China blocks the Guardian, censorship-tracking website says | Hacker News Reader

China blocks the Guardian, censorship-tracking website says

theguardian.com

26 pointsteawithcarl37 comments

This just in: oppressive totalitarian regime, having developed the widest-ranging censorship capability in human history, censors another thing

Just now? I thought all news sites that they can't control are already blocked in some way. Some are keywords-triggered instead of fully blocked though.

There are always ways to "unblock" blocked websites. HTTPS (for anti-keyword-filtering), SSH Tunnels, VPNs, Proxies, Tor, they all had their presence in Chinese Internet history. And then the government are always able to either block or weaken methods that unblock blocked websites. It's an endless battle between the officials and citizens, or between dictatorship and freedom of speech.

I'm getting really bored. Here in HN, I'd love to see some technical article behind GFW[0] instead of yet another piece of news of some site blocked by it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Project

The technical method of the blocking is indeed interesting. From my home broadband connection:

- I can connect to port 80 on fallback.global-ssl.fastly.net (to which the CNAME entry for www.theguardian.com points).

- I can successfully get a 404 page (from that same server) by doing something like this: GET / HTTP/1.1 Host:www.invaliddomain.com

- I get disconnected if I specify Host: www.theguardian.com in any HTTP request, even if I'm connecting to some IP address that has no relationship with theguardian.com.

So, in this instance, the GFW is not blocking by IP address, nor is it blocking by keyword. It is blocking by the hostname in the Host: header of the HTTP request.

This implies that HTTPS would easily bypass it.

If only the Guardian had HTTPS support...

Sadly it's not as simple as that. Facebook has HTTPS support, but TCP connections on port 443 just time out.

The GFW is sophisticated. It would be trivial to stop all obvious VPN traffic (obvious = PPTP and L2TP/ipsec on default ports) without affecting other things, but this isn't done, unless many people connect to the same server over some period of time.

Unidentifiable TCP/UDP traffic on other ports (e.g. OpenVPN on a port number in the 1000s) again isn't blocked. However, if the same TCP/UDP port on the same server is accessed for long enough, and often enough, it will get blocked. Switching to a different port on the same server will probably fix it, until the next time.

The Golden Shield Project has nothing to do with the GFW. The whole Wikipedia article is a misnomer.

Can you explain further for those of us who aren't familiar with either term?

The Golden Shield Project is an internal police network. The "Great Firewall of China" is several systems of very lengthy official names, but basically a dual-use firewall of CNCERT. CNCERT does not report to any police.

I wrote a 15 page essay on this for school. Maybe I'll turn it into a blog post.

and the Chinese government confiscated electronics equipment including the mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles from Glenn Greenwald's partner... Got it. No wonder.

Not surprisingly so the Guardian is the only newspaper in the western world that might wanna tell you the truth as is, and even take a shot or two while doing it.

Nonsense. ALL newspapers, TV channels, websites have an agenda. ALL of them. If you think that your pet one hasn't, then you are in an echo chamber without realizing it, time to take a step back and reevaluate the situation.

Best thing is to read two equal-but-opposite new sources. I like The Times for my right-wing slant and the New York Times for my left-wing, that way I get a balanced picture. You might prefer the Guardian and the Daily Mail. But read both and make up your own mind.

"Best thing is to read two equal-but-opposite news sources. I like The Times for my right-wing slant and the New York Times for my slightly less right-wing slant, that way I understand what both sides of the American establishment want me to think."

There, I fixed it for you.

Except that The Times is a British newspaper and IIRC has been since before America.

Thanks for playing.

That's irrelevant. The point is you've picked two news sources that politically covers a tiny little sliver of the political spectrum, both of them solidly right wing and pro-establishment from a European perspective, as if that somehow has let you avoid the echo chamber.

A British newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Altho' The Times is owned by News UK, which is 'a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp' which is 'an American multinational mass media company'.

Tenuous, but you can't deny the relationship. Most papers (especially tabloids) in the UK are owned by News Corp.

> Most papers (especially tabloids) in the UK are owned by News Corp.

They only own The Sun and The Times. The other ones are owned by various others.

Ah, you're right - I had incorrectly attributed tabloids like the Mirror and Daily Mail to News Corp.

There's no universally politically correct newspaper because all people are subject to framing[1]. I get that, even Socrates was affected I guess.

That said, what should be of major interest for a newspaper is to find the truth and not take sides.

I know Guardian leans towards a more social approach on almost all subjects, I try to take it into account when reading it's articles, but I like it because it's closer to my personal beliefs.

However, as of today, the fact remains: When a journalist wants to go anti-establishment 9 out of 10 times he contacts the Guardian (Snowden, Assange, etc.). Even Hollywood embraced the fact, in "Bourne series" Jason Bourne is after a Guardian Journalist[2] who is about to unveil a CIA conspiracy (or something like that).

So, either I have to accept that there's a huge conspiracy (ala 1984) where the Guardian is actively trying to deceit us all, or it's probably the most famous anti-establishment newspaper worldwide of the last 2 or 3 decades.

ps. I'm stating just a personal opinion here, I'm not stupid enough to think that I'm right and others are necessarily wrong or anything.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bourne_Ultimatum_(film)#Plo...

Right.

The nice thing about the Chinese press (xinhua, chinadaily) is that they are so biased and divorced from reality that no one takes them seriously. Just one step above the North Korean Press. This is quite more honest than the western press, which try to hide their agenda more carefully and present information that we could possibly believe.

I've actually found Xinhua quite reasonable for anything that the Chinese government doesn't care about, e.g., fashion, movies, the odd natural disaster and human interest story, that kind of thing, and even political events in other countries that are sufficiently divorced from China's interests.

[Obviously when it is something the Chinese government cares about Xinhua just repeats the party line verbatim, regardless of how insane it sounds...]

