Golden Shield Project

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Golden Shield Project
The Golden Shield Project (Chinese: ; pinyin: jndn gngchng), colloquially referred to as the Great
Firewall of China (Chinese: ; pinyin: fnghu chngchng) is a censorship and surveillance project
operated by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) division of the government of China. The project was initiated in
1998 and began operations in November 2003.
History
The political and ideological background of the Golden Shield Project is considered to be one of Deng Xiaopings
favorite sayings in the early 1980s: "If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in."
(Chinese: ; pinyin: Dki chungh, xnxin
kngq h cngying ji hu yq jnli.
[1]
) The saying is related to a period of the economic reform of China that
became known as the "socialist market economy". Superseding the political ideologies of the Cultural Revolution,
the reform led China towards a market economy and opened up the market for foreign investors. Nonetheless, the
economic freedom, values, and political ideas of the Communist Party of China have had to be protected by
"swatting flies" of other unwanted ideologies.
[2]
The Internet in China arrived in 1994, as the inevitable consequence of and supporting tool for the "socialist market
economy". Gradually, while Internet availability has been increasing, the Internet has become a common
communication platform and tool for trading information.
The Ministry of Public Security took initial steps to control Internet use in 1997, when it issued comprehensive
regulations governing its use. The key sections, Articles 4-6, are: "Individuals are prohibited from using the Internet
to: harm national security; disclose state secrets; or injure the interests of the state or society. Users are prohibited
from using the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit information that incites resistance to the PRC
Constitution, laws, or administrative regulations; promotes the overthrow of the government or socialist system;
undermines national unification; distorts the truth, spreads rumors, or destroys social order; or provides sexually
suggestive material or encourages gambling, violence, or murder. Users are prohibited from engaging in activities
that harm the security of computer information networks and from using networks or changing network resources
without prior approval."
[3]
In 1998, the Communist Party of China feared that the China Democracy Party (CDP) would breed a powerful new
network that the party elites might not be able to control.
[4]
The CDP was immediately banned, followed by arrests
and imprisonment. That same year, the Golden Shield project was started. The first part of the project lasted eight
years and was completed in 2006. The second part began in 2006 and ended in 2008. On 6 December 2002, 300
people in charge of the Golden Shield project from 31 provinces and cities throughout China participated in a
four-day inaugural Comprehensive Exhibition on Chinese Information System.
[5]
At the exhibition, many western
high-tech products, including Internet security, video monitoring and human face recognition were purchased. It is
estimated that around 30,000-50,000 police are employed in this gigantic project.
It has been nicknamed "the Great Firewall" ( ) (a term that first appeared in a Wired magazine article in
1997)
[6]
in reference to its role as a network firewall and to the ancient Great Wall of China. A major part of the
project includes the ability to block content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through and consists of
standard firewalls and proxy servers at the six
[7]
Internet gateways. The system also selectively engages in DNS
cache poisoning when particular sites are requested. The government does not appear to be systematically examining
Internet content, as this appears to be technically impractical. Because of its disconnection from the larger world of
IP routing protocols, the network contained within the Great Firewall has been described as "the Chinese
autonomous routing domain".
Golden Shield Project
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During the 2008 Summer Olympics, Chinese officials told Internet providers to prepare to unblock access from
certain Internet cafs, access jacks in hotel rooms and conference centers where foreigners were expected to work or
stay.
Purpose
In September 2002, Li Runsen, the technology director at Ministry of Public Security and member of the Golden
Shield leadership, further explained this broad definition to thousands of police nationwide at a meeting in Beijing
called "Information Technology for Chinas Public Security".
In October 2001, Greg Walton of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development published
a report; he wrote:
Old style censorship is being replaced with a massive, ubiquitous architecture of surveillance: the
Golden Shield. Ultimately, the aim is to integrate a gigantic online database with an all-encompassing
surveillance network incorporating speech and face recognition, closed-circuit television, smart cards,
credit records, and Internet surveillance technologies.
The empirical study by the OpenNet Initiative (collaboration between Harvard Law School, University of Toronto
Citizen Lab, and Cambridge Security Program) found that China has the most sophisticated content-filtering Internet
regime in the world. Compared to similar efforts in other countries, Chinese Government effectively filters content
by employing multiple methods of regulation and technical controls. In contrast, the PRC-sponsored news agency,
Xinhua, stated that censorship targets only "superstitious, pornographic, violence-related, gambling and other
harmful information."
[8]
In July 2007, authorities intensified the "monitoring and control" of The Great Firewall, causing email disruption, in
anticipation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting scheduled for August 2007.
Blocking methods
Some commonly used technical methods for censoring are:
Method Description
IP blocking The access to a certain IP address is denied. If the target Web site is hosted in a shared hosting server, all Web sites on the same
server will be blocked. This affects all IP protocols (mostly TCP) such as HTTP, FTP or POP. A typical circumvention method is
to find proxies that have access to the target Web sites, but proxies may be jammed or blocked. Some large Web sites allocated
additional IP addresses to circumvent the block, but later the block was extended to cover the new addresses.
