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As someone living on the other side of the Great Firewall of China it's become VERY clear that a government can effectively censor the internet(without VPN to g

As someone living on the other side of the Great Firewall of China it's become VERY clear that a government can effectively censor the internet(without VPN to get out it's terrible), provided that the government in question put enough effort into it. As I said in another comment, the Chinese government has beaten Tor. You can't download it or even read about it(almost everything Tor related is blocked). Even when you have it you can't connect, as all bridge IPs are blocked the moment the gov discovers them. It's slow as hell to boot and on top of this the Chinese government is still able to monitor those who can connect with traffic analysis(a Tor weakness). I'm something of a lazy cipherpunk and had hoped that most services and sites would have moved onto darknets like i2p by now. But sadly this is not the case, however it is the place where we finally need to go. TLDR: I don't use Tor because it don't work, plain and simple. Never mind the insecurity mentioned by Zed, and no one here is talking about this.

gst 16y ago
What would prevent the Chinese government from just blocking I2P? Also, while Tor isn't used in China there seem to be some other Proxy Services that are used. A non-tech-savvy friend of mine who is Chinese citizen and moved back to China one year ago, uses some kind of proxy service to connect to sites like Facebook. I have the impression that the knowledge how to circumvent the firewall is rather common in China.
- dublinclontarf 16y ago
  There are many paid VPN services available to those who have credit cards. These VPN services are based outside China. But this is quite expensive for most Chinese people to use. The reason Tor isn't used in China is that most of the bridge relay IP addresses are blacklisted by Chinese ISP's and net-cops. Now the list of bridge relays are not public, but China has enough man power(working full time I might add) to get ahold of nearly all the ip's and block them. Actually it wouldn't be too difficult to automate this at all. Knowlege to circumvent the wall is available, it's the resources to do so that are lacking. I2P currently is too small to show up on the Chinese governments radar. Apart from this I don't know how I2P gets the ip's of the darknet node. The only guaranteed way to be safe is to have a Freind to Friend network, with absolutely no public connection nodes.
JonnieCache 16y ago
At the end of the day when you're dealing with a government that has absolutely no qualms about simply taking you away and killing you discreetly, regardless of who you are, there is no hack clever enough to protect you.
- dublinclontarf 16y ago
  True, but a good Friend to Friend darknet cannot be stopped as long as there is a network to run it on.
  - flatline 16y ago
    If enough people were using it, I'd think that a) some of them would be government operatives and b) the traffic could be analyzed to identify and remove internet access from a large number of the participants. I don't know that much about darknets so maybe the traffic analysis is not so straightforward.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      It isn't. You can use the analysis algorithms to hide your traffic in a bunch of garbage. If China banned encrypted traffic it would be easier though.
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    They could switch from a blacklist to a whitelist and then you would only be able to connect to other nodes if they were run surreptitiously on pre-approved networks.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      It would be far too complex to do with human operators without destroying the primary benefits of the internet.
- gnosis 16y ago
  "At the end of the day when you're dealing with a government that has absolutely no qualms about simply taking you away and killing you discreetly, regardless of who you are, there is no hack clever enough to protect you." The thing is that for many people the risk of getting killed is worth it, and protecting the source is not the ultimate goal. History has shown us that dissidents will often and gladly risk their own lives to get their message out. And often, despite the risks, they've managed to evade detection and capture even when they were up against huge, ruthless spy networks like those of the Soviet Union, post-war East Germany, or the Gestapo.
gnosis 16y ago
This is why more people need to learn about and use steganography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography Properly used, good steganographic software will hide your use of encryption. Ideally, your communication stream will seem perfectly innocuous to all observers. Of course, in real life nothing is perfect. So there's always a chance your use of encryption will be detected. But using steganography properly should still reduce that chance to well below that of obviously encrypted systems like TOR, Freenet, etc. Also, just as importantly, the more people use steganography, the greater the cost of widespread monitoring will become. As pointed out in other replies in this thread, when you use regular encryption or systems like TOR, you're effectively raising a big red flag for anyone who cares to monitor your communication. So detection is really easy. But if you use steganography, the snoopers will have to work much harder to even stand a chance of detecting that there's anything unusual about your communication. Multiply this by thousands or millions of people using steganography (especially if it's embedded in huge data transfers, like video streams) and the resource drain for effective, widespread monitoring could become unsustainable. Right now the snoopers can go after the low-hanging fruit of obviously encrypted communications, and then maybe use rubber hose cryptanalysis to decrypt it, or simply block it. Steganography has the potential change the game drastically. Here's some steganographic software for you: http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=steganography&section=projects http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=steganography&section=pro... http://www.jjtc.com/Steganography/tools.html http://www.jjtc.com/Steganography/tools.html http://www.cotse.com/tools/stega.htm http://www.cotse.com/tools/stega.htm
- poet 16y ago
  Stealth circumvention tools are even harder to write than just plain old circumvention tools, which we already are struggling with. It's a disaster waiting to happen. See Haystack and this comment by Thomas: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690871 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690871.
  - gnosis 16y ago
    From Thomas' post: "Get circumvention at all wrong and you achieve the opposite of what the tool is intended for: you put a big red flag on people breaking their local laws. ... Don't build circumvention tools." That attitude is so wrongheaded I hardly know where to begin. First of all, anyone who uses something like TOR in China has already put a huge (and very very obvious) red flag on their communications stream. So, if those people are going to be trying to break through the firewall anyway, why should't they do so with the best tools available? Why shouldn't they try to hide their communication in a stream of innocuous traffic rather than obviously red-flagging it? And why shouldn't concerned programmers write tools to make the hiding of such information more effective? Look, many people are going to try to communicate even when they're forbidden from doing so, and they're going to try to circumvent censorship. So we can either try to make it easier for them, or harder. I'm on the side of making it easier. Sure, some people are going to get caught despite using steganographic software. But I'm willing to bet a lot fewer of them will get caught than using bare encryption systems like TOR.

