Iranians and Others Outwit Net Censors

"The creators of the software seized upon by Iranians are members of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, based largely in the United States and closely affiliated with Falun Gong. The consortium is one of many small groups developing systems to make it possible for anyone to reach the open Internet. It is the modern equivalent of efforts by organizations like the Voice of America to reach the citizens of closed countries..."

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"...The technique works like a basketball bank shot — with the remote computer as the backboard and the desired Web site as the basket. But government systems hunt for and then shut off such alternative routes using a variety of increasingly sophisticated techniques. So the software keeps changing the Internet address of the remote computer — more than once a second. By the time the censors identify an address, the system has already changed it..."

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"...the Great Firewall of China, is built in part with Western technologies. A study published in February by Rebecca MacKinnon... determined that much blog censorship is performed not by the government but by private Internet service providers, including companies like Yahoo China, Microsoft and MySpace

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"As for the Falun Gong software, it proved a little too popular among Iranians. By the end of last year the consortium’s computers were overwhelmed. On Jan. 1, the consortium had to do some blocking of its own: It shut down the service for all countries except China."

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Original report from
JOHN MARKOFF,"Iranians and Others Outwit Net Censors", The New York Times,April 30, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/technology/01filter.html