Huge System for Skype Surveillance, Censorship Discovered in China | Hacker News Reader

Huge System for Skype Surveillance, Censorship Discovered in China

nytimes.com

21 pointsjoshwa14 comments

Encrypted comm channels, tunneling, and anon networks are tools we hackers are good at utilizing. There are many solutions that enable these tools for "joe user". The problem is that any solution I can think of that simplifies privacy for the end user is fairly easily blocked by a government that controls the network.

I think it comes down to the fact that if you're a great tool-smith, you can have some privacy. Others get to be monitored or blocked.

Note: my opinion is based on my experience as an American living in Shanghai for 8 years.

I'm tempted to think that a Chinese national using encryption would be subjected to stronger, maybe even in person surveillance.

Chinese savvy programmers use encryption tools and I have not heard of them being "visited" by officials. Its not a big problem. Censorship is a numbers game. It doesn't matter much if highly educated tech savvy people have access to info. The government isn't concerned with what this sub group reads. They do care what they say ;).

How about when the traffic from privacy tools looks the same as legitimate business traffic? Surely ecommerce in China uses SSL, and blocking such traffic would really piss off large businesses.

The usage patterns may look different which may result in further scrutiny, but it seems hard to block such tools outright, especially when used while mobile.

You are correct. I get around the firewall by tunneling (SSH) to my U.S. server. However, when you simplify "tunneling" by using point and click tools, now you have something generally identifiable and blockable as these tools also will use known discover and tunneling points. So if you don't have your own server in a foreign land, you can't easily tunnel without being blockable.

"To his surprise, the coded messages were being stored on Tom Online computers. When he examined the machines over the Internet, he discovered that they had been misconfigured and that the computer directories were readable with a simple Web browser."

How dumb can that company be?

The phrase "It's good enough for government work" comes to mind.

Why not create a spambot that spews "democracy now" or something to everyone? It will make the haystack much larger.

Do you want to turn the Chinese off to the concept for good?

Fuck Great Firewall !

Tomorrow on the NY Times:

Bear Shits in Woods

Clay Aiken is Gay

Pope Reveals That He Is Of The Catholic Faith

St. Louis Might Not Win The NFC West

Does anybody think the American government isn't either doing the same thing or trying really hard to get that power?

Certain members of government certainly are, though I don't think you can say that the government as a whole is pursuing this.

If the government as a whole could pursue anything, we'd all be screwed.

True, true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com