China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February • Hacker News Board

Re: China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

#91

Post by contingencies » Tue, Jul 11, 2017, 10:47 AM UTC

bovitclan wrote: post #49

contingencies wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The preconditions of revolution exist in the UK, and most western countries. The number of active pre-conditions is quite stunning, from elite isolation to concentrated wealth to inadequate socialisation and education, to concentrated land holdings to loss of authority to repression of new technologies especially in relation to energy, to the atrophy of the public sector and spread of corruption, to media dishonesty,…

Robert David Steele has interesting things to say about OSINT, but one must take him with an entire cow lick of salt. After getting interested in his ideas and watching several interviews with him, I was very disappointed. His personal narrative is exaggerated; he advocates conspiracy theories that are popular but ridiculous; he shows a certain arrogance. He looks & quacks like an aggressive self promoter without muc…

About the same as my views, but still a fair and handy antidote quote to "China is on the brink of revolution!" as per OP!

Re: China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

#92

Post by geff82 » Tue, Jul 11, 2017, 11:03 AM UTC

You should not deal with censorshipping countries. Period. That's a dead end road. If you are Chinese - fight for your natural rights. If you are a foreigner: let them alone and try to do business with countries that provide more freedom or that are at least on the right track (I fully understand that not every country is equal or values freedom equally - but at least they should move in the right direction).

Re: China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

#93

Post by uloop » Tue, Jul 11, 2017, 11:03 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14

iliketosleep wrote: post #12

Previously, there was an implicit understanding that the Great Firewall was in place to prevent unauthorised access to the Internet by the masses. This is to prevent them from being influenced by foreign media, prevent too much information leakage of citizen info (e.g. via facebook), and to give Chinese tech companies a monopoly in China. If, however, you had the will and ability to use VPN software, the government u…

That was never the official or even the implicit position. There has always been a war with VPNs, want VPNs work and don't can change monthly, and it's been like that for the last 10 years. Xi's nationalism is nothing new here, they just think that the tech is good enough to cut off VPNS for good now. China has been trying to close their internet since after the Olympics. It isn't surprising that they would eventuall…

I don't think there has been many technical reasons why they couldn't block VPNs. I would presume that it has more to do with the overall cost / benefit of the open Internet.

Access to the open Internet is becoming less and less of a necessity. "The next big thing" isn't really happening. A country like China, having developed their own industry, can safely rely on companies coming to them or developing their own alternatives. At the same time things like ddos, ransomware, money laundering, black markets, foreign influence, rumors, populism etc. is becoming more of a problem.

It's like any other technology adopted by China. They will buy or co-develop something as long as you have something to bring to the table, when you don't they will do it themselves instead.

I don't agree with the Chinese governments position nor methods, but I'm not sure their reasoning around "cyber-sovereignty" wrong.

Re: China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

#94

Post by netsharc » Tue, Jul 11, 2017, 11:30 AM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #67

So what we need is a VPN that looks like https traffic or is https forbidden in China too? Is anyone working on this? After a quick read it's apparent that even the most sophisticated defences are going to be open to the one endpoint having loads of data against it. It would need lots of different "real" IP connections and my guess peer to peer would be difficult too. Statistics and machine learning will always be go…

Life finds a way? I could encode 0 to "duck" and 1 to "cat" and I can tell you "duck duck cat duck, cat duck duck cat" and that's 0010 1001, i.e. the letter I. Obviously it need to be more sophisticated than this. Then, you can use the channels that no one's looking at, but I guess China is looking everywhere.

Re: China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

#95

Post by gcb0 » Tue, Jul 11, 2017, 11:33 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14

iliketosleep wrote: post #12

Previously, there was an implicit understanding that the Great Firewall was in place to prevent unauthorised access to the Internet by the masses. This is to prevent them from being influenced by foreign media, prevent too much information leakage of citizen info (e.g. via facebook), and to give Chinese tech companies a monopoly in China. If, however, you had the will and ability to use VPN software, the government u…

That was never the official or even the implicit position. There has always been a war with VPNs, want VPNs work and don't can change monthly, and it's been like that for the last 10 years. Xi's nationalism is nothing new here, they just think that the tech is good enough to cut off VPNS for good now. China has been trying to close their internet since after the Olympics. It isn't surprising that they would eventuall…

then why would they say "personal vpn"?

