I am an advocate of free speech, full disclosure etc., of course. But that's not all. The Internet wizards are watching this censorship movement overall and think they have it under control. They have built in low-level protocols (in very clever ways) which ensure that censorship cannot work. But, in my opinion, they have forgotten that most people don't have their skills or knowledge. Sure, unless a country 'cuts the wire' there are ways to bypass the censorship. Sure, if there's an information flow into and out of a country, you can always get information you want, in spite of any attempt at censorship - and do it undetected. BUT it requires skills. Very few sites on the Internet tell you how to do it. This site attempts to redress this deficiency.
When the censorship in use by countries does, in fact, censor 99.9 per cent of the population, then it IS working. No matter how easily it can be bypassed by those with a little knowledge. When this happens (as it has in the middle East, for example) it means the censors are encouraged to move on to more, better and more invasive censorship. They block access to information about bypassing censorship. They look at examining the content of web pages to see how they can use artificial intelligence to block when necessary. They look for keywords in the content. They block ports leading to external proxies. They block sites which point to CGI proxies or other applets in use for the purpose. They block access to Usenet News, and many other services. They experiment with blocking access to users home pages and to individual sites on an ad hoc basis (like CNN) when necessary.
Then, of course, they abuse their control further and block access to things like net2phone to preserve telco profits. I'm sure there's more to come.
On the other hand, if a large enough number of people know how to bypass this 'trivially bypassable' censorship, then the censors have their censorship infrastructure ripped out from underneath them. They need to justify spending money on it to their managers, and these arguments will no longer work. It becomes pointless to experiment with better censorship using their proxy server when, for example, it's easy to set up your own proxy server. This site tries to attack things right down at the base of their assumptions and attempts to show their arguments for funding to be full of holes. At the least we should be able to highlight that their arguments are only good when the censoring works on the majority, and then we attempt to change that proportion. I think there's a critical mass necessary, but I think it is lower than just a few per cent of the population.
Let's do it. The more people who know how to do the stuff talked about on this site, the better it will be for all. This is not a 'script kiddy' hacker/cracker/DOS/defacer site, where the important thing is to look 3l33t and to stop others from being able to learn whatever abilities you have. The main point here is to spread this knowledge as far as possible, in a way anyone can use. I ask for your assistance in this. Spread the word. Teach others. And, of course, additions to the site, changes to wording, new information for the site etc., are all welcome.
OK. I'm off the soap box for now :-)
