The Great Firewall of China? No, that wasn’t a spoof, there really is such a thing in China and it regulates what the Chinese can and can’t see on the internet. However, this may all change on December 1st upon the release of a new tool.

For those in China and other countries where the Internet comes along with puppet strings, an early Christmas present will arrive, allowing Internet users to circumvent government censorship through a software application named Psiphon (pronounced “SY-fon”).

Created by a University of Toronto team of political scientists, software engineers and computer-hacking activists, Psiphon works as an encrypted proxy, allowing someone in a restricted-access country to gain access to censored sites through an uncensored country access point. “Now you will have potentially thousands, even tens of thousands, of private proxies that are almost impossible for censors to follow one by one,” said Qiang Xiao, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley.

Rather than publicly advertising the required login and password information, Psiphon is intended to be shared within trusted social circles. This feature will undoubtedly limit efforts to spread the program to as many target users as possible, however its main purpose is to keep the program away from Internet censors.

Psiphon is said to be different than programs like Tor, in that it provides anonymous web browsing, whereas Tor focuses more on protecting the transport of data.

It’s now up to those who live free to download psiphon and extend a hand across borders to those living behind the barricades of Firewalls where human rights are being denied.

Jeffrey J Basford

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 10:47 amand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.