Local Version Of China's Great Firewall Now Required On All PCs In China

from the yeah,-that'll-work... dept

Mon, Jun 8th 2009 12:50am — Mike Masnick

There have been plenty of stories on the inner workings of China's "Great Firewall," whereby various ISPs are threatened with liability if they don't block "bad stuff." Yet, it's all been done at the ISP level. Apparently, that's about to change. A report is making the rounds that, as of July 1st, all PCs sold in China will be required to have client-side censorship software. You have to wonder if the censorship software also includes spying software.... Either way, you have to imagine it won't take long at all for people to figure out how to disable such software.

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Filed Under: censorship, china, filters, great firewall

15 Comments

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drewmerc (profile), 8 Jun 2009 @ 1:37am

unless they are putting it in the bios, any linux live distro will do
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jun 2009 @ 1:42am

Hey that's nice.
How about that community management over the weekend, Mike?

Where's my Ballmer Story?
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jun 2009 @ 1:46am

Re:
I only mention it because maybe I should take off on a trip to get away from it all more often.

Anywho, Greetings from Tampa! Anyone know how to conveniently run into Billy Mays, perhaps for lunch, while here? I want to congratulate him on his new series on Discovery.
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Tor (profile), 8 Jun 2009 @ 2:50am

France ahead of China this time around
It seems like the western countries copy the surveilance efforts of China, but this time around France actually seems to be ahead China with their plan to oblige people to install state-approved "anti piracy" security software on every computer of every home with Internet access in France.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jun 2009 @ 6:08am

Might not be that easy
The tech people for the Chinese government are probably not idiots who would make it possible to simply install a new OS and get rid of the software. If you don't have the software installed, your ISP's routers probably won't event talk to you.

Basically, this would DRM everything sent over the Internet. Someone will figure out how to get around it, but it probably won't be as easy as going to "Add/Remove Programs" or installing a Linux distro.
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Zaphod (profile), 8 Jun 2009 @ 6:16am

If only they would block the real bad stuff...
If only this firewall, were a real firewall, and could block all the botnets that are flinging spam out of China.

But those run on server farms, and probably with the government's blessings due to the funds they generate.

Wonder if they will realize that any .php equipped server farm can become a proxy server in minutes, and that they had better keep an eye on those too.

Meanwhile, I'll keep blocking all of China and Korea from my website, it's only a couple hundred IP ranges.
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mdmadph (profile), 8 Jun 2009 @ 6:29am

Re:
Not quite -- Red Flag Linux is very, very popular in China. I'd be surprised if they got left out.
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Hephaestus (profile), 8 Jun 2009 @ 6:52am

LOL .... where do I get a copy of this software???
If it does include spyware this could be a really big thing for the US intel community, its about time we hacked them back.
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Rekrul, 8 Jun 2009 @ 10:41am

Why doesn't every computer sold there just come with am armed guard who will shoot the user in the back of the head the first time they access something they're not supposed to? You know the government would do it if they could...
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The Cenobyte, 8 Jun 2009 @ 11:11am

Data overload anyone
Can you imagine have every computer in China reporting back what it does and when? How the heck would you even deal with that data? I would think it would just be so much data that the noise totally overwelms any signel you hope to get.
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Freedom, 8 Jun 2009 @ 1:45pm

Starts as an Add-On...
This will start as an add-on and before you know it, it will be required for Microsoft to sell its OS in China that it be bundled in at the Kernel level. I wouldn't doubt if they also start using some sort of Smart Card in combination with it.

It is all about control and if you control the core network, you can control what people are doing on it.

Let's hope this is a wake up call that we need to preserve and prevent this crap from happening here - before we hear how it will protect the children!

Freedom
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jun 2009 @ 5:11pm

And..
Either way, you have to imagine it won't take long at all for people to figure out how to disable such software.

It probably won't take long for people to go to prison for doing so, either.
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Rokr, 8 Jun 2009 @ 8:52pm

I certainly don't want this coming stateside
This is some scary Orwellian stuff. I feel sorry for those Chinese but at the same time I don't want that stuff coming to GA.
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Garry, 9 Jun 2009 @ 4:22am

Either way, you have to imagine it won't take long at all for people to figure out how to disable such software.

Having a firewall at access level and a filtering program at local would make it very easy to detect who is using the software and who is not. This could lead to authorities investigating and probably ending up prosecuting the people not using the software for some reason or another.
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Matt, 9 Jun 2009 @ 5:31pm

China Wall of Fire
maybe that might mean we can FINALLY fully bypass the firewall. Although, i thought it was cheaper giving all those people jobs.
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