JISHOU, HUNAN — I am happy to report that I can once again post to my Picasaweb photo site, as long as I use the Ultrasurf proxy client I downloaded a couple of months ago.

It’s slow, but at least I can use the 80 GB of Picasaweb storage space that I paid for. It also means my photos will automatically get posted to Facebook through the Picasa Facebook app.

So, as I wait for my photos to trickle slowly into my Picasaweb space, I can write some posts. Here’s the first one.

August 15th, 2010 | Tags: censorship, China, Great Firewall of China, Internet, picasa, proxy, Ultrasurf | Category: China, Civil liberties, General stuff | Leave a comment

UPDATE 28/7/2010 11:25 am: And now everything is back to “normal.” But Firefox went south on me, Winamp got trapped in a loop somehow, and even taskmgr couldn’t kill it. After I shut down the computer, and restarted, the “blocked” sites listed below were accessible again. So I laid blame on the Great Firewall, but maybe it was my laptop or Vista Home edition.

JISHOU, HUNAN — Yesterday, I could access a whole slew of my favorite websites. Today, I can’t. I blame the Great Firewall of China.

In fact, my own website (this one) is now blocked. I am using the Ultrasurf proxy to climb the Great Firewall just to post this.

And to aggravate me even more, Wikipedia seems also to be blocked, just as I was beginning the last phase of a long term project to edit Wiki entries about locations in Hunan, using my students’ research papers as the sources. I managed to edit the Jishou entry two days ago. Now, I’ll have to use the proxy to continue.

Here’s a partial list of what I could access yesterday, but cannot today.

• www.nytimes.com
• my.yahoo.com
• www.liitlegreenfootballs.com
• wheatdogg.computernewbie.info — MINE! and thereby cpanel access
• en.wikipedia.org
• www.sadlyno.com
• questionablecontent.net — a webcomic I kinda enjoy
• www.rightwingwatch.org

And here’s what seems so far to be unaffected.

• www.cnn.com
• scienceblogs.com
• www.washingtonpost.com
• www.bbc.co.uk – but some media blocked
• www.gmail.com
• dailykos.com

July 27th, 2010 | Tags: censorship, China, Great Firewall, Internet, proxy | Category: China, Civil liberties, General stuff, Media | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — It was bound to happen someday. I am now completely shut off from Facebook. So if you want to communicate with me, either use my blog here, IM me or send me an email.

China started blocking Facebook (and other sites) about a year after I arrived. Until recently, I had been able to use the Tor proxy network to “climb the firewall” and access Facebook. China’s net nannies had been blocking the IP addresses of public Tor connections, but I was able to get private bridge IPs by email.

Now even the private bridge connections don’t work. My Tor’s log reports “problem bootstrapping. Stuck at 5%” and there it stays. Apparently, China’s censors have found a way to render the Tor proxy network ineffective, thereby shutting us netizens in China out of the wider WorldWide Web.

Internet restrictions here typically get more severe as we approach significant anniversaries, such the Tiananmen Square protests by university students on June 5, 1989. In fact, I just discovered that just trying to visit sites (wikipedia, bbc.co.uk, etc.) that discuss the events is useless. It seems those are being blocked, too.

Sigh.

Perhaps the blocks will be removed after the anniversary passes. Or maybe not. Meanwhile, instant messaging and emails (and comments on this blog) are the only Internet ways to communicate with me.

By the way, Janice, the books arrived this week. Many thanks!

May 29th, 2010 | Tags: block, China, Facebook, Great Firewall, Internet, Tor | Category: China, Civil liberties | Comments (2)

JISHOU, HUNAN — Google and China have had a bit of a falling-out, as you may have heard. Google has relocated its China-based search services to autonomous Hong Kong and the mainland has responded by apparently blocking access to www.google.com — the US-based site.

All I know is, I cannot browse to www.gmail.com now to check my email. On one hand, it’s not a big deal; I can still use IMAP access and Mozilla Thunderbird to handle my email. On the other hand, I’ve now lost easy access to all the contact lists I had created for my classes. To get to them, I will either have to use the Tor proxy network to climb over the Great Firewall of China, or replicate the lists using Thunderbird or another unblocked webmail account.

Here’s a recap of the Google mess, if you haven’t been following it closely.

China requires foreign companies to abide by national laws, so Google had to agree to filter its search engine and search results to eliminate, among other things, risqué photos, porn and politically sensitive sites. Google took some heat stateside for its acquiescence to the restrictions, but Google’s leadership said it was a business decision.

In China, Google’s reps were also trying to persuade China’s net nannies to ease the restrictions, and to unblock some of Google’s other services, including Youtube, Blogspot, Blogger and Picasaweb. They had no success.

March 24th, 2010 | Tags: censorship, China, google, Great Firewall, Internet, net nannies | Category: China, Civil liberties, Commentary | Comments (1)

JISHOU, HUNAN — China’s censors have postponed the deadline by which computer manufacturers must include a net-filtering application called Green Dam Youth Escort.

Green Dam was supposed to be installed on all computers sold in China as of tomorrow.

The requirement — made ostensibly to protect youngsters from pornography — resulted in an avalanche of protests from China’s Internet users, computer manufacturers and the US government. China’s netizens were prepared to boycott the Internet tomorrow as a protest.

[UPDATE July 1: Green Dam has inspired China's wittier netizens to create a manga-style "Green Dam Bitch." A variety of renderings of GDB can be seen here. A link in the accompanying article takes you to an image search for 绿坝娘 (Green Dam Bitch) on www.baidu.com, but the search will fail. Baidu, a homegrown search engine, will instead say, "The search result possibly does not conform to the related laws and regulations and content policies."]

Critics of Green Dam say the application is not only a security risk, allowing external computers access to users’ files and browsing history, but a probable means for Chinese authorities to censor the Internet.

Chinese authorities offered no explanation for the delay.

June 30th, 2009 | Tags: censorship, China, green dam, Internet | Category: China, Civil liberties, Media | Leave a comment