Psiphon – creating cracks in the great firewall

ttp://psiphon.civisec.org/

I remember, I think it was Northern Voice 2006, talking with Brian, D’Arcy and Alan about the “Google filtering Chinese search results” and “China banning wikipedia” stories. While I was just as willing as the next to shake my fist at the injustice of it all, at the time I also argued that if you understand networks and the technology of proxy servers, that this approach was doomed to fail, that the great firewall of China (or wherever) becomes just more damage to route around. Whether it be via mesh networks via radio or good old fashioned fidonet, there are many ways to get past this kind of control.

Here’s a new one you can participate in. Psiphon, developed by the Citizen’s Lab at U of T, allows individuals to form social networks that proxy web traffic in a way that no central censor will ever keep up with. See an illustration here that helps explain it. Instead of just a few central proxy server sites that authorities can block themselves, this turns any machine with an IP address into a potential proxy, but unlike more anonymous p2p approaches this works through the idea of small trusted networks. Have a friend in China, Saudi Arabia, or Iran, give them the gift of a free internet by running psiphon and providing them with a URL to start their anonymous surfing. No software, just a unique URL. Since I don’t know people in those nations, please let me know if you do. I’d like to help.

And as Quentin D’Souza noted, it’s not just big bad repressive governments who run firewalls that you might want to get around. He he.

And finally, props to CBC’s The Hour for apparently covering the story way back in December. – SWL

7 thoughts on “Psiphon – creating cracks in the great firewall”

  1. I should have also noted that this is another reason to get off of your butts and start fighting for net neutrality, because blanket efforts like Rogers to packet shape ALL encrypted traffic not just p2p filesharing traffic, impinges on your ability to participate in projects like this. If you are a Rogers customer, complain vociforously, and go sign the Net Neutrality petition.

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  4. Hi, I live in China, i’m Swedish and im used to a somewhat free Internet back home. If you still run psiphon please let me know.

  5. China firewall is lame, use water to put out the fire of the wall but how do you get over the wall? – use Freedur.com to bypass it. You can bypass China Great Firewall and access youtube, facebook, blogger and all other sites which are blocked.

  6. living in china is such a pain in the butt because of the GFW… i want to go on facebook and youtube!! but im only 12 and the solutions i see are too confusing to understand and only for PC users…(i use mac… i like it… but things seem more confusing with it….)

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