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Great Firewall of China

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The Golden Shield Project (Chinese: 金盾工程; Chinese: jīndùn gongcheng) is owned by Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China(MPS). It started in 1998, began the process in November of 2003, the first part of the project passed the national inspection on November 16, 2006 in Beijing. According to MPS, it is to construct a communication network and computer information system for police to improve their capability and efficiency.

History

The Golden Shield project was started 1998. The first part of the project lasted three years, completed in 2006. The second part began in 2006. It will be finished in two years. According to China Central Television (CCTV), up to 2002, the preliminary work of the Golden Shield Project cost US$800 million (equivalent to RMB 6,400 million or €640 million).[1]

On 6 December 2002, 300 people in charge of the Golden Shield project from 31 provinces and cities throughout China participated in a four-day inaugural “Comprehensive Exhibition on Chinese Information System”. At the exhibition, many western high-tech products including Internet security, video monitoring and human face recognition, were purchased. It is estimated that around 30,000 police are employed in this gigantic project. [2]

It was formally known as the Great Firewall of China (in reference both to its role as a network firewall and to the ancient Great Wall of China). A major part of the project includes the ability to block content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through and consists of standard firewall and proxy servers at the Internet gateways. The system also selectively engages in DNS poisoning when particular sites are requested. The government does not appear to be systematically examining Internet content, as this appears to be technically impractical.[3]

Purpose

In September 2002, Li Runsen, the technology director at MPS and member of the Golden Shield leadership, further explained this broad definition to thousands of police nationwide at a meeting in Beijing called “Information Technology for China’s Public Security”. He said:

In October 2001, Greg Walton of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development published a report, he wrote:

Old style censorship is being replaced with a massive, ubiquitous architecture of surveillance: the Golden Shield. Ultimately, the aim is to integrate a gigantic online database with an all-encompassing surveillance network – incorporating speech and face recognition, closed-circuit television, smart cards, credit records, and Internet surveillance technologies.

[4]

The Chinese government views the Golden Shield as one of the most important projects for ensuring its political power.

Technical information

Some commonly used methods for censoring content are:[5]

  • IP blocking. The access to a certain IP address is denied. If the target website is hosted in a shared hosting server, all websites on the same server will be blocked. This affects all TCP protocols such as HTTP, FTP or POP. A typical circumvention method is to find proxies that have access to the target websites, but proxies may be jammed or blocked, and some websites such as Wikipedia also block proxies. Some large websites such as Google have allocated additional IP addresses to circumvent the block, but later the block was extended to cover the new IPs.
  • DNS filtering and redirection. Don't resolve domain names, or return incorrect IP addresses. This affects all TCP protocols such as HTTP, FTP or POP. A typical circumvention method is to find a domain name server that resolves domain names correctly, but domain name servers are subject to blockage as well, especially IP blocking. Another workaround is to bypass DNS if the IP address is obtainable from other sources and is not blocked. Examples are modifying the Hosts file or typing the IP address instead of the domain name in an Web browser.
  • URL filtering. Scan the requested Uniform Resource Locator (URL) string for target keywords regardless of the domain name specified in the URL. This affects the HTTP protocol. Typical circumvention methods are to use escaped characters in the URL, or to use encrypted protocols such as VPN and SSL.[6]
  • Packet filtering. Terminate TCP packet transmissions when a certain amount of controversial keywords are detected. This affects all TCP protocols such as HTTP, FTP or POP, but Search engine pages are more likely to be censored. Typical circumvention methods are to use encrypted protocols such as VPN and SSL, to escape the HTML content, or reducing the TCP/IP stack's size thus reduce the amount of text contained in a given packet.
  • Connection reset. If a previous TCP connection is blocked by the filter, future connection attempts from both sides will also be blocked for up to 30 minutes. Depending on the location of the block, other users or websites may be also blocked if the communication are routed to the location of the block. A circumvention method is to ignore the reset packet sent by the firewall.[7]

Censored content

Research into mainland Chinese Internet censorship has shown that censored websites include:

Blocked websites are indexed to a lesser degree, if at all, by some Chinese search engines, such as Baidu and Google China. This sometimes has considerable impact on search results.[9]

According to the New York Times, Google has set up computer systems inside China that try to access Web sites outside the country. If a site is inaccessible, then it is added to Google China's blacklist.[10] However, once unblocked, the websites will be reindexed.

References

  1. ^ 金盾工程前期耗8亿美元 建全国性监视系统 Template:Zh icon
  2. ^ 首屆「2002年中國大型機構信息化展覽會」全國31省市金盾工程領導雲集 Template:Zh icon
  3. ^ "War of the words". The Guardian.
  4. ^ China's Golden Shield: Corporations and the Development of Surveillance Technology in the People's Republic of China
  5. ^ Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China.
  6. ^ For an example, see Wikipedia:Advice to users using Tor to bypass the Great Firewall
  7. ^ zdnetasia.com
  8. ^ Marquand, Robert (2006-02-04). "China's media censorship rattling world image". Christian Science Monitor. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |accessyear=, |month=, |accessmonthday=, and |coauthors= (help)
  9. ^ "controlling information: you can't get there from here -- filtering searches". The tank man. Frontline (pbs.org).
  10. ^ Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem), p8

See also

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