This sucks for travelers and ex-pats, but for China's future this is a very, very, very big deal.
I lived in Shanghai last year, and Chinese Internet surveillance is unreal. I could use gmail chat to talk about tiananman square, but as soon as I did all of my Google apps would suddenly be unavailable. I can only assume that when i used certain keywords my every chat was being monitored. A VPN was the only way I could access YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and even some Google searches.
But reality is 90% of the young population of Shanghai didn't really care what the "great firewall" did, because EVERYONE used a VPN. I saw more people watching YouTube in China than I do in the states, even though Chinese versions of these platforms exist. Some platforms, like RenRen (Facebook-like but more similar to Russia's VKontakte) were popular, but most just used the US-built versions. Now most of them won't be able to.
This absolutely terrifies me. I was literally minutes away from being on a bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing that killed "x" people. Chinese authorities cite incredibly low numbers for a train traveling at 300 km/h. Most non-state observers cited hundreds of deaths. China slowly grew its number from 20-40.
It's illegal for foreigners to talk about the "Three Ts" with Chinese nationals - Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananman Square. But previously the youth learned through their VPNs letting them access the outside world. With that shut down, the government might as well be burning books.
While knowledge of VPNs is huge, their use is not as large as you posit. I would argue instead that the real reason many young Chinese don't really care what the "great firewall" does is that they're almost exclusively using the domestic Chinese internet. Browsing in simplified Chinese, there's rarely a need to access the outside internet.
Perhaps it's not; I spent most of my time among very internationally-oriented, business-minded English speakers, which is by no means a fair sample, but it's not an insignificant subset, either. I'm most concerned about VPNs as the only possible path to avoid censorship on a large scale.
>I was literally minutes away from being on a bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing that killed "x" people. Chinese authorities cite incredibly low numbers for a train traveling at 300 km/h. Most non-state observers cited hundreds of deaths. China slowly grew its number from 20-40.
I'm unfamiliar with this, is it a reference to bullet trains running over people who somehow got on the tracks?
It is not illegal for foreigners to talk about the three Ts with Chinese nationals, its just not very wise. China technically has the right of free speech in their constitution, so you wouldn't go to jail for this (but you could still get in trouble, lose your job, get deported, etc...)
Cert pinning should prevent some of this, but I suspect a lot of Chinese use web browsers downloaded locally (which could compromise pinning; rather than pinning fake certs, I'd just pull the pinning entirely), or browsers which don't support pinning.
I don't think the GFW routinely MITMs HTTPS, but I would be amazed if they didn't do it on a targeted basis against specific sites and users.
And of course if you're using a phone from a state-controlled carrier or a webcafe from someone who complies with pressure, you can be attacked even easier.
Comments
This sucks for travelers and ex-pats, but for China's future this is a very, very, very big deal.
I lived in Shanghai last year, and Chinese Internet surveillance is unreal. I could use gmail chat to talk about tiananman square, but as soon as I did all of my Google apps would suddenly be unavailable. I can only assume that when i used certain keywords my every chat was being monitored. A VPN was the only way I could access YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and even some Google searches.
But reality is 90% of the young population of Shanghai didn't really care what the "great firewall" did, because EVERYONE used a VPN. I saw more people watching YouTube in China than I do in the states, even though Chinese versions of these platforms exist. Some platforms, like RenRen (Facebook-like but more similar to Russia's VKontakte) were popular, but most just used the US-built versions. Now most of them won't be able to.
This absolutely terrifies me. I was literally minutes away from being on a bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing that killed "x" people. Chinese authorities cite incredibly low numbers for a train traveling at 300 km/h. Most non-state observers cited hundreds of deaths. China slowly grew its number from 20-40.
It's illegal for foreigners to talk about the "Three Ts" with Chinese nationals - Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananman Square. But previously the youth learned through their VPNs letting them access the outside world. With that shut down, the government might as well be burning books.
While knowledge of VPNs is huge, their use is not as large as you posit. I would argue instead that the real reason many young Chinese don't really care what the "great firewall" does is that they're almost exclusively using the domestic Chinese internet. Browsing in simplified Chinese, there's rarely a need to access the outside internet.
Perhaps it's not; I spent most of my time among very internationally-oriented, business-minded English speakers, which is by no means a fair sample, but it's not an insignificant subset, either. I'm most concerned about VPNs as the only possible path to avoid censorship on a large scale.
>I was literally minutes away from being on a bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing that killed "x" people. Chinese authorities cite incredibly low numbers for a train traveling at 300 km/h. Most non-state observers cited hundreds of deaths. China slowly grew its number from 20-40.
I'm unfamiliar with this, is it a reference to bullet trains running over people who somehow got on the tracks?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision
It is not illegal for foreigners to talk about the three Ts with Chinese nationals, its just not very wise. China technically has the right of free speech in their constitution, so you wouldn't go to jail for this (but you could still get in trouble, lose your job, get deported, etc...)
True, illegal isn't the correct word.
How were they able to sniff your keywords on Gmail chat? I thought as long as you are connected via HTTPS, your packets are encrypted.
Or does China not allow connecting to foreign websites via HTTPS?
China owns at least one CA.
Cert pinning should prevent some of this, but I suspect a lot of Chinese use web browsers downloaded locally (which could compromise pinning; rather than pinning fake certs, I'd just pull the pinning entirely), or browsers which don't support pinning.
I don't think the GFW routinely MITMs HTTPS, but I would be amazed if they didn't do it on a targeted basis against specific sites and users.
And of course if you're using a phone from a state-controlled carrier or a webcafe from someone who complies with pressure, you can be attacked even easier.