We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

This move is in response to an internal Google investigation that revealed widespread targeting and surveillance of human rights activists with interests in the PRC.  The blog indicates that there are two distinctly different problems that were uncovered.  One involved the compromise of internal Google intellectual property and the other involved the accessing of gmail accounts by unauthorized third parties.

…we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties.

Google believes that the sophisticated attacks that resulted in the internal compromise of Google information have also hit more than 20 other organizations.

So what does this mean?  It is difficult to say at this point.  Perhaps it will draw attention to the censorship issue as well as the widespread hacking frequently attributed to the PRC government.  I think it will be unlikely that google.cn will be allowed to operate in the PRC without filtering its search results.  This may mean that google.cn will cease to exist or that it is operated outside of the PRC where it will probably get GFW’d.  Either way, Baidu wins.

It would be very cool if others (yahoo!, microsoft) follow suit.

The censors in the PRC are now apparently blocking searches and taking down articles related to a recent bribery scandal over a multi-million dollar contract in Namibia.  The censors at baidu.cn got a little ambitious and briefly blocked any searches that contain the word Namibia so any search was filtered rather than just results that contained information about the scandal.  As of this post, it appears that baidu.cn searches for “纳米比亚” work just fine without any error message – news about the scandal still does not appear however.  Maybe next they will reach into Chinese Kindles to delete anything related to Namibia.

baidu.cn briefly blocked searches for 纳米比亚 (namibia)

Source: Open Net Initiative:  http://opennet.net/blog/2009/07/no-more-namibia-china-blocks-search-results-entire-country

Reactionary

Communist Party
Producing party
Anti-communist
Anti-G
CPC
Brainwashing
GCD
CCP
GONG Party
Network Special
Tyranny
Dictatorship
China will
Power
Public property party
Voice of America
Free Asia
ddgcd
World War III
Puppet government
Pseudo-big
独夫民贼
Taiwan
A total of X Party
Communist
Do not like party
The demise of socialism
Out a total of
Do not do personnel
Communism sleep
Network blocking
Now the police
Hemosiderosis division
Now the Communist Party
Opposition
The present Government
Shanghai
Today’s society
Land alone
gong chan dang
Total independence
Commemoration of the Cultural Revolution
40th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution
Internet police
National Unification Council
Waste Commission
Guidelines for National Unification
Taiwan du
Taiwan independence
China’s human rights
Suppress
The children of the list of senior cadres
Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Song
Chiang Kai-shek
Human rights protection
Democracy dictatorship
Taiwan independence
Shanghai independence
Beijing independence
Hong Kong Independent
Return to Mongolia
The party now
Zhang Zhixin
China
Hate China
One-party power
Government incompetence
Weak diplomacy
One-party interests
One-party dictatorship
Quit
Dictatorship
Freedom of expression
Olympic outsiders
Capital
Alliance party
Bandits
A total of thieves
Chinese Party
The second capital
Death of the party
Administration
Public Order now
Anti-party
Anti-socialist
Total death
The party now
Hao Xin years
Who is the New China
Anti-party
Min pig
Aparine, as

Information on various types of human rights petition

Procession
Demonstration
Petition
Assembly
Rights
Strike
Buyout
Aggregation
Of demobilized army officers
Letters
Rebel
Land
Off
Demolition
Investors
AIDS
Sit -
Riots
Democratic
Demobilization
Impact on the masses
Clashes with police
Collective protest
Violence, assaulting a police officer
The use of force to suppress
Armed repression
Dai Jing
Ryan incident
8.18
9.12 events
Yuan Weimin
Migrant workers
Wei said
Forcing people to rebel
Criminal and Law Enforcement
A cops and robbers
A gang officer
Guangan
School burglary action
Everlasting Regret laid-off workers

64 events [comment:  as in June 4, 1989]

