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View Full Version : Tech Censors Can't Beat Free Speech Tech Enthusiasts, and Never Will.




Kludge
08-16-2011, 03:44 AM
China's Great FireWall may have been able to partially block out the Tor network, but a man named J. Alex Halderman has stepped up efforts by developing a service called Telex. Telex is the latest anti-censorship tool in the masses' arsenal against gov't censorship. Basically, it uses an encrypted connection to secretly route users to censored websites while snoops only detect the user accessing non-banned websites. Private ISPs must permit this service, which could only happen with particularly daring ISPs - but if they do, inside the encrypted page request is an alternate request for the censored website the user actually wants to visit. This encrypted hidden request is only viewable by Telex services, disallowing gov't snoops from figuring out what the user is actually accessing.

Currently, Telex is not ready to release, but has been tested successfully in China to access sites normally censored.

On top of that ambitious service, many Chinese and other net activists have been putting together systems of mirrors to... mirror websites and topics censored by government. Sites linking to mirrors' content are safe* as they aren't hosting the website, allowing users to go through massive lists of constantly-changing mirrors to find what they're looking for.


Short Telex/Mirror article: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110815/03054815523/as-governments-get-censorship-happy-new-technologies-popping-up-to-route-around-that.shtml

Telex main page with infographics: https://telex.cc/

Streisand.me, site in construction hosting banned information and links to mirrors containing banned information: http://streisand.me/

Another website including a simple app to test Wikileaks mirrors for accessibility: http://www.bortzmeyer.org/testing-wikileaks.html



As government increasingly disrespects individuals' rights, individuals will increasingly disrespect government's rules. Gov't oppression is counter-productive. Taxes and regulations leads to black markets, gov't censorship leads to extreme freedom of information, gov't violence leads to violence against gov't. Libertarianism will expand with the State, simply because we're right.

noneedtoaggress
08-16-2011, 05:00 AM
I only heard of this in passing (haven't really looked into it), but has anyone seen this yet?

http://www.openmeshproject.org/

Warrior_of_Freedom
08-16-2011, 05:44 AM
Chinese can't use a simple proxy? Or are they banned too?

DamianTV
08-16-2011, 07:31 AM
Simple proxies operate on standardized ports. For example, if China decided it wanted to block Port 80, all web traffic not routed through a proxy would essencially cease. The same goes for blocking Proxies but allowing HTTP traffic.

Kludge
08-16-2011, 09:53 AM
Chinese can't use a simple proxy? Or are they banned too?
And on top of DTV's comment -- yes, every proxy the gov't's team has found has been blocked, including as many Tor nodes as they've been able to find. It's still possible to use Tor in China, but more difficult.

Kludge
08-16-2011, 01:02 PM
I only heard of this in passing (haven't really looked into it), but has anyone seen this yet?

http://www.openmeshproject.org/
Doesn't look very active.

I suspect plenty of people would go toward setting up their own array of high-power WiFi repeaters if things got out of hand here. Plenty of communities already do this, some public, some private. That way, Intranets with... Intrawebs (?) could exist separately outside gov't control. Many people with home media servers basically already do this on a smaller scale. I wonder if a link could be established between local networks - could they share information?

Two network adapters on the central Intranet/Internet server... one handling Intranet connections, one handling an "Internet" connection. The central server has its own DNS for local connections, so someone typing a local IP address can get a page hosted by the corporation, but can also access the Internet if they type in an Internet IP address (or corresponding domain name depending on the Internet DNS server the main corporate server chooses to use). It's usually prevented for obvious reasons, but what's to stop these servers from allowing the "Internet" to connect to their "Intranet"? Couldn't they theoretically plug in many different wireless network adapters and basically form their own Internet with other in-range Intranets? From there, the central Intranet/Internet servers just looks up the DNS which hosts the IP address the client computer wants, and then connects to the proper network to allow the client computers to communicate with each other. There's been some talk about p2p DNS software popping up in the next few years... I guess they must be trying to simplify this, but this is the basic idea? (serious questions -- I don't know much about networking, so Idunno if this is actually plausible)


.... Or some extreme black marketeer could just throw some satellites into space, selling modems and satellite dishes for a one-time fee, I guess. ... Or the government could just go explode.

Dreamofunity
08-16-2011, 02:17 PM
Thank god for computer nerds. I have faith in thee.

heavenlyboy34
08-16-2011, 02:52 PM
Thank god for computer nerds. I have faith in thee.
+1 Nerds rule the world! w00t! (I am a proud nerd, btw :cool: )