A Way Around the Great Firewall?

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have found a way to circumvent the Great Firewall of China. Unfortunately, it won't do me much good since it involves "using special software or modifications to firewall software that would ignore RST packets to circumvent the Great Firewall," software that isn't readily available yet. And as the article notes, this doesn't offer that much of an advantage over encrypted proxy servers.

But given all my troubles recently, I'm willing to bet that finding encrypted proxy servers isn't exactly easy for the average user. And given that a fair chunk, if not most, of the Chinese don't really question the content the government is blocking (they think it's propaganda, porn, or both -- pornproganda!), you're going to have to make it fairly easy for them to access banned sites for them to do so.

More on the flip.

What makes this particular proposal interesting however (and you can read more at Richard Clayton's (one of the researchers) blog, is that he's proposing a solution that makes it easy for the user. Rather than have the user look for a proxy server, he's asking that content providers (i.e. website servers) and operating system manufacturers (i.e. Microsoft) work together to "ignore" the Great Firewall of China, or more broadly, produce a standard that makes it more difficult to censor access to particular pieces of Internet content.

Ultimately, I think that's the key to breaking down censorship in China. When people say that economic progress and globalization will loosen up this authoritarian state, there are two general assumptions behind this. The first is that a growing middle class demands freedom, has access to information from outside the country, yada yada. The second is the state, in order to function within this new global system, has to conform to certain standards of that system (which we assume is relatively good).

The problem is that China could just as well force the system to adapt to it (or create its own systems) rather than the other way around. The key then is to make these standards so fundamental to the system and to China's own national interests that it's forced to adopt those standards (e.g. plenty of dogs don't want to take their medicine, but if you mix the medicine in with their food, they'll scarf it down with knowing it).

As far as Internet access in China is concerned, the goal then is to integrate standards and technology that makes it more difficult for the government to control that access into standard technology (i.e. an operating system). And Microsoft knows how to integrate stuff into Windows. We're not just talking about the Cambridge solution of ignoring RST packets but other solutions that work as well (i.e. finding encrypted proxy servers). If these solutions are tied fundamentally into standard technology, and that technology is tied fundamentally to something the government wants (i.e. economic progress), what's the PRC to do?

Ban Windows?

[tag]Microsoft[/tag] [tag]Internet[/tag] [tag]Package Deals[/tag] [tag]China[/tag] [tag]Blogging in China[/tag] [tag]Censorship[/tag]