Web

The Best Way to Leap China's Great Firewall

(Page 2 of 2)

  • Thursday, March 5, 2009
  • By David Talbot

Ten tools--some commercial products and some open-source, nonprofit efforts--were tested for the new study, which was conducted partly in a lab setting at Harvard and partly in cybercafes in Beijing, Shanghai, Hanoi, and Seoul. Hal Roberts, a senior researcher at Berkman, visited the cafes and ran the circumvention tools through their paces. The best tools overall were found to be Ultrareach, Psiphon, and Tor, while Dynaweb and Anonymizer also scored well. Others suffered greater problems with usability or security.

"All of the tools we tested worked in the sense that if you sat in an Internet cafe in China and tried to bring up a site, you could do it," says Roberts. But a major problem, he says, was the long loading times of restricted pages, a function of limited bandwidth at proxies or the additional hops the data took to reach the cafe. "The only tool that was even marginally unpainful was Ultrareach," Roberts says, "but even for Ultrareach, it was anywhere from two to eight times slower than direct connection." In some cases, the extra time helps provide added security--notably for Tor.

The larger issue is that circumvention tools are only used by a few million people around the world--a small number, considering that China alone has some 300 million Internet users. The challenge ahead will include spreading the word more widely, increasing the availability of proxy computers, and enlisting more technical and financial support in the fight against censorship.

Circumvention research is supported by human-rights and civil-rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and by some Western governments. "It's easy to understand why governments and human rights funders would be interested in supporting censorship circumvention tools," notes the text of the report, which was coauthored by Palfrey, Roberts, and Ethan Zuckerman, who heads a blogging advocacy group called Global Voices. "As discourse shifts from traditional media to new participatory media, the ability to access and create online information becomes equivalent to the ability to read, listen, and speak freely."

Print

Related Articles

The Internet's Perilous New Year's Resolution

Antipiracy legislation headed for a U.S. Senate vote in January could be fraught with downsides.

Middle East Conflict and an Internet Tipping Point

Social media sites have played a huge role in the prodemocracy surge—but states have also been very good at using technology to suppress their people.

Mapping the Malicious Web

Analyzing the connections between sites could help spot Web attacks.

Close Comments

To comment, please sign in or register

Forgot my password

rvandell

22 Comments

  • 1075 Days Ago
  • 03/05/2009

Ni Hao, bozos

Finally, say good by to William Randolph Hearst and other political lackeys like Rupert Murdoch, Robert Maxwell, Marshall Naify, Conrad Black, Silvio Berlusconi, Alex Springer and Ted Turner.

May they go the way of the "Lord" Northcilffe's "Lord" Rothermere's and "Lord" Beaverbrook's of the past. (e.g. worm food).

There are now too many publishers for any one government to buy off. (even China's)

Reply

1rick

1 Comment

  • 1075 Days Ago
  • 03/05/2009

Glaring Omission

What about VPNs?

Reply

nathaniell

2 Comments

  • 37 Days Ago
  • 01/07/2012

Re: Glaring Omission

VPNs work. Not all services though.  Witopia, Skydur, Hide My Ass, and a few others have been blocked completely.  12VPN, StrongVPN, and SwitchVPN have had their main domains blocked, but have alternate domains with access. There are a number of other VPN services, including Panda Pow, PureVPN, and VyprVPN that have not experienced any issues.

http://www.bestvpninchina.com has up to date info on which VPNs are blocked, and which are accessible from behind The GFW.

Reply

tyriver

2 Comments

  • 1074 Days Ago
  • 03/06/2009

this article

    I am wondering whether this article itself is banned by the great firewall so chinese readers have to circumvent to read this one.

Reply

r1c081

1 Comment

  • 975 Days Ago
  • 06/13/2009

Re: this article

Was able to read this article in China...but can't get onto youtube.

Reply

gabrielg01

450 Comments

  • 966 Days Ago
  • 06/22/2009

Re: this article

Actually, you can test what is viewable in China by using this test tool:
http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html
Ironically, this article was viewable in China.

Reply

juholie

1 Comment

  • 804 Days Ago
  • 12/01/2009

Freedur

im using Freedur to get aroud the GFW now. it is very fast and stable. super fast when i load vids on youtube

Reply

simon1978011

1 Comment

  • 793 Days Ago
  • 12/12/2009

Re: Freedur

FYI, the owner of Freedur Chris Mathews and his operations are very shady. There is so many bad comments floating around the internet about Chris Mathews, Freedur, ShoeMash and OpenTerrace LTD. Supposedly, Chris Mathews has stolen Freedur from its real owner - StackFile (owner - Paul Hay).

Freedur server is full of stolen files, just as example - https://freedur.net/images/placeholder/stackfile_logo.jpg

You can read the law suit against Freedur/Chris Mathews here http://www.skydur.com/law-suit-against-chris-mathews.php.

If I were you I would stay away from Freedur, ShoeMask and Open Terrace LTD.

Simon

Reply

Chris Mathews

1 Comment

  • 746 Days Ago
  • 01/28/2010

Re: Freedur

The above comment and content of links are fabricated lies. Skydur is a copycat service that was created after Obrad Grujic, Paul Hay, and Jovica Mizdrak (all former developers of the Freedur application terminated due to poor work quality and ethics) hijacked the Freedur servers and fraudulently posted lies posing as Freedur staff on our own website. The hacking incident took place back in August 2009 and caused severe damages and grief to our company and customers.  The whole, and definitive true story can be found within OUR lawsuit against them:

http://freedur.net/public_record/Freedur_law_suit.pdf
*Currently we are only able to pursue Paul Hay and Stackfile Corp via the court, as Grujic lives in Serbia and Mizdrak lives in Australia.

Currently, the perpetrators operate under the following identities: Stackfile, Skydur, and Astrill.  All of these entities either do not exist as a real company or are suspended.  Stackfile Corp is suspended by the State of California. A search for "Stackfile" at http://kepler.sos.ca.gov will reveal its current status.

The Skydur individuals are attempting to confuse the public by accusing Freedur and its owners of doing what they actually did to us.  Their continuing campaign of defamation, lies and distortion will be resolved in court.  Their malicious and fraudulent misrepresentations of facts speak for themselves.  Please support us by seeking the truth of the matter.

Reply

nathaniell

2 Comments

  • 37 Days Ago
  • 01/07/2012

Re: Freedur

I can attest to the fraudulent nature of Astrill, Jovica, and their team. I was an affiliate of Astrill starting in March 2011.  Without repeating all of the details (I've posted them on my personal blog and scam report sites), basically, they owe me thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions and refuse to address the subject. After months of chasing them down with various debt collectors, I was informed that Astrill has filed for bankruptcy.  I see that Astrill is continuing to operate despite this - what this means for the company and its users, I'm not sure.  However, any search for reviews of their service will turn up more than a few negative comments about the quality of their VPN and customer service.

Reply

Advertisement

MAGAZINE

Can We Build Tomorrow's Breakthroughs?

Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.

Videos

A Social-Media Decoder

More

Advertisement

Technology Review Lists

TR50

Our list of the 50 most innovative companies, including the following:

Nissan

Crowdcast

A123 Systems

iRobot

More

Advertisement

Facebook

Advertisement