Tiananmen Square
HE Xin
Atrocities
Riots
Unrest
The massacre of students
The suppression of students
Zhao Ziyang
89 years
Square incident
Demeanor of blood
17 years ago
89 events
89′s
Goddess of democracy
Bloodshed
tiananmen
2089
The killing of student
Student
Student leaders
89
Events
1989
In a matter
The wounds of history
24 events
64
6 4
Four events
6.4
6 d
4 events
89 storm
liusi
8964
8964
Pro-democracy movement
xuechao
Political turmoil
Beijing storm
tusha
Xidan Democracy Wall
Ziyang
TAM
64 period
Lu IV
CAI Ling
I Fall to open the West
Kaixi
Rivers of Sorrow
Kaixi

Falun Gong and the cult

Eastern Lightning
Li Hong Zhi
Act in a reactive
Made of
flg
Gong FL
Gong wheels
Act X-Gong
Act On
Since the fen
Falun
9 ping
9ping
Lee Hong-X
Possession of stone words
Self-immolation
Cult
LHZ
falun
With nine
Nine Commentaries
9 Comments
Fa Lun
Fa-lun
囵fat
Fat theory
Law theory
fa round
Law lun
Law L
Fallon
9 Ping
Act O-gong
Law 0 Zhigong
The Epoch Times
Big brothel
DJY
DONG Yuan-chen
Falun Gong
Xiao-Ying Li
In reactive
Gong Chinese health puzzle
Zhang Hong Bao
Zhang Hongbao
Shadow government
jiuping
李洪智
Li wheels
zifen
Gao Zhisheng
FL Dafa
Law Lun Gong
Dafa disciples
XX Gong
Li Hong hemorrhoids
Fat round
Cart Lun Law
Unbounded
Free community
Free gate
9 impeach
Sujiatun
Free gate
Check kidney in vivo
Lee x

Relatives of national leaders and important

Hu Jintao
Wu Bangguo
Wen Jiabao
Jia Qinglin
Zeng Qinghong
Huang Ju
Wu
Li Changchun
Luo Gan
Liu
Zhou Yongkang
He Guoqiang
Wang Gang
Xu Caihou
He Yong
Wang
Wang
Hui Liangyu
Liu Qi
Wu Yi
Zhang
Zhang
Chen Liangyu
Yu Zhengsheng
Guo
Cao
Zeng
Deng dog
xiaoping
Tang Dwarfs
Deng Xiaoping
Hu
Ma Ying-jeou
Hu Yaobang
Hu Yaobang
Jiang pig
Lee Teng-hui
刘亚洲
History Jiuwu
Hu Haiqing
Gu Yue Tao金帛

This is inept on China’s part. Why do I consider it puzzling? Because of two additional facts I would not have guessed before coming to China: it’s a better country than its leaders and spokesmen make it seem, and those same leaders look more impressive in their home territory.

The article is very well-reasoned and insightful as usual.

There are many ways to get around the GFW. Web-CGI/PHP based proxies all seem to work reasonably well (though frequently slow) and there are other anonymizer services out there such as Anonymouse and Ultrasurf.

James Fallows from the Atlantic has blogged about using commercial anonymizing VPN services.

James Fallows was interviewed in a Network World article today about his articles on the Great Firewall of China.  We blogged about the GFW previously.  From the article:

When it comes to the Internet, this haziness about just what is and is not permissible has two implications. At a purely technical level, it makes it harder to reverse-engineer the firewall’s filters. One day, you can reach all pages at the BBC. The next day they’re blocked. If you’re trying to game out the system, you’re stymied. And at a social level, it makes it hard for people to be sure that they’re ever operating in a truly safe zone, since the rules of enforcement might shift tomorrow.

FYI:  www.thedarkvisitor.com has been GFW’d since January of this year.  We still get occasional hits from the mainland though.  Mostly from English language browsers – probably in hotels.

I first became interested in Internet censorship after hearing Roger Dingledine talk about TOR and Kenneth Geers’  talk “Greetz from Room 101 (PDF)” at DEFCON XV.