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Agreed. Contrasted with the > 1,000,000 results on google.com And curiously, google.cn gives ~42,000 results - and they still say they are censoring (据当地法律法规和

by chrisb 17y ago

Agreed. Contrasted with the > 1,000,000 results on google.com And curiously, google.cn gives ~42,000 results - and they still say they are censoring (据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示。 = According to local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not shown.)

jacquesm 17y ago
I had this really weird idea: allow proxied access to google from any webserver. Simply reconfigure apache on a world-wide basis to allow it to proxy requests for search results. The 'great firewall' would presumably have a bit of an issue with filtering out all the websites on the planet running apache.
- bensummers 17y ago
  Since they do content based filtering (sending a RST if they don't like the contents of your packet) the actual IP address of the server returning search results is irrelevant.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Any page with 10 or more links on them is supect then. I'm fairly sure that if they blocked all forms and all results pages with more than 10 links on them that the internet would cease to be an asset to China. Censorship is a delicate thing, censor too little and it is useless, censor too much and you might wake the dragon.
    - bensummers 17y ago
      Don't you think they'd block on keywords, not link counts? These people aren't stupid, and are supplied by purveyors of the very best western technology.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        Witness the ability of spammers to circumvent the best of filters there are no doubt enough cracks to squeeze forbidden information through. I never said they were stupid, and I'm aware of the credentials of the parties colluding with the Chinese government in this respect.
- chrisb 17y ago
  Interesting idea. But maybe more practical to provide an easy-to-install package that allows an apache installation to provide a proxy service in a standard way. Probably with a configurable bandwidth limit. Not sure how people would discover them though...
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    That's why I figured to do it on every existing installation. Simply go to some site and type ?q=hello+there after the domain and get your google results.
    - chrisb 17y ago
      This may allow full search results, but the links still won't work, as the firewall blocks 'undesirable' URLs. So the proxy would also need to convert URLs in the returned pages to link to proxied URLs, and to provide a proxy service for these 'undesirable' URLs. If content filtering is used, then it would also need to strip out 'undesirable' words to prevent the whole page from being blocked based on its content rather than its URL. I suppose a central service could be provided to provide all the proxy servers with the uptodate list of URLs that need proxying, and words that must be removed. All this seems to me to be very possible, although it's probably a little more than you were thinking.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        > All this seems to me to be very possible, although it's probably a little more than you were thinking. That's probably true. But I can't see how a single government entity would be able to withstand the collective smarts of the population on both sides of that link cooperating to defeat it. They would either have to shut down the link or stop censoring at some point.
        chrisb 17y ago
        I agree that technically it should be possible to defeat the firewall with a system like this. However, possibly fear of reprisals from the government if found doing it may put off many people. I might spend some time putting together something that can easily be installed in apache that does this.

by chrisb 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

I had this really weird idea: allow proxied access to google from any webserver. Simply reconfigure apache on a world-wide basis to allow it to proxy requests for search results. The 'great firewall' would presumably have a bit of an issue with filtering out all the websites on the planet running apache.

bensummers 17y ago
Since they do content based filtering (sending a RST if they don't like the contents of your packet) the actual IP address of the server returning search results is irrelevant.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Any page with 10 or more links on them is supect then. I'm fairly sure that if they blocked all forms and all results pages with more than 10 links on them that the internet would cease to be an asset to China. Censorship is a delicate thing, censor too little and it is useless, censor too much and you might wake the dragon.
  - bensummers 17y ago
    Don't you think they'd block on keywords, not link counts? These people aren't stupid, and are supplied by purveyors of the very best western technology.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      Witness the ability of spammers to circumvent the best of filters there are no doubt enough cracks to squeeze forbidden information through. I never said they were stupid, and I'm aware of the credentials of the parties colluding with the Chinese government in this respect.
chrisb 17y ago
Interesting idea. But maybe more practical to provide an easy-to-install package that allows an apache installation to provide a proxy service in a standard way. Probably with a configurable bandwidth limit. Not sure how people would discover them though...
- jacquesm 17y ago
  That's why I figured to do it on every existing installation. Simply go to some site and type ?q=hello+there after the domain and get your google results.
  - chrisb 17y ago
    This may allow full search results, but the links still won't work, as the firewall blocks 'undesirable' URLs. So the proxy would also need to convert URLs in the returned pages to link to proxied URLs, and to provide a proxy service for these 'undesirable' URLs. If content filtering is used, then it would also need to strip out 'undesirable' words to prevent the whole page from being blocked based on its content rather than its URL. I suppose a central service could be provided to provide all the proxy servers with the uptodate list of URLs that need proxying, and words that must be removed. All this seems to me to be very possible, although it's probably a little more than you were thinking.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      > All this seems to me to be very possible, although it's probably a little more than you were thinking. That's probably true. But I can't see how a single government entity would be able to withstand the collective smarts of the population on both sides of that link cooperating to defeat it. They would either have to shut down the link or stop censoring at some point.
      - chrisb 17y ago
        I agree that technically it should be possible to defeat the firewall with a system like this. However, possibly fear of reprisals from the government if found doing it may put off many people. I might spend some time putting together something that can easily be installed in apache that does this.