Can someone explain to me how China

[TallahasseeGrannie]

is able to come down hard on their blogs and websites? Do they follow the IP numbers and show up, or what?

In the unlikely and horrible event that we had a bad situation over here where perhaps there was a reaction... response... to bad times with military action against the people... would our ability to get together in forums like this be compromised?

or have I been spending too much time on DU?


Grannie.... mumbling into her Merlot, looking for the Reynolds Wrap

[annabanana]

1. I hope you get an answer to this..

I have been wondering too. (And wondering if Skinner & Elad would be able to contact us via other means...)

[newswolf56]

2. Good question -- and I don't know the answer. I assume...

here in the United States, the oppression would be like that of the '60s in that it would take place on two levels: instant temporary interruption of the entire communications network (note how all landline communications -- including news service teletypes -- were "mysteriously" shut down in and out of Ohio at the exact moment the National Guard was shooting students at Kent State); long-term monitoring of content (with ready-made lists of people to be rounded up and/or exterminated once the coup begins, as was done under CIA direction in Chile c. 1973). But how China does it -- as I said -- I don't know.

[oblivious]

3. I was hoping people would add to this thread in the Internet forum.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=319&topic_id=77

This site mentioned in my OP may interest you:

How to bypass Internet Censorship
http://www.zensur.freerk.com/

[annabanana]

4. .. a little technical information... net heads, please..

and dumb it down for me, if you can..

[Az]

5. China maintains essentially a giant firewall for its entire nation

They block any an all traffic to designated IP addresses and ranges of addresses. Various laws and restrictions are passed by the central government. The enforcement of bans and restrictions are implemented as best they can, but due to the massive nature of the net it is difficult to apply them uniformly.

[htuttle]

6. All internet packets have a 'return address'

The smallest 'quanta' of internet traffic is called a 'packet'. It contains, among other things, both a 'to' and a 'from' IP address (along with data containing all or part of a message or request, etc...).

In order for the packet to get from 'to' from 'from', these packets have to travel through many other computers, routers, etc along the way. Depending on who is controlling any of these devices, the packets may or may not be logged or recorded.

There are ways of capturing lots of these packets as they "pass by", and later reconstituting them into the original messages. It isn't hard to do -- any Unix based personal computer has most of the tools already built in to do so.

That's the basic principle that allows internet traffic to be monitored and examined. I don't know how the Chinese government monitors the net exactly, but since they control all the routers out of China, I'd assume they are looking for packets going to specfic places (like blogspot.com at '66.102.15.100', or DU at '216.158.28.196' and '216.158.28.198'), and simply tracing back where they came from.

The whole concept of internet "anonymizers" is to use a third 'proxy' machine in between your computer, and the one that you are trying to get to, and 'wrapping' your packets in an 'envelope' with the anonymizer site's return address on it, instead of yours. Packets going back the other way are also 'wrapped' to disguise where they came from.

[Tesha]

7. If a "situation" occurs, you *WILL NOT* be able to use the Internet.

See the LBN story I posted about two Internet companies that are
having a spat, blacking each other out, and leaving many people
unable to get to large portions of the Interent.

As the Internet backbone has become more and more centralized, it
has become easier and easier to bring the whole thing down on
command.

The right parties whispering "National Security" would probably
do the trick.

Tesha

[TallahasseeGrannie]

8. Is there a way to put another system in place

for that eventuality? Like stand-alone servers?