Any news about local policies or something that would affect my daily life, I have to read it counter-factually: e.g. if they say they won't do something, it means they are probably refuting a rumor and they will do it. For example, they were vehemently denying rumors that cars would be restricted in Beijing in the press a couple years back just before they actually did that.

Some of the translated editorials about politics are absolutely bizarre and incoherent. Chinadaily has great comedy value.

The BBC has a mandate to remain balanced, its the best you can do. The mid point of 2 distorted sources is not necessarily the center

This quote should be written on squares in Greece, for everyone to see:

> The mid point of 2 distorted sources is not necessarily the center

> ALL newspapers, TV channels, websites have an agenda. ALL of them.

How does that preclude a particular agenda from being to seek and tell the truth? Not commenting on the Guardian as much as on basic logic.

Because the world is a complex place and the truth is often subjective. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, as the old saying goes.

There is also the factor that news outlets are commercial enterprises and have a certain vested interest in telling their audience what they want to hear. I used to work for Reuters, and news is a horribly expensive business to be in, the margins are razor thin. Some organizations have workarounds for that (Reuters subsidizes news with financial services, Al Jazeera has a Sheik, the BBC has the taxpayer and so on). The Guardian makes a loss, but someone is footing the bill - what does that someone want you to think?

But as I say, as an individual, you can defend yourself against this, by reading two newspapers, or at least, cross-checking stories. If the Guardian and the Daily Mail ever agreed on anything, then that thing would probably be "the truth" in an objective sense...

> Because the world is a complex place and the truth is often subjective.

This statement is misleading and ultimately false. Truth is either subjective (as you seem to believe) or objective. I believe the later.

Here is an interesting dialog on the subject. It's old but shows a point:

# IS TRUTH RELATIVE?

Protagoras: Truth is relative. It is only a matter of opinion.

Socrates: You mean that truth is mere subjective opinion?

Protagoras: Exactly. What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me, is true for me. Truth is subjective.

Socrates: Do you really mean that? That my opinion is true by virtue of its being my opinion?

Protagoras: Indeed I do.

Scorates: My opinion is: Truth is absolute, not opinion, and that you, Mr. Protagoras, are absolutely in error. Since this is my opinion, then you must grant that it is true according to your philosophy.

Protagoras: You are quite correct, Socrates.

Now imagine if we all took everyone's opinion as an absolute truth... Mathematician's have a hard time accepting that Riemman was right and still refer to his conjecture as a Hypothesis, after a trillion (or more?) 0s on the same line, it's still a hypothesis!!!

You are being deliberately obtuse. News reporting is rarely about scientific proofs, it is about the actions and decisions of people and the motives behind them, and the context in which these things happen. These things are subjective and open to interpretation. Economics, politics, etc are not sciences and there is no "absolute truth" to be found therein.

But you didn't just say "all major news outlets", you also said "all websites". Which is to say, all people. If you believe that, why then trust your own assessment of the situation? If you believe you yourself are genuinely interested in knowing the truth as objectively as possible, why could this not apply to others, as well?

Yes, the world is complex, that's why I think "left and right" is too simple a dichotomy. It leaves out more than it covers, and adding a lot of biased sources together doesn't necessarily cancel the bias out, leaving the facts.

Say you read articles of each "side" about colony collapse disorder -- where on that spectrum do statements of actual beekeepers fit in? Or hey, consider well sourced articles on Wikipedia, say, about skin colors and "races".. not a fun ride for racists. Does that make Wikipedia "leftist"? Or is it rather that reality is "leftist" in that case?

If you go back to the original meaning of the words, right basically means supporting the status quo and special privilege (the king, that is), and left being against it. Since then it has come to mean all sorts of things for all sorts of people.

Is someone who is against abortion and for gay marriage in the US a liberal or a conservative? Are they liberal on gay marriage while being conservative on abortion? If you allow for such granularity, you are back to reading articles by individidual authors -- even a "left-wing" newspaper can publish a "right-wing" article, and none of them will ever publish the perspective of someone who thinks all objects are just delusions of the mind, that there exists nothing but everything, because such a person would not bother to write, and nobody would understand it.

> The Guardian makes a loss, but someone is footing the bill - what does that someone want you to think?

In this case, we can at least find out what the trust wants you to think that they want you to think it: http://www.gmgplc.co.uk/the-scott-trust/values/ Granted, everybody says that.. But that doesn't mean everybody is lying or deluding themselves about it, and if it does, it includes you and me, too, and we're back at square one.

Interesting choice of example, because there are multiple perspectives on it. One says "teh drug companies are EEVIL, killing bees for PROFITS" and that may or may not be true, but there's also the explanation of varroa mites spreading viruses, which may or may not be the root cause - we just don't know yet. And the "solution" might turn out to be that the drug companies devise a way to protect the bees by targeting the mites. The world is complex.

Incidentally, right and left mean which side of the House of Commons the parties sit - whoever is in government now, sits on the right and the opposition on the left. So you see the absurdity - the last government was the left on the right...

I find it hilarious that someone warns of an echo chamber, yet specifies your "opposite" news sources as The Times and New York Times.

The Guardian are the least bad but they still need their articles dismantling carefully.

Always use multiple sources. Also always make sure that at least 50% of those sources aren't Associated Press who feed into a lot of different papers.

Meh, The Guardian are heavily left-tilted, and editorialize. It's also exceptionally important to not confuse news from The Guardian, and anything on their Comment is Free platform, which is, by design, full of insane view points.

BBC have a legal obligation not to editorialize.

The thing with the BBC is that they just fail to report any stories their agenda doesn't agree with or summarise other news agencies' reports after the event.

Could you give some examples?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC

Look at the specific examples section.

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