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I think unsecured WIFI AP in Burma or China is a very precious commodity, if it even exists.

by jonas_b 18y ago

mahmud 18y ago
China has some open WIFI services (I deployed some FON routers in South China.) I have also been to Burma last year, and the biggest risk there is not technological censorship but human snitches. Burma is a massive country, some parts of which are controlled by the opposition groups, but in government strong-holds, you probably wouldn't find wifi, much less an unsecured one. In any case, do not use someone's network to do something that might get them killed.
poutine 18y ago
Then you think very wrong. It's trivial to find open WIFI all over China. Most restaurants and coffee shops have it. I can see several from my apartment.
- gommm 18y ago
  But, of course, the problem is that even with an open wifi there are quite a few websites that are blocked by the great firewall... So using an open wifi doesn't solve the problem the way tor does. The other way is to have a server outside of china and use ssh to proxy through it but how many have a server they can access like that...
  - poutine 18y ago
    Anyone that cares can access the Internet at large in China. There's many http proxies that work quite fine. Most expats that care use a VPN tunnel to a service or corporate HQ. The rare person uses Tor but it's generally disfavored because it's unreliable and slow. This is not the problem however. The vast majority of Chinese people in general don't really care about censorship. Far more due to language and culture than censorship the Internet is mostly an internal Chinese thing to Chinese for the purposes of entertainment, not information. Many view state censorship as doing its job to protect the majority from corrupt western influences. But it seems most people in the west would like to prefer to imagine jackbooted thugs keeping the masses down through coercion and fear. The truth is rather worse, that of apathy, ignorance and a collectivist submission to authority.

I think unsecured WIFI AP in Burma or China is a very precious commodity, if it even exists.

by jonas_b 18y ago

I think unsecured WIFI AP in Burma or China is a very precious commodity, if it even exists.

China has some open WIFI services (I deployed some FON routers in South China.) I have also been to Burma last year, and the biggest risk there is not technological censorship but human snitches. Burma is a massive country, some parts of which are controlled by the opposition groups, but in government strong-holds, you probably wouldn't find wifi, much less an unsecured one. In any case, do not use someone's network to do something that might get them killed.

poutine 18y ago

Then you think very wrong. It's trivial to find open WIFI all over China. Most restaurants and coffee shops have it. I can see several from my apartment.

gommm 18y ago
But, of course, the problem is that even with an open wifi there are quite a few websites that are blocked by the great firewall... So using an open wifi doesn't solve the problem the way tor does. The other way is to have a server outside of china and use ssh to proxy through it but how many have a server they can access like that...
- poutine 18y ago
  Anyone that cares can access the Internet at large in China. There's many http proxies that work quite fine. Most expats that care use a VPN tunnel to a service or corporate HQ. The rare person uses Tor but it's generally disfavored because it's unreliable and slow. This is not the problem however. The vast majority of Chinese people in general don't really care about censorship. Far more due to language and culture than censorship the Internet is mostly an internal Chinese thing to Chinese for the purposes of entertainment, not information. Many view state censorship as doing its job to protect the majority from corrupt western influences. But it seems most people in the west would like to prefer to imagine jackbooted thugs keeping the masses down through coercion and fear. The truth is rather worse, that of apathy, ignorance and a collectivist submission to authority.