. The government’s new capabilities were revealed in September when it blocked access to the Google search engine for a week. When the blockade was lifted, Chinese surfers found their browsers’ cache function—once an easy way to access information from banned Web sites—disabled. More ominous, the government also had the ability to search for keywords, and to block “sensitive” Web pages, like those devoted to Taiwan, the Falun Gong or foreign news coverage. The software, which experts say is “a great technological leap forward,” punishes surfers who attempt to access blocked pages, preventing them from accessing the Web for up to to several hours. Chinese censors have also begun to employ filtering technology to block e-mails from the country’s 49.5 million Netizens.
        And Chinese authorities are going on the offensive. Beijing has become quite skilled at hunting down proxy servers that allow users to maneuver around firewalls. The average cyberlife of a new proxy server is now about 30 minutes. Nor are Internet cafes havens any longer for exploring the Net. Cafes in Jiangxi province are experimenting with swipe cards linked to customers’ national ID cards. Some Beijing Internet cafes have installed surveillance cameras overlooking computer screens. One cafe manager took foreign reporters to a back room, where a police-linked computer, connected to four spy cameras, monitored users.
        So how has China’s Internet lockdown come to be so effective, so fast? “There’s no way they could have done this without Western help,” says Baranowski, back in his Toronto apartment. “Even now, they need Western help to keep up their firewall. They simply don’t have enough people and the technology they need to do this.” In a report issued last month, Amnesty International singled out Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Cisco and Websense as U.S. corporations that are increasingly selling filtering hardware and software, among other products, to Chinese authorities. Eric Gutmann, a visiting fellow at the Project for the New American Century, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank, claims that Chinese engineers familiar with Cisco’s operations told him that the U.S. company had “gone out of its way” to adapt its routers and firewall technology for China. “Cisco knew exactly what their equipment was going to be used for,” insists Gutmann. Terry Alberstein, Cisco’s head of Asian public relations, denies that the company tailors its products for the China market, adding, “If the government of China wants to monitor the Internet, that’s their business. We are basically politically neutral.”
        But to some, being “neutral” is just a code for complicity. “Even if [Cisco] is not modifying their equipment for China—and I’m very skeptical about that—to me it makes no difference,” says Greg Walton, a freelance researcher focusing on the impact of technology on human rights. “It’s a great leap of the imagination to think this is not going to be used in harmful ways.” But with Western firms competing for a share of China’s rapidly expanding technology market—said to be worth more than $20 billion a year—it’s a safe bet they’ll continue to be drawn to morally questionable alliances.
        And online freedom fighters—loose collections of Chinese dissidents and hacktivists—will continue to test the ingenuity of Chinese censors. Lin Hai, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison for distributing 30,000 e-mail addresses to “overseas hostile publications,” now lives in the United States. He is developing software to enable Chinese surfers to circumvent government interference with free Web-based e-mail accounts such as Yahoo and Hotmail. Researcher Walton says there are about 30 hacktivists around the world who are excellent programmers and who have taken up the cause of Internet freedom in China. ‘There is a romantic tinge to the whole thing,” says Walton, but he thinks they’d be more effective if they teamed up with the “thousands of people working in university labs” rather than acting as “lone wolves.”

[Paul Ross]

Well, three years ago I warned the naive young programmers this cyber censorship could...and would happen unless we took proactive steps to keep it from happening. I am not happy about having to remind all and sundry among these guys...'I told you so, listen to the voice of experience.'

[Paul Ross]

Ping

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[justlurking]

Chinese censors have also begun to employ filtering technology to block e-mails from the country’s 49.5 million Netizens.

I think they meant to Chinese 'Net users.

However, if they are blocking outgoing email, maybe it will cut down on the amount of spam from Asia.

[Paul Ross]

Ping.

[palmer]

Censorship is easy, just cut the connection. Obviously the Chinese government sees value in net access, first because it spreads information to their citizens and second because it will enable them to track what their citizens read.

Overcoming censorship is easy unless the connection is cut. There's no way filters can keep up with ways of disguising information.

Allowing the Chinese to surf anonymously is a different matter but also doable. Even if a proxy only lasts 30 seconds it is useful if automated programs are used to create proxies and access them.