Klixxx Home
> Webmaster Article Archives Home >
The Sleeping Dragon: China and The Adult Internet
by Ed Rampell
Part Four: Political Power Grows out of the Barrel of a Computer
"There's always a cat and mouse game there - the state makes a new regulation, but people find away around it," Wolf asserts. Chase described methods used to bypass the Great Firewall: "Peer-to-peer technology is different from the Internet's prevailing client-server architecture. Peer-to-peer allows an individual to communicate directly with another individual without going through a server, which could be relatively easy to block. Napster is perhaps the most widely known peer-to-peer program, although it's not pure because there's a centralized song index. Lots of programs Chinese exiles use, are pure peer-to-peer programs, just direct communication between Internet users, say one in China and one in the U.S. It's most often used to exchange files, but you can use peer-to-peer for chat, and there're applications we think people in China are using to access blocked Web pages also," states the Rand researcher.
Chase went on to say, "A proxy server is a server an Internet user in a country like China could use to try to indirectly access a blocked Web site. If they requested Falun Gong's main Web page directly through their Web browser, it's blocked. But if they use a proxy server, it appears to the Chinese government as if they're accessing the proxy server's site, and then the proxy server obtains the Web pages they want and transmits them back to that user," says Chase.
Newsmax.com reported March 2, 2002 that University of Oregon physicist Stephen Hsu, and his SafeWeb company diagrammed China's Web and its weaknesses. They developed a proxy server system called 'Triangle Boy' - Chinese users, and a "mothership" servers report to beyond the firewall but PRC cybersnoops can't find. Chinese surfers receive daily e-mails listing new addresses of Triangle Boy servers, allowing users to visit sites they otherwise couldn't reach.
Reuters reported July 15, 2002: "Some of the world's best-known hackers unveiled a plan… to offer free software to promote anonymous Web surfing in countries where the Internet is censored, especially China and Middle Eastern nations…
Hacktivismo… or hacker activism… released… 'Camera/Shy'… allow[ing] Internet users to conceal messages inside photos posted on the Web, bypassing most known police monitoring methods… The program allows visitors at public Internet cafes… to install the 1.2 megabyte program using a simple floppy disk. The user installs the program on a computer, surfs the Web, then removes the program, leaving no electronic records… of… sites… visited…"
Reuters added other hackers, including Peekabooty and Privaterra, struggle for electronic democracy, which "is going to be a guerrilla information war," Oxblood Ruffin said. Hackers "plan to develop programs that will allow anonymous direct e-mail, file trading and untraceable chat programs that bypass conventional Internet monitoring… The latter is especially important in places like China, where online chat is more popular than Web surfing."
NewsFactor Network reported May 7, 2001 Peekabooty's peer-to-peer "anti-censorship Web browsing system is aimed at helping users in countries like China, Malaysia, Singapore and a host of Arab countries that screen out adult content and political material they deem subversive. A user in China, for example, could request a banned Web page from a fellow Peekabooty member in Canada. Because of encryption, the governments involved could not filter the content using current technology."
Another method used to transgress the Great Firewall is spamming en masse. Adult webmasters may reason that while this serves the interests of activists, freebies won't enrich e-pornsters. However, massive spamming could introduce content to vast audiences, whetting their appetites for adult material. Chase notes, "Spamming provides plausible deniability" - users caught by authorities can easily claim they're not subscribers, but recipients of uninvited spam.
Chase warns, however, hacking "can go both ways… 'Patriotic Hackers' hack U.S. and Taiwan Web pages during diplomatic and political crises," either independently or in league with PRC officials. Cybersmut could expect the same.
Part One: The Great Firewall of China
Part Two: Dare To Struggle, Dare To Win!
Part Three: Serve The People
Part Four: Political Power Grows Out of the Barrel of a Computer
Part Five: Let 100 Flowers Bloom
|
 Printer
Friendly Version
 Submit
Questions or Comments to Klixxx
Need More Information?
Search the Webmaster Articles at Klixxx
Submit
an Article | Link to Klixxx
| Earn With Klixxx Cash
Become
a Sponsor | Advertising Information
Klixxx Home
> Webmaster Article Archives Home >
|