DNS filtering
and redirection
Doesn't resolve domain names, or returns incorrect IP addresses. This affects all IP protocols such as HTTP, FTP or POP. A
typical circumvention method is to find a domain name server that resolves domain names correctly, but domain name servers are
subject to blockage as well, especially IP blocking. Another workaround is to bypass DNS if the IP address is obtainable from
other sources and is not blocked. Examples are modifying the Hosts file or typing the IP address instead of the domain name in a
Web browser.
URL filtering
Scan the requested Uniform Resource Locator (URL) string for target keywords regardless of the domain name specified in the
URL. This affects the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Typical circumvention methods are to use escaped characters in the URL, or to
use encrypted protocols such as VPN and SSL.
[9]
Packet filtering Terminate TCP packet transmissions when a certain number of controversial keywords are detected. This affects all TCP protocols
such as HTTP, FTP or POP, but Search engine pages are more likely to be censored. Typical circumvention methods are to use
encrypted protocols such as VPN and SSL, to escape the HTML content, or reducing the TCP/IP stack's MTU, thus reducing the
amount of text contained in a given packet.
Connection
reset
If a previous TCP connection is blocked by the filter, future connection attempts from both sides will also be blocked for up to 30
minutes. Depending on the location of the block, other users or Web sites may be also blocked if the communications are routed to
the location of the block. A circumvention method is to ignore the reset packet sent by the firewall.
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Censored content
Main article: List of websites blocked in China
Mainland Chinese Internet censorship programs have censored Web sites that include (among other things):
Web sites belonging to "outlawed" or suppressed groups, such as pro-democracy activists and Falun Gong
News sources that often cover topics that are considered defamatory against China, such as police brutality,
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy, and Marxist sites. These sites include Voice
of America and the Chinese edition of BBC News.
Sites related to the Taiwanese government, media, or other organizations, including sites dedicated to religious
content, and most large Taiwanese community websites or blogs.
Web sites that contain anything the Chinese authorities regard as obscenity or pornography
Web sites relating to criminal activity
Sites linked with the Dalai Lama, his teachings or the International Tibet Independence Movement
Most blogging sites experience frequent or permanent outages
Web sites deemed as subversive
Blocked Web sites are indexed to a lesser degree, if at all, by some Chinese search engines. This sometimes has
considerable impact on search results.
According to The New York Times, Google has set up computer systems inside China that try to access Web sites
outside the country. If a site is inaccessible, then it is added to Google China's blacklist. However, once unblocked,
the Web sites will be reindexed. Referring to Google's first-hand experience of the great firewall, there is some hope
in the international community that it will reveal some of its secrets. Simon Davies, founder of London-based
pressure group Privacy International, is now challenging Google to reveal the technology it once used at China's
behest. "That way, we can understand the nature of the beast and, perhaps, develop circumvention measures so there
can be an opening up of communications." "That would be a dossier of extraordinary importance to human rights,"
Davies says. Google has yet to respond to his call.
[10]
Bypassing
See also: Evasion of Internet censorship in China
Because the Great Firewall blocks destination IP addresses and domain names and inspects the data being sent or
received, a basic censorship circumvention strategy is to use proxy nodes and encrypt the data. Most circumvention
tools combine these two mechanisms.
[11]
Proxy servers outside China can be used, although using just a simple open proxy (HTTP or SOCKS) without
also using an encrypted tunnel (such as HTTPS) does little to circumvent the sophisticated censors.
Companies can establish regional Web sites within China. This prevents their content from going through the
Great Firewall of China; however, it requires companies to apply for local ICP licenses.
Onion routing, such as I2P or Tor, can be used.
Freegate, Ultrasurf, and Psiphon are free programs that circumvent the China firewall using multiple open
proxies, but still behave as though the user is in China.
VPNs (virtual private network) and SSH (secure shell) are the powerful and stable tools for bypassing
surveillance technologies. They use the same basic approaches, proxies and encrypted channels, used by other
circumvention tools, but depend on a private host, a virtual host, or an account outside of China, rather than open,
free proxies.
Open application programming interface (API) used by Twitter which enables to post and retrieve tweets on sites
other than Twitter. "The idea is that coders elsewhere get to Twitter, and offer up feeds at their own
URLs which the government has to chase down one by one." says Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of Harvard's
Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
[12]
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Reconfiguration at the end points of communication, encryption, discarding reset packets according to the TTL
value (time to live) by distinguishing those resets generated by the Firewall and those made by end user, not
routing any further packets to sites that have triggered blocking behavior.
[13]
Unblocking
Certain sites have begun to be partially unblocked, including:
The English-language BBC website (but not the Chinese language website).
Wikipedia (wikipedia.org), HTTPS version is not blocked (As of December 2013[14]). However, if one uses
HTTP, many wikis are blocked.
