132 lines
6.4 KiB
Plaintext
132 lines
6.4 KiB
Plaintext
From fork-admin@xent.com Mon Sep 23 22:48:30 2002
|
||
Return-Path: <fork-admin@xent.com>
|
||
Delivered-To: yyyy@localhost.example.com
|
||
Received: from localhost (jalapeno [127.0.0.1])
|
||
by jmason.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1AAAD16F03
|
||
for <jm@localhost>; Mon, 23 Sep 2002 22:48:29 +0100 (IST)
|
||
Received: from jalapeno [127.0.0.1]
|
||
by localhost with IMAP (fetchmail-5.9.0)
|
||
for jm@localhost (single-drop); Mon, 23 Sep 2002 22:48:29 +0100 (IST)
|
||
Received: from xent.com ([64.161.22.236]) by dogma.slashnull.org
|
||
(8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g8NLixC03765 for <jm@jmason.org>;
|
||
Mon, 23 Sep 2002 22:44:59 +0100
|
||
Received: from lair.xent.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by xent.com (Postfix)
|
||
with ESMTP id 84DFC2941D4; Mon, 23 Sep 2002 14:41:08 -0700 (PDT)
|
||
Delivered-To: fork@example.com
|
||
Received: from alumnus.caltech.edu (alumnus.caltech.edu [131.215.49.51])
|
||
by xent.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 75D6B2941D0 for <fork@xent.com>;
|
||
Mon, 23 Sep 2002 14:40:57 -0700 (PDT)
|
||
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by alumnus.caltech.edu
|
||
(8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g8NLiaSV002734 for <fork@xent.com>;
|
||
Mon, 23 Sep 2002 14:44:36 -0700 (PDT)
|
||
MIME-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v482)
|
||
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; format=flowed
|
||
Subject: How about subsidizing SSL access to Google?
|
||
From: Rohit Khare <khare@alumni.caltech.edu>
|
||
To: fork@example.com
|
||
Message-Id: <AAC883CC-CF3D-11D6-817E-000393A46DEA@alumni.caltech.edu>
|
||
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.482)
|
||
Sender: fork-admin@xent.com
|
||
Errors-To: fork-admin@xent.com
|
||
X-Beenthere: fork@example.com
|
||
X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11
|
||
Precedence: bulk
|
||
List-Help: <mailto:fork-request@xent.com?subject=help>
|
||
List-Post: <mailto:fork@example.com>
|
||
List-Subscribe: <http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork>, <mailto:fork-request@xent.com?subject=subscribe>
|
||
List-Id: Friends of Rohit Khare <fork.xent.com>
|
||
List-Unsubscribe: <http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork>,
|
||
<mailto:fork-request@xent.com?subject=unsubscribe>
|
||
List-Archive: <http://xent.com/pipermail/fork/>
|
||
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 14:44:41 -0700
|
||
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
|
||
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by dogma.slashnull.org
|
||
id g8NLixC03765
|
||
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-3.1 required=5.0
|
||
tests=AWL,KNOWN_MAILING_LIST,USER_AGENT_APPLEMAIL
|
||
version=2.50-cvs
|
||
X-Spam-Level:
|
||
|
||
[a cheeky letter to the editors of the Economist follows, along with the
|
||
article I was commenting on... Rohit]
|
||
|
||
In your article about Chinese attempts to censor Google last week ("The
|
||
Search Goes On", Sept. 19th), the followup correctly noted that the most
|
||
subversive aspect of Google's service is not its card catalog, which
|
||
merely points surfers in the right direction, but the entire library. By
|
||
maintaining what amounts to a live backup of the entire World Wide Web,
|
||
if you can get to Google's cache, you can read anything you'd like.
|
||
|
||
The techniques Chinese Internet Service Providers are using to enforce
|
||
these rules, however, all depend on the fact that traffic to and from
|
||
Google, or indeed almost all public websites, is unencrypted. Almost all
|
||
Web browsers, however, include support for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
|
||
encryption for securing credit card numbers and the like. Upgrading to
|
||
SSL makes it effectively impossible for a 'man-in-the-middle' to meddle;
|
||
censorship would have to be imposed on each individual computer in
|
||
China. The only choice left is to either ban the entire site (range of
|
||
IP addresses), but not the kind of selective filtering reported on in
|
||
the article.
|
||
|
||
Of course, the additional computing power to encrypt all this traffic
|
||
costs real money. If the United States is so concerned about the free
|
||
flow of information, why shouldn't the Broadcasting Board of Governors
|
||
sponsor an encrypted interface to Google, or for that matter, the rest
|
||
of the Web?
|
||
|
||
To date, public diplomacy efforts have focused on public-sector
|
||
programming for the Voice of America, Radio Sawa, and the like. Just
|
||
imagine if the US government got into the business of subsidizing secure
|
||
access to private-sector media instead. Nothing illustrates the freedom
|
||
of the press as much as the wacky excess of the press itself -- and most
|
||
of it is already salted away at Google and the Internet Archive project.
|
||
|
||
On second thought, I can hardly imagine this Administration *promoting*
|
||
the use of encryption to uphold privacy rights. Never mind...
|
||
|
||
Best,
|
||
Rohit Khare
|
||
|
||
===========================================================
|
||
|
||
The search goes on
|
||
China backtracks on banning Google<6C>up to a point
|
||
|
||
Sep 19th 2002 | BEIJING
|
||
From The Economist print edition
|
||
|
||
IN CHINESE, the nickname for Google, an American Internet search engine,
|
||
is gougou, meaning <20>doggy<67>. For the country's fast-growing population of
|
||
Internet users (46m, according to an official estimate), it is proving
|
||
an elusive creature. Earlier this month, the Chinese authorities blocked
|
||
access to Google from Internet service providers in China<6E>apparently
|
||
because the search engine helped Chinese users to get access to
|
||
forbidden sites. Now, after an outcry from those users, access has been
|
||
restored.
|
||
|
||
An unusual climbdown by China's zealous Internet censors? Hardly. More
|
||
sophisticated controls have now been imposed that make it difficult to
|
||
use Google to search for material deemed offensive to the government.
|
||
Access is still blocked to the cached versions of web pages taken by
|
||
Google as it trawls the Internet. These once provided a handy way for
|
||
Chinese users to see material stored on blocked websites.
|
||
|
||
After the blocking of Google on August 31st, many Chinese Internet users
|
||
posted messages on bulletin boards in China protesting against the move.
|
||
Their anger was again aroused last week when some Chinese Internet
|
||
providers began rerouting users trying to reach the blocked Google site
|
||
to far less powerful search engines in China.
|
||
|
||
Duncan Clark, the head of a Beijing-based technology consultancy firm,
|
||
BDA (China) Ltd, says China is trying a new tactic in its efforts to
|
||
censor the Internet. Until recently, it had focused on blocking
|
||
individual sites, including all pages stored on them. Now it seems to be
|
||
filtering data transmitted to or from foreign websites to search for key
|
||
words that might indicate undesirable content. For example earlier this
|
||
week when using Eastnet, a Beijing-based Internet provider, a search on
|
||
Google for Falun Gong<6E>a quasi-Buddhist exercise sect outlawed in China<6E>
|
||
usually aborted before all the results had time to appear. Such a search
|
||
also rendered Google impossible to use for several minutes.
|
||
|
||
|