Re: China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

#96

Post by gcb0 » Tue, Jul 11, 2017, 11:35 AM UTC

imron wrote: post #53

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was never the official or even the implicit position. There has always been a war with VPNs, want VPNs work and don't can change monthly, and it's been like that for the last 10 years. Xi's nationalism is nothing new here, they just think that the tech is good enough to cut off VPNS for good now. China has been trying to close their internet since after the Olympics. It isn't surprising that they would eventuall…

Since well before the Olympics actually. I was in China when 9/11 happened and for a brief period of time they opened access to a large number of previously blocked foreign news sites so that people could read what was happening.

why would people be checking a news site that was previously blocked? do you go everyday "oh, let me try cnn.com... oh, still blocked. let's try tomorrow?"

Re: China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

#97

Post by yladiz » Tue, Jul 11, 2017, 11:37 AM UTC

powstudio wrote: post #11

China is one black swan event away from an economic collapse and possible Arab spring. The authoritarian Chinese government is starting to have some sense of fear now. Between the 300%+ gdp/debt ratio, second real estate bubble bursting in shanghai/tier1 cities, huge spike in shadow lending, stalled stock market, complete frozen capital control, Trump's 100 day ultimatum to China regarding trade deficit, demographics…

I seriously doubt China will go into economic collapse like Venezuela, but I think in the next 5-10 years once growth is down below 3-4%, the economy will start to suffer and people will become uneasy because the economy is affecting how much they can buy. Probably the biggest domestic economic issue you pointed out is the debt to GDP ratio, which is very high, but may not be an issue depending on how China deals with the impending developing to developed country situation. I think that the two largest issues that will face China in the next decade or two are 1) that manufacturing and electronics jobs like at Foxconn will move to countries where labor doesn't cost as much, unless China is really smart and opens up powerful trade deals with certain countries (which it wants to spearhead with the downfall of TPP); and 2) South China Sea will likely become a major point of contention between its neighbors and could lead to a major cooling of relations with bigger economies like USA and Japan. NK possibly could be an issue but only if it becomes war, which all parties including NK want to avoid.

Re: China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

#98

Post by gcb0 » Tue, Jul 11, 2017, 11:38 AM UTC

fishywang wrote: post #29

b9599b93b5 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they "talk" to the shadowsocks vpn author to > force him to stop working on the project. just some side note... the author of shadowsocks vpn is "her", a girl goes by the id "clowwindy"...

clowwindy is male. the current maintainer of shadowsocks is a female.

and that's why we always use they if we don't known the person(s) we're talking about.

Re: China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

#99

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 11, 2017, 11:41 AM UTC

dis-sys wrote: post #83

68c12c16 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

touché... I did not know that before...thanks for sharing... But the whole point is about a fair income distribution in a society... If you think that as a Pharaoh, without contributing much to a society but could still get all the best things -- including the pyramids -- provided by the people in the country, by telling them that his ruling is god's will -- which does not seem to hold much truth in it...I just feel…

First thing first, I didn't downvote you or anyone else - because I simply don't have enough karma to downvote anyone. Please check my public profile before pointing fingers, that would be a much more civilised move. I was educated in the west, with PhD from the top ranking university. I spent 12 years living in your society and do understand where you came from. The problem is you seem to be forcing your definition…

[deleted]

Re: China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

#100

Post by rini17 » Tue, Jul 11, 2017, 11:43 AM UTC

dis-sys wrote: post #83

68c12c16 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

touché... I did not know that before...thanks for sharing... But the whole point is about a fair income distribution in a society... If you think that as a Pharaoh, without contributing much to a society but could still get all the best things -- including the pyramids -- provided by the people in the country, by telling them that his ruling is god's will -- which does not seem to hold much truth in it...I just feel…

First thing first, I didn't downvote you or anyone else - because I simply don't have enough karma to downvote anyone. Please check my public profile before pointing fingers, that would be a much more civilised move. I was educated in the west, with PhD from the top ranking university. I spent 12 years living in your society and do understand where you came from. The problem is you seem to be forcing your definition…

Cultural or ideological differences are never good reason to cut all communication. It will backfire(economically, psychologically) and you seem to refuse to even acknowledge this basic fact.

And I am not writing this as some disrespecting westerner, but as Eastern European. Having to figure out what is truth and what is propaganda in non-free-speech environment has severely morally stunted our nations, and I can't believe some "consensus culture" can avoid that.