Posted on 09/06/2002 4:56:36 PM PDT by Neuromancer
Google mirror beats Great Firewall of China
15:55 06 September 02 NewScientist.com news service
China's widely criticised blocking of the web's most popular search engine Google can be defeated by viewing a strange Google mirror site through a mirror, New Scientist has discovered.
The mirror site, called elgooG, is a parody of the English language version of Google in which all the text on the web pages has been reversed. The text terms used for searches are also entered in reverse. The site, which returns all the same hits as Google, can be accessed from behind China's "great firewall". Viewing the page using a mirror makes it somewhat easier to read, and would allow someone to find a website. Web site "mirroring" normally involves copying the contents of a site and hosting on a different server. This can be useful if one server is particularly busy.
New Scientist ascertained that elgooG is accessible from China using a system that remotely tests China's internet restrictions. The system was created by two researchers at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School in the US. Routine block
Google has been blocked inside China since at least 1 September. It emerged on Friday that a second search engine Altavista is also restricted. The action has come under criticism from western human rights groups and journalist's organisations.
China's government routinely blocks access to news sites that host content they consider unacceptable, such as the BBC's news site. Web proxies including anonymizer.com and safeweb.com, which can be used to view pages on one site through another, are also blocked.
The reason for the latest restrictions is not clear but observers have speculated that government elections in November could have prompted a crack down on access to information via the internet.
!ynnuf yreV
!nimeZ gnaiJ ,uoy no s'ekoj ehT
The Chinese have a problem. If they continue to block information, they fall behind. If they allow it, the government falls.
Technology is a wonderful thing, especially when it's a technology of free information.
The Chinese government proves that they are weak by restricting information. They can't stand the light.
Eventually, they will die.
That, in a nutshell, is what happened to the Soviet Union. The Soviet government depended upon controlling information for survival. They started falling behind in the '80s when Reagan kicked the Cold War into high gear with his Star Wars initiative. Rather than risk falling behind as the hated western capitalists built their space shield, they brought in large numbers of PCs and fax machines to facilitate the flow of information.
By the time the Communists attempted their coup against Gorbachev in 1991, modems, fax machines, and even cell phones were widely available. As a result the forces opposed to the Communists could communicate and coordinate -- not just with each other, but with the West. They knew, despite what they were hearing on Soviet-controlled radio, that Bush (41) was refusing to recognize the coup leaders as the legitimate Soviet government. This (in part) emboldened many to join Boris Yeltsin at the barricades. (And, yeah, Yeltsin was a drunk, who hurt Russia towards the end of his Presidency, but he was vital to the creation of a representative Russian government.)
It appears that turn of the old men in the Summer Palace is appoaching. . .
No:
oodood peed ni era sredael s'anihC deR ekil sdnuoS
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