Companies line up for funding to break China's Firewall
Falun Gong versus the Great Firewall
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An organisation with links to Falun Gong is hoping to benefit from US government spending on breaking China's Great Firewall.
Last year Congress approved $15m in State Department funds to help “the advancement of information freedom in closed societies, including the Middle East and Asia”. This was generally interpreted as support for technologies which would help people avoid government restrictions on internet use especially in China.
But now a group of geeks and Falun Gong followers hopes to get a slice of this money. The Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC) claims to be the largest and longest-running anti-censorship organisation.
It makes available several tools to help Chinese residents avoid the government's Great Firewall.
The group, made up of companies and individual programmers, said 90 per cent of its web traffic comes from China and Iran. GIFC compares China's Great Firewall with the Berlin Wall, and predicts it too will fall.
Spokesman for the group Zhou Shiyu told Reuters the service was not for technically literate users who can use virtual private networks and other methods to evade Chinese censorship. He said: "Our goal is not this elite user. We want to make this massive and decisive, to tear down the wall."
He told the newswire that about a million people a day use its software in China and about 400,000 in Iran. The original launch of a Farsi version crashed the organisation's web servers.
Although removing references to Falun Gong might make the Global Internet Freedom Consortium more palatable to US Congress, any funding from the US State Department could backfire on an organisation that needs to appear transparent and neutral. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Anti-American Idiocy
I'd just like to interject that while I never condone anti-American idiocy - I have one parent from each side of the pond, but I wouldn't condone it anyway, it's idiocy after all - I don't believe it has much to do with the 'former colony' thing. I'd class that angle as, well, anti-British idiocy, myself.
As you were!
Anti-American Idiocy
OK OK... I get that many of you twits enjoy poking fun of the US. I get that you don't like a former colony surpassing you in every way. (Yes, I do mean every way. Good and bad.) But, the idiocy of many of the recent anti-US comments is pathetic and annoying. This $15M (which for you idiots that think this is a large amount in the grand scheme of things don't have a clue) is for circumvention. That is, working AROUND firewalls and other censorship systems. It has JACK to do with hacking. If we want to hack we hack. We don't go around publicly throwing money out to groups to hack anything. Get your panties out of the bunch, twats.
Oh, by the way, $15M would get you MAYBE 15 *SMALL* bridges in the US replaced that are in drastic need of repair. *SMALL* being 2 lane & no more than 30 feet in length. So, really, not much money at all.
symptoms of the same problem
Phorm, Aussie firewall, Chinese firewall, preventing outside gambling sites, etc are all symptoms of the same problem occuring all over the world. Governments all over the world need to learn to fear their people instead of subtly and not so subtly trying to control. They only get away with it because people have become such sheep that can't be bothered for any type of sacrifice in the name of justice.
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