How the Great Firewall Works

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How the Great Firewall Works

• Bill Xia
• Dynamic Internet Technology Inc. bill_at_dit-inc.us
  (bill_at_freenet-china.org)

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Outline

• Internet 101
• Internet censorship
• The Matrix
• Summary

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The Internet/post office analogy
100 1st St. Shanghai China
Sibley Aud. Berkeley,CA USA
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The Internet/post office analogy
202.99.23.208
169.229.131.109
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DNS Hijacking
Websites redirected to bogus locations

• epochtimes.com, rfa.org, anonymizer.com
• dtnet, dtwang, dweb, dtw and various other
  domains that keep changing IP
• www.3dweb.com, etc. -- victim of generalized
  blocking

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Other Internet censorship

• Email
• Instant Message (QQ), BBS, chat room (including
  Yahoos Chinese chat room), SMS etc.
• Internet Cafes

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Voices from the Matrix distrust
You are anti-revolutionary
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Voices from the Matrix (II)

• You are anti-China.
• How can China be this bad? You are lying.
• There are many problems in China, but if we
  expose all the negative side, there will be
  turmoil.
• Psychiatric patients said that he is Falun Gong
  and wants to kill people. How can you allow Falun
  Gong sites?
• If I were Li Peng, I would have killed students
  on Tiananmen square as well.

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Fear truth or illusion

• Is this safe?
• ???????,???????? ???????,????????
• ?I am not interested in politics and just want
  live quietly.

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Occupying peoples mind

• Destroy traditional culture
• Replace traditional Chinese characters
• drink, eat, man, woman - all is allowed?I am
  not interested.

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The coming crash of the Matrix

• Blatant lies illusion becomes unrealistic
• SARS, HK anti-subversion law, Taiwan elections
  cracks in the Matrix
• Life and death issues
• Critical mass 300 500k regular users

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Summary

• China is blocking all communication avenues
• Anti-censorship technologies reached maturity
• Distrust, fear, lack of interest major
  bottleneck
• Critical mass of 500k regular users within a
  year

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Timeline of the technology race

• IP blocking
•  
•  
•  
•  
• DNS Hijacking
•  
• upgrade I
• upgrade II
• upgrade III?

Triangle Boy Freenet-China End of Triangle Boy
and Proxy Dynaweb Ultrascape   Freegate 3.x
March 2001 May 2001 Nov. 2001 March
2002 July 2002 Sept. 2002 Nov. 2002 Feb.
2003 July 2003 Dec. 2004
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