FC: Request from EFC for help with China and Internet censorship

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

[David has worked tirelessly for the cause of online liberty for years, and 
I encourage anyone who can to help him. It strikes me that three things 
might be useful: (1) An up-to-date list of encrypting proxy servers, (2) 
Good steganographic software, (3) Web access via email retrieval. Email 
responses to efc-china@efc.ca. --Declan]

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Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 18:56:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Jones <djones@insight.cas.mcmaster.ca>
Subject: Inquiry about Practical Anti-Censorship Tools used inside China ...

I am assisting a Canadian-Chinese Human Rights Activist who will soon
be travelling to China.

We are interested in compiling a list of techniques that are currently
being used, or with a little effort or education, could easily be used
by people in China to circumvent state-sponsored censorship of
political information on the Internet.

Since I know that others (perhaps yourselves) must already have documented
answers to this question, I am asking you for pointers to web sites,
press articles, or personal knowledge about how Chinese people
circumvent state-sponsored censorship ... hopefully without getting
caught and punished.

Your assistance is much appreciated.

Sincerely,
   David Jones

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Prof. David G. Jones              president, Electronic Frontier Canada
McMaster University                email: djones@efc.ca
Dept of Computer Science             web: http://www.efc.ca/
1280 Main St West                 office: +1 (905) 525-9140 ext. 24689
Hamilton, ON, Canada  L8S 4K1        fax: +1 (905) 546-9995 or 524-0340
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( Here is a longer posting, sent to the EFC-TALK@efc.ca mailing list.)

 > Subject: anti-censorship tools for use from inside China ??
 >
 > I am interested in learning about any real-life tools that people
 > in China are currently using to circumvent the state-sponsored
 > censorship that exists there.
 >
 > The nature, target, and consequences of censorship in China
 > is quite different from what we are used to in Canada.
 > Most (or all?) ISPs are either state run or state-licensed
 > and cooperate fully with the government's desire to limit access
 > to certain kinds of information, and presumably provide free access
 > to web logs and contents of email messages.  Contrary to our
 > domestic obsession with sex and paranoia about sex and young people
 > and the resulting focus on kiddie porn, ... in China the state doesn't
 > care about porn ... they care about political speech.  Apparently
 > access to www.nytimes.com is blocked, while www.playboy.com is not.
 > In Canada, people can be embarrassed, reprimanded, fired, or in rare
 > cases jailed for accessing controversial/illegal information online.
 > In China they can be killed (or so I am told by someone who should know).
 >
 > So, although the we Canadians think it might be easy to circumvent
 > corporate/government control/censorship with techniques like Napster (P2P),
 > Anonymizer.com, Anonymous Remailers, and so on, ... it isn't clear
 > these are robust enough or easy enough to use for your average
 > Chinese person who wants to get political viewpoints outside
 > their own state-approved sources.
 >
 > I am appealing to people on this list who are closely linked to
 > people actually living in China to share with me their knowledge
 > on these two questions:
 >
 > Q1:  What specific techniques/technologies are people living in China
 >      *currently* using to circumvent state-sponsored censorship
 >      to access restricted political information (such as the New York 
Times).
 >
 > Q2:  What specific *new* techniques/technologies would be most useful
 >      to help people in China circumvent state-sponsored censorship?
 >      ... or what existing methods are effective, but simply under-utilized??
 >
 > Please feel free to forward this request to other suitable mailing list
 > you may be on.  I will provide a summary of any responses.
 >
 > -- David Jones

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Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 19:25:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Jones <djones@insight.cas.mcmaster.ca>
To: declan@well.com
Subject: Is it even true that the Chinese government blocks access to 
political web sites?

Hi Declan,

I have received a large number of messages from Canadian university
students fresh from China who tell me they can access whatever web site
they like from within China, and nobody is punished for engaging in
political discussions against the Chinese government.

This leaves me wondering what the heck Chinese Human Rights Activists
are talking about when they speak of Net censorship in China.

Can you direct me to any reliable source of documentation relating
to Net-censorship occurring in China??

thanks,
   David Jones

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