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I was wondering about simply using VPNs, which is not mentioned in the article at all, but checking GFW on Wikipedia, it tells: > The use of VPNs in China can
by WinstonSmith84 3y ago
I was wondering about simply using VPNs, which is not mentioned in the article at all, but checking GFW on Wikipedia, it tells:
> The use of VPNs in China can provide individuals access to the international internet, but in China, it can be a potential legal risk. In 2017, the Chinese government declared all unauthorized VPN services to be illegal.[94] An example of the use of this punishment is Vera Zhou, a student at the University of Washington, who, when visiting her Hui parents in Xinjiang, China, used a VPN to access her school homework. She was arrested and sent to a Xinjiang internment camp from October 2017 until March 2018, followed by house arrest after her release. She was not able to return to the US until September 2019.[95][96]
- Arn_Thor 3y agoAnd for those who don’t feel in legal jeopardy many VPNs are still being blocked and reconfigured in an endless arms race between the provider and the GFW
- FaultBit 3y agoA lot of people actually use VPNs in China (since 2010 even), and some of them call it "加速器" which basically means "booster" (for your internet). Some use it for lower latencies when playing foreign games. The issue is that VPN connections get easily blocked. We aren't really worried about legal issues. Except for that one time when police (of a certain district, not everywhere in China) knocked on people's doors to inspect their phones for VPNs during the "white paper protest" I believe.
- mushbino 3y agoSure, but you're ruining the yellow peril narrative we need for our cold war with China.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoSurely Xinjiang has stricter rules and more aggressive enforcement than the other provinces/regions? They always put a hardliner in as party head.
- mushbino 3y agoProbably, but there's a real history of many terrorist attacks in China being planned online. It's why Facebook is blocked. Look at what the US did to Muslims after 9/11
- LorenPechtel 3y agoThis. I don't worry about generating illicit traffic in China--but there's no way I'm going to Xinjiang. If I had to go there I would stay off the internet entirely.
- helen___keller 3y agoWhen I was in China in 2019, the VPN built into google fi actually got me around the GFW with zero effort. I didn’t even realize it until I caught myself checking American social media unhindered. My experience is most younger and tech savvy people have a VPN. It’s common / casual, like speeding your car by 10mph on the highway. Most people are not persecuted for using a VPN, I assume that’s reserved for people who the government already wanted to persecute and just need to give an excuse for why they detained their target.
- chanind 3y agoThe reverse is true as well. I traveled in India with a friend from China who used their Chinese sim card in India, and their data was censored through the firewall. Really annoying to be outside China and not able to use Google maps.
- mushbino 3y agoCould that just be India blocking Chinese sims?
- porridgeraisin 3y agoMostly that's india blocking Chinese comms.
- qingcharles 3y agoThis is the same in Qatar, and probably in other Middle-East countries. Most of the residents use a VPN to get around the firewall, but I don't think anyone would be prosecuted for it unless the police wanted a nice easy reason to get you into custody.
- pantalaimon 3y agoI think China doesn’t care if foreigners use a VPN, it’s their own people they want to keep under control.
- balder1991 3y ago
- guessmyname 3y agoMore context about this WikiPedia excerpt: → https://www.chinafile.com/extensive-surveillance-china https://www.chinafile.com/extensive-surveillance-china → https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/student-01272020075256.html https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/student-01272020075256.ht... It looks like 周月明 (Vera Yueming Zhou) was sent to a Chinese concentration camp mostly because she was part of a religious minority and not necessarily for using a VPN to access the University of Washington’s website. > Vera was living in her hometown of Kuytun (Kuitun) in Ili Prefecture, an area directly north of the Tian Shan mountains that borders Kazakhstan. She had been trapped there since 2017, when—in the middle of her junior year at the University of Washington, where I was an instructor—she had taken a spur-of-the-moment trip back home to see her boyfriend, a former elementary school classmate. Using digital surveillance tools, the Kuytun police had noticed that Vera had used a Virtual Private Network in order to access websites such as her university Gmail account. Given her status as a member of a Muslim minority group, this could be deemed a “sign of religious extremism.”
- esaym 3y agoEncamped for your beliefs and not for breaking the law, that makes it much better!
- mannerheim 3y ago[flagged]
- KptMarchewa 3y agoWe can look at russia arresting random foreign nationals for bullshit reasons right now.
- jareklupinski 3y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/article/brittney-griner-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/brittney-griner-russia.html
- noduerme 3y agoJust a small personal anecdote from another country with tight restrictions: When I rented a furnished apartment in Saigon back in 2008, there was an ethernet cable on the table and a piece of paper in English that said "Do not visit websites of anti-government propaganda, or pornography, or news such as the New York Times." Naturally, as the police held my passport for the entire year I was in Vietnam, I was cautious. But after a few days, I just went ahead and openly browsed the NYT for a few minutes. My internet was shut off for about 3 hours. The next time I did it, it was shut off for 24 hours, and then I knew it wasn't a glitch. It wasn't exactly immediate, either; it took a few minutes. I was pretty sure there was a semi-dedicated person assigned to watch my traffic. That wasn't over a VPN. I wanted them to see my traffic. But I knew running over a VPN would just raise suspicion. When I opened up VPNs to check email after that, I did it from cafes, and I did it in short spurts.
- pdntspa 3y agoWait, the police held your passport? Why?
- wahnfrieden 3y ago[flagged]
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> The use of VPNs in China can provide individuals access to the international internet, but in China, it can be a potential legal risk. In 2017, the Chinese government declared all unauthorized VPN services to be illegal. An example of the use of this punishment is Vera Zhou, a student at the University of Washington, who, when visiting her Hui parents in Xinjiang, China, used a VPN to access her school homework. She was arrested and sent to a Xinjiang internment camp from October 2017 until March 2018, followed by house arrest after her release. She was not able to return to the US until September 2019. Use of VPNs is... universal... among middle-to-upper-class Chinese. This is obviously not an example of legal risk associated with using a VPN. Rather, it's an example of a punishment coming down on someone who was targeted for other reasons. An immediate implication is that, if you repealed all the laws against VPNs, nothing about anything would change.