Against censorship in China

Yuan is a Chinese friend of mine, which I met in Rotterdam. One of the first things she said to me was that she is amazed of the amount of information that we, “the Europeans”, have access to, and that they are denied of. I remember seeing her devouring electronic newspapers, and I guess I never really understood how that must be. Some kind of living in the dark, in an era of light… I remember my parents talking about how the communist regime over here kept a lot of information secret, and how the country was like a snowglobe: one could onyl get out to visit other communist countries. In any case, 30 years ago this information barrier was much easier to maintain than it is today. Back then the physical borders meant keeping a lot of information secret, controlling the only TV station meant inoculating the desired ideas, and the information service (Securitate) did a great job in questioning everyone that ever came across a foreigner.

But today is another story. Today people have the Internet, which means receiving information from all over the world in just minutes. Today the struggle to prevent access to information involves mainly controlling the access to the Internet. As I got the chance to find out yesterday, this action is quite complex in China. Everyone figured that Internet pages are censored over there, but I for one could never have imagined that such control involves screening email attachments and blocking access to those attachments and, eventually, to the email service.

What happened was that Yuan wanted to read news on Tibet. As we all know this is more than sensitive in China, which means that she cannot access the page with that news. She then asked me to send her the page. This is how it went:

yuan (4/17/2008 6:49:56 PM): hello

yuan (4/17/2008 6:50:08 PM): can i ask a favor?

andreea (4/17/2008 6:50:11 PM): sure

yuan (4/17/2008 6:50:21 PM): there’s this news on http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/17/asia/17tibet.php

yuan (4/17/2008 6:50:26 PM): it’s about Tibet

yuan (4/17/2008 6:50:34 PM): i can’t access it

yuan (4/17/2008 6:50:41 PM): can you copy and paste it for me?

andreea (4/17/2008 6:50:42 PM): i can send it to you by mail

andreea (4/17/2008 6:50:49 PM): sure, no problem

yuan (4/17/2008 6:50:49 PM): thank you!!

yuan (4/17/2008 6:50:58 PM): it’s seems my government downed it

yuan (4/17/2008 6:52:13 PM): i really hate it when they screen the info on internet and just decide what we should know and we should not

yuan (4/17/2008 6:52:43 PM): i click it, it’s like cannot find server, but i can see the address on the address bar

yuan (4/17/2008 6:55:23 PM): i got your mail

yuan (4/17/2008 7:00:29 PM): no way, i can’t download it from your mail! they can’t be this powerful, can they??

andreea (4/17/2008 7:00:44 PM): well… i don’t know

andreea (4/17/2008 7:00:53 PM): but i can try to put the text in a word doc

yuan (4/17/2008 7:01:14 PM): can you do that for me?? thank you!!

andreea (4/17/2008 7:01:28 PM): sure

andreea (4/17/2008 7:01:32 PM): it’s nothing

yuan (4/17/2008 7:02:21 PM): it feels good to have someone in another world hahahaha

andreea (4/17/2008 7:04:45 PM): i just sent it again

andreea (4/17/2008 7:04:50 PM): it’s a text document

andreea (4/17/2008 7:04:55 PM): I copied all the article

andreea (4/17/2008 7:07:06 PM): can you download the doc?

yuan (4/17/2008 7:08:25 PM): not just yet,i’ll try again later

andreea (4/17/2008 7:08:33 PM): jeez…

andreea (4/17/2008 7:08:50 PM): is it the only trouble you have with hotmail?

yuan (4/17/2008 7:09:07 PM): i’m afraid yes

yuan (4/17/2008 7:08:58 PM): they can’t possibily screen that out too…

andreea (4/17/2008 7:09:29 PM): well… if it doesn’t work, maybe it will on another server, like yahoo

yuan (4/17/2008 7:09:58 PM): but we don’t even indicate tibet on the mail title or anything

andreea (4/17/2008 7:10:06 PM): i know…

andreea (4/17/2008 7:10:30 PM): i sent it on yahoo

yuan (4/17/2008 7:10:51 PM): thanks a lot

andreea (4/17/2008 7:11:23 PM): let me know if you can receive it

andreea (4/17/2008 7:11:30 PM): if not i’ll think of something else

yuan (4/17/2008 7:14:23 PM): no, i can’t download it either….i clicked download attachment and nothing happens…

yuan (4/17/2008 7:17:12 PM): maybe we can try copy the all article and just paste it as plain text as the main body of the mail

andreea (4/17/2008 7:17:24 PM): ok, let’s try

yuan (4/17/2008 7:18:13 PM): this is ridiculous, i downloaded pdf files, xls files, wrd files all the time

andreea (4/17/2008 7:18:25 PM): i can try a pdf

yuan (4/17/2008 7:18:57 PM): i think plain text as the main body of the mail will do better than pdf

andreea (4/17/2008 7:19:11 PM): I’ll do both

yuan (4/17/2008 7:20:32 PM): got your mail

andreea (4/17/2008 7:21:01 PM): do you see the text?

yuan (4/17/2008 7:22:54 PM): can’t open my mail box anymore……………………………………………………………………………………

yuan (4/17/2008 7:23:03 PM): this is laughable

andreea (4/17/2008 7:23:04 PM): WHAT?

yuan (4/17/2008 7:23:40 PM): at least now the mail box is dead, maybe in it will recover later

andreea (4/17/2008 7:23:51 PM): i sent it on both addresses

andreea (4/17/2008 7:23:54 PM): try yahoo

yuan (4/17/2008 7:25:36 PM): as i clicked the mail, it’s the page cannot be displayed

andreea (4/17/2008 7:25:51 PM): this is unbelievable

yuan (4/17/2008 7:26:21 PM): in a world like this

andreea (4/17/2008 7:26:52 PM): i’ll try to replace Tibet with XXX

andreea (4/17/2008 7:26:57 PM): see if it works

yuan (4/17/2008 7:27:25 PM): let’s assume it’s my computer’s or my internet connection is wrong and i’ll try to open the mail tomorrow

yuan (4/17/2008 7:27:42 PM): but i can’t really open my mail box right now

andreea (4/17/2008 7:30:01 PM): ok, try this

andreea (4/17/2008 7:30:14 PM): go on http://[edit].ro/webmail

andreea (4/17/2008 7:30:26 PM): username is [edit]

andreea (4/17/2008 7:30:29 PM): pass [edit]

andreea (4/17/2008 7:30:36 PM): there’s only one mail

yuan (4/17/2008 7:31:43 PM): Login Attempt Failed!

andreea (4/17/2008 7:31:53 PM): let me try once more

andreea (4/17/2008 7:32:20 PM): it works here

andreea (4/17/2008 7:32:21 PM): …

yuan (4/17/2008 7:33:43 PM): no, the window to enter user name and password poped up three times and it says login attempt failed

[...]
yuan (4/17/2008 7:40:52 PM): i’ll try the mail box tomorrow and let you know if it’s temporary connection unstable or not

andreea (4/17/2008 7:41:49 PM): ok

______________________________________

yuan (4/18/2008 6:27:18 PM): it’s true, i can read my other mails all right,

yuan (4/18/2008 6:27:33 PM): but if i click your mail, it will no longer connect

So this is it. The good part is that we found a way to get the news through – I won’t write about it here, because I don’t intend to help those that filter the Internet from China. I don’t know how long this will work, but I’m confident there must always be a way. I’m really curious if she can see this