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They can block all intermediary servers outside the country, that's fine. E-mail is an entire system, the way Facebook is a system. They would either need to bl

They can block all intermediary servers outside the country, that's fine. E-mail is an entire system, the way Facebook is a system. They would either need to block individual addresses, or the entire system. The former is the only feasible option with e-mail, otherwise basically you couldn't do business with the outside world, and China likes doing business. With the web, or chat apps, they block the whole target system and provide an alternative, which is somewhat reasonable. You could make this more difficult by designing the technology to make it more difficult to design alternate systems, and easier for it to work in a way that is acceptable to China and still supports existing users. This isn't a difficult or bad thing. We've had this forever on the web, where you could see a page was not using a secured connection (saying "this page is secure" just because the connection is secure is a big overstatement). It's mostly a recent development that privacy zealots have been shoving this "secure or nothing" idea down everyone's throats.

icebraining 9y ago
They would either need to block individual addresses, or the entire system Well, no, they could (and would) block domains, like "*@facebook.com". Which would leave you exactly where you are now. If what you want is an a non-encrypted web where China can analyze and choose the specific content it wants to block, then fine, but I don't see what the whole email-like system has to do with it.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  Yes and no. You could block the Facebook domain, but due to things like alternate domains, aliases and forwarders, you can easily pass data to different domains and still have your data reach the intended recipient. The target can be made ephemeral just by configuring your mail server account. I don't think China wants to block specific content because that's a lot more complicated an approach than blocking target systems. By making the web more e-mail like, you can pass data through the web, and it can reach the intended target without that target being discovered. You could in essence borrow the Tor method, but for plaintext communications over HTTP. You could use the same approach for web data by decoupling the addresses from the content. Federated services and pre-authorized applications is one way to connect disparate content and networks to each other. Another would be a way to submit data to a network in general, and allow others to retrieve it, for example with some pre-shared key or authorized service. You could make this work across different types of data and networks. For example, I should be able to send an e-mail to some address, and an intended recipient could check their Facebook messages and see the data, even though the mail address was something arbitrary.

icebraining 9y ago

They would either need to block individual addresses, or the entire system Well, no, they could (and would) block domains, like "*@facebook.com". Which would leave you exactly where you are now. If what you want is an a non-encrypted web where China can analyze and choose the specific content it wants to block, then fine, but I don't see what the whole email-like system has to do with it.

peterwwillis 9y ago
Yes and no. You could block the Facebook domain, but due to things like alternate domains, aliases and forwarders, you can easily pass data to different domains and still have your data reach the intended recipient. The target can be made ephemeral just by configuring your mail server account. I don't think China wants to block specific content because that's a lot more complicated an approach than blocking target systems. By making the web more e-mail like, you can pass data through the web, and it can reach the intended target without that target being discovered. You could in essence borrow the Tor method, but for plaintext communications over HTTP. You could use the same approach for web data by decoupling the addresses from the content. Federated services and pre-authorized applications is one way to connect disparate content and networks to each other. Another would be a way to submit data to a network in general, and allow others to retrieve it, for example with some pre-shared key or authorized service. You could make this work across different types of data and networks. For example, I should be able to send an e-mail to some address, and an intended recipient could check their Facebook messages and see the data, even though the mail address was something arbitrary.