Ask HN: On China VPN block, would you help us out?
If you are a hacker, online freedom NGO or a team in any form, would you develop software or technology to help us bypass the Great Firewall in China? I mean a real total solution beyond tips or workarounds.
Dictators always want to control the free flow of information, seems they’re one step closer to the target. Please do something to stop that. No matter it’s China, Iran or who-knows-who-is-next.
TL;DR version: GFW is not new, but recently it becomes severely tight up. Things got worsen months ago, GFW got technical upgrade which enabled it to interfere even OpenVPN and SSH tunnel which had worked fine for a long time. I had used openvpn and astrill for 2 years, worked perfectly okay (to bypass internet filtering instead of privacy concern), GFW could not do anything to them but after the tech upgrade, no matter how I config protocol, port, TLS, MTU, no matter where the server is, the VPN connection could not be established or last no longer than 5 minutes. Tor? Too slow.
We guess the big brother has been collecting commercial VPN services’ data or GFW gained ability to operate based on packet behavior.
I’m not saying my whole life is total f*cked because of that but the truth is that I’m and so many people here are really angered and frustrated. It’s not because facebook or youtube, it’s about us connecting with the world. Our right to watch, know and learn from YOU and the outside world is abruptly violated.
Sometimes I even wondered there’re people like Anonymous who would bother to take down some websites (I personally think that’s controversial way to express or protest), why not leverage you tech skills, teamwork and passion to do something to the GFW? Track the GFW nodes down? Analyze how it works? Counter interfere it? Develop a new tech solution?
And Finally Unblock Us?
Thanks for your patience and hope I’ll still be able to come back to you.