[15]
Social websites and free web hosting websites. However, these have also been re-blocked.Wikipedia:Citation
needed
Some foreign news websites.Wikipedia:Citation needed
Exporting technology
Reporters Without Borders suspects that regimes such as Cuba, Zimbabwe and Belarus have obtained surveillance
technology from China.
Protest in China
Despite strict government regulations, the Chinese people are continuing to protest against their governments
attempt to censor the Internet. The more covert protesters will set up secure SSH and VPN connections using tools
such as UltraSurf. They can also utilize the widely available proxies and virtual private networks to fanqiang(
), or "climb the wall." Active protest is not absent. Chinese people will post their grievances online, and on some
occasions, have been successful. In 2003, the death of Sun Zhigang, a young migrant worker, sparked an intense,
widespread online response from the Chinese public, despite the risk of the governments punishment. A few months
later, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao abolished the Chinese law that led to the death of Sun. Ever since, dissent has
regularly created turmoil on the Internet in China. Also in January 2010, when Google announced that it will no
longer censor its Web search results in China, even if this means it might have to shut down its Chinese operations
altogether, many Chinese people went to the companys Chinese offices to display their grievances and offer gifts,
such as flowers, fruits and cigarettes.
Notes
[1] There are several variants of this saying in Chinese, including
" and " ". Their meanings are the same.
[2] R. MacKinnon Flatter world and thicker walls? Blogs, censorship and civic discourse in China Public Choice (2008) 134: p. 3146,
Springer
[3] China and the Internet., International Debates, 15420345, Apr2010, Vol. 8, Issue 4
[4] Goldman, Merle Goldman. Gu, Edward X. [2004] (2004). Chinese Intellectuals between State and Market. Routledge publishing. ISBN
0415325978
[5] 2002 - 31 (http:/ / www. adsale. com.
hk/ tw/ iframe/ anews-s3-n4. asp)
[6] http:/ / www. economist.com/ news/ special-report/ 21574631-chinese-screening-online-material-abroad-becoming-ever-more-sophisticated
[7] http:/ / www. nbcnews.com/ technology/ welcome-wyoming-how-chinas-great-firewall-could-have-sent-web-2D11970733
[8] [8] China and the Internet. International Debates, 15420345, Apr2010, Vol. 8, Issue 4
[9] For an example, see Wikipedia:Advice to users using Tor to bypass the Great Firewall
[10] [10] Will Google's help breach the great firewall of China? By: Marks, Paul, New Scientist, 02624079, 4/3/2010, Vol. 205, Issue 2754
[11] "Splinternet Behind the Great Firewall of China: The Fight Against GFW" (http:/ / queue. acm. org/ detail. cfm?id=2405036), Daniel
Anderson, Queue, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Vol. 10, No. 11 (29 November 2012), doi:10.1145/2390756.2405036.
Retrieved 11 October 2013.
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[12] "Leaping the Great Firewall of China " (http:/ / online. wsj. com/ article/ SB10001424052748704896104575139742687410862. html),
Emily Parker, Wall Street Journal, 24 March 2010. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
[13] "Ignoring the Great Firewall of China" (http:/ / www.cl. cam. ac. uk/ ~rnc1/ ignoring. pdf), Richard Clayton, Steven J. Murdoch, and Robert
N. M. Watson, PET'06: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Springer-Verlag (2006), pages
20-35, ISBN 3-540-68790-4, doi:10.1007/11957454_2. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
[14] http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ w/ index. php?title=Golden_Shield_Project& action=edit
[15] (Chinese) #
References
External links
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Transwiki:Bypassing the Great Firewall of China
China Digital Times: Internet Control (http:/ / chinadigitaltimes. net/ tag/ Internet-control)
Breaking Through the Golden Shield (http:/ / www. soros. org/ resources/ articles_publications/ articles/
china-internet-censorship-20041101)
ViewDNS.info - Chinese Firewall Test (http:/ / www. viewdns. info/ chinesefirewall/ ) - Tests if Golden Shield is
performing DNS filtering/redirection on your domain within mainland China.
Dotcom-Monitor (http:/ / www. dotcom-monitor. com/ technical-tools-browser-test. aspx)- Tests if a website (or
third-party hosts to a website) is filtered from within Great Firewall of China using an actual Internet Explorer
browser
Article Sources and Contributors
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Article Sources and Contributors
Golden Shield Project Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=626565237 Contributors: A1candidate, AlphaRho, Arthur Rubin, Caorongjin, Chmarkine, Chris the speller,
ChrisGualtieri, Codename Lisa, Deacon of Pndapetzim, Dekema2, Dennis97519, Epicgenius, Fizikanauk, Funandtrvl, Gjnyasa, Justinrleung, LittleWink, Nen, Stephen Balaban, TheJae,
Tomwood0, W163, Zhaofeng Li, Zzq1015, 19 anonymous edits
Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors
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