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Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

en.greatfire.org

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Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#21

Post by smoyer »

teawithcarl wrote: post #16
smoyer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article describes how the their (small?) group of activists is willing to "bet the house", and that the potential outcome could include Google being blocked. It's nice that they're willing to see Google blocked, but they're not actually giving up anything if that happens. Google on the other hand is a public company and has a lot more to lose if they're blocked. What would the shareholders say to Google risking t…

Sincerely, that's not correct. GreatFire.org is at the cutting-edge of research (including from Harvard, Princeton, and many software engineers globally and in China) to end the censorship in China. GreatFire.org is on the front lines of solving censorship. This idea is new research that works. Google has a preponderant position in search in 125 nations, and is not hurting that much from retreating to HongKong. Baidu…

I won't dispute that GreatFire.org is at the cutting edge of research, I just think the solution is naive. And you haven't addressed my real point which is that they're giving up nothing (certainly nothing of their own) if Google gets kicked out of China but you've conceded my point that there's an economic reason Google has behaved the way it has.

All I was stating is that part one of the two-part proposal (encrypting all traffic) should be done on it's own - that providing access to blocked content took Google from a passive position to an active one. Most of the students at Tiananmen Square didn't risk getting run over by a tank, but we still talk about the fact they had the courage to rally. If GreatFire.org wants to decides to take on the tank, that's fine, but it's not fair to push Google in front of the tank ... that's their decision to make.

P.S. The article also discusses Google's "Don't be evil" model ... I agree that it would be admirable to also try to abate evil where they can.

P.P.S. After watching the Matt Damon video in another posting, I'm reconsidering blind obedience myself!

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#22

Post by magicalist »

teawithcarl wrote: post #12
magicalist wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, a number of those are regularly and/or completely blocked in China, e.g. Google Drive[1] and encrypted.google.com[2] completely (if I'm reading those right) and gmail[3] often enough to be notable. [1] https://zh.greatfire.org/https/drive.google.com [2] https://zh.greatfire.org/encrypted.google.com [3] https://zh.greatfire.org/https/mail.google.com

The translation of your link for Gmail says Gmail is (only) 9% blocked in China.

right, which is why I said "often enough to be notable". Nearly 1 out of 10 visits blocked would certainly make use of it difficult. However, almost all of the samples for gmail are colored orange, but google translate doesn't do a great job of translating the legend ("矛盾" -> "Contradiction"?), or at least I'm not sure what that means.

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#24

Post by paulgb »

lucb1e wrote: post #18
livnev wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely, this is an (admittedly broad and difficult) issue with CAs and the trust element of SSL authentication. By the theory of SSL, an 'attacker' is not supposed to have control over a 'trusted' CA, so SSL is 'supposed to' protect against this.

I only thought of the Chinese govt issuing a certificate after writing half the post. Initially I was just going to comment on the easy possibility of MITM attacks. These would fail whenever anyone forced https into their address bar, but I think less than 5% of the people do that. That would mean just refusing connections for the <5% and still sniffing everyone else.

Strict transport security (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Securit...) is an attempt to prevent exactly this. However assuming that the user is always on a MITM'd connection, a preloaded list in the browser becomes necessary.

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#25

Post by onedognight »

livnev wrote: post #15
lucb1e wrote: post #14

> The code-sharing site Github uses encrypted-only access and, perhaps not intentionally, broke the pattern of Internet control in China. Encrypted-only access is not a solution, it's a patch. Here is how China could break it if they wanted to: 1. Choose domains that you want to monitor in this way. E.g. github.com. 2. Requests to any IP for that domain on port 443 will return a certificate that the Chinese governmen…

Surely, this is an (admittedly broad and difficult) issue with CAs and the trust element of SSL authentication. By the theory of SSL, an 'attacker' is not supposed to have control over a 'trusted' CA, so SSL is 'supposed to' protect against this.

> By the theory of SSL, an 'attacker' is not supposed to have control over a 'trusted' CA, so SSL is 'supposed to' protect against this.

Every major government has a CA cert in your browser. SSL was obviously designed to be subverted in exactly this way. You won't even get a warning. Google pins their own certs in their own browser, but Moxy's Convergene.io or something like TACK would need to be implemented by Google and Mozilla for you to have a fighting chance.

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#26

Post by charliesmith »

lucb1e wrote: post #14

> The code-sharing site Github uses encrypted-only access and, perhaps not intentionally, broke the pattern of Internet control in China. Encrypted-only access is not a solution, it's a patch. Here is how China could break it if they wanted to: 1. Choose domains that you want to monitor in this way. E.g. github.com. 2. Requests to any IP for that domain on port 443 will return a certificate that the Chinese governmen…

You might be interested in the post we wrote about the Github MITM attack in China: https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2013/jan/china-github-and-man-...

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#27

Post by ronaldx »

teawithcarl wrote: post #12
magicalist wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, a number of those are regularly and/or completely blocked in China, e.g. Google Drive[1] and encrypted.google.com[2] completely (if I'm reading those right) and gmail[3] often enough to be notable. [1] https://zh.greatfire.org/https/drive.google.com [2] https://zh.greatfire.org/encrypted.google.com [3] https://zh.greatfire.org/https/mail.google.com

The translation of your link for Gmail says Gmail is (only) 9% blocked in China.

If Gmail didn't work 9% of the time, nobody would use it.

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#28

Post by charliesmith »

wodenokoto wrote: post #13
teawithcarl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sincerely, you're wrong. GreatFire.org exists to end China's censorship - they have pondered long, researched, and have not missed your point. China's weakness is they cannot censor where it crimps the economy too much. Read: Collateral Freedom https://openitp.org/pdfs/CollateralFreedom.pdf China blocking all Google products would make such a backlash in China that it's not a feasible move for the China government. J…

You've never been to China, have you? Access to gmail is spotty and unreliable, like most other google services. Android phones connect to Chinese android market and most have alternative chinese only app markets. If google where to stop access to android market, people would get pissed, but switch app-provider. For the rest, these are barely used services. I don't even think hangouts are accessible, since it's a par…

How about Amazon?

Re: Google Can Bring an End to Censorship in 10 Days

#29

Post by teawithcarl »

wodenokoto wrote: post #13
teawithcarl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sincerely, you're wrong. GreatFire.org exists to end China's censorship - they have pondered long, researched, and have not missed your point. China's weakness is they cannot censor where it crimps the economy too much. Read: Collateral Freedom https://openitp.org/pdfs/CollateralFreedom.pdf China blocking all Google products would make such a backlash in China that it's not a feasible move for the China government. J…

You've never been to China, have you? Access to gmail is spotty and unreliable, like most other google services. Android phones connect to Chinese android market and most have alternative chinese only app markets. If google where to stop access to android market, people would get pissed, but switch app-provider. For the rest, these are barely used services. I don't even think hangouts are accessible, since it's a par…

I've been going to China since 1985 (28 years), speak Chinese and Japanese, and read the newspapers fluently in both.
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