gst 16y ago

What would prevent the Chinese government from just blocking I2P? Also, while Tor isn't used in China there seem to be some other Proxy Services that are used. A non-tech-savvy friend of mine who is Chinese citizen and moved back to China one year ago, uses some kind of proxy service to connect to sites like Facebook. I have the impression that the knowledge how to circumvent the firewall is rather common in China.

dublinclontarf 16y ago
There are many paid VPN services available to those who have credit cards. These VPN services are based outside China. But this is quite expensive for most Chinese people to use. The reason Tor isn't used in China is that most of the bridge relay IP addresses are blacklisted by Chinese ISP's and net-cops. Now the list of bridge relays are not public, but China has enough man power(working full time I might add) to get ahold of nearly all the ip's and block them. Actually it wouldn't be too difficult to automate this at all. Knowlege to circumvent the wall is available, it's the resources to do so that are lacking. I2P currently is too small to show up on the Chinese governments radar. Apart from this I don't know how I2P gets the ip's of the darknet node. The only guaranteed way to be safe is to have a Freind to Friend network, with absolutely no public connection nodes.

JonnieCache 16y ago

At the end of the day when you're dealing with a government that has absolutely no qualms about simply taking you away and killing you discreetly, regardless of who you are, there is no hack clever enough to protect you.

dublinclontarf 16y ago
True, but a good Friend to Friend darknet cannot be stopped as long as there is a network to run it on.
- flatline 16y ago
  If enough people were using it, I'd think that a) some of them would be government operatives and b) the traffic could be analyzed to identify and remove internet access from a large number of the participants. I don't know that much about darknets so maybe the traffic analysis is not so straightforward.
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    It isn't. You can use the analysis algorithms to hide your traffic in a bunch of garbage. If China banned encrypted traffic it would be easier though.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  They could switch from a blacklist to a whitelist and then you would only be able to connect to other nodes if they were run surreptitiously on pre-approved networks.
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    It would be far too complex to do with human operators without destroying the primary benefits of the internet.
gnosis 16y ago
"At the end of the day when you're dealing with a government that has absolutely no qualms about simply taking you away and killing you discreetly, regardless of who you are, there is no hack clever enough to protect you." The thing is that for many people the risk of getting killed is worth it, and protecting the source is not the ultimate goal. History has shown us that dissidents will often and gladly risk their own lives to get their message out. And often, despite the risks, they've managed to evade detection and capture even when they were up against huge, ruthless spy networks like those of the Soviet Union, post-war East Germany, or the Gestapo.

gnosis 16y ago

This is why more people need to learn about and use steganography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography Properly used, good steganographic software will hide your use of encryption. Ideally, your communication stream will seem perfectly innocuous to all observers. Of course, in real life nothing is perfect. So there's always a chance your use of encryption will be detected. But using steganography properly should still reduce that chance to well below that of obviously encrypted systems like TOR, Freenet, etc. Also, just as importantly, the more people use steganography, the greater the cost of widespread monitoring will become. As pointed out in other replies in this thread, when you use regular encryption or systems like TOR, you're effectively raising a big red flag for anyone who cares to monitor your communication. So detection is really easy. But if you use steganography, the snoopers will have to work much harder to even stand a chance of detecting that there's anything unusual about your communication. Multiply this by thousands or millions of people using steganography (especially if it's embedded in huge data transfers, like video streams) and the resource drain for effective, widespread monitoring could become unsustainable. Right now the snoopers can go after the low-hanging fruit of obviously encrypted communications, and then maybe use rubber hose cryptanalysis to decrypt it, or simply block it. Steganography has the potential change the game drastically. Here's some steganographic software for you: http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=steganography&section=projects http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=steganography&section=pro... http://www.jjtc.com/Steganography/tools.html http://www.jjtc.com/Steganography/tools.html http://www.cotse.com/tools/stega.htm http://www.cotse.com/tools/stega.htm

poet 16y ago
Stealth circumvention tools are even harder to write than just plain old circumvention tools, which we already are struggling with. It's a disaster waiting to happen. See Haystack and this comment by Thomas: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690871 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690871.
- gnosis 16y ago
  From Thomas' post: "Get circumvention at all wrong and you achieve the opposite of what the tool is intended for: you put a big red flag on people breaking their local laws. ... Don't build circumvention tools." That attitude is so wrongheaded I hardly know where to begin. First of all, anyone who uses something like TOR in China has already put a huge (and very very obvious) red flag on their communications stream. So, if those people are going to be trying to break through the firewall anyway, why should't they do so with the best tools available? Why shouldn't they try to hide their communication in a stream of innocuous traffic rather than obviously red-flagging it? And why shouldn't concerned programmers write tools to make the hiding of such information more effective? Look, many people are going to try to communicate even when they're forbidden from doing so, and they're going to try to circumvent censorship. So we can either try to make it easier for them, or harder. I'm on the side of making it easier. Sure, some people are going to get caught despite using steganographic software. But I'm willing to bet a lot fewer of them will get caught than using bare encryption systems like TOR.