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from the what-about-the-ones-you-did-NOT-catch? dept.
Chinese authorities have detained a software developer for selling computer services that allow internet users to evade China's "Great Firewall," which blocks access to thousands of websites, from Facebook to Twitter to some news outlets, a media report said Monday.
The software developer, who is from the coastal province of Jiangsu, near Shanghai, was arrested in late August and held for three days for building a small business to sell virtual private networks, the Global Times newspaper reported, citing the official Xinhua news agency. VPNs create encrypted links between computers and allow Chinese web users to see blocked sites by hiding the address from government filters.
Subscribers paid 10 yuan, or about $1.50, for one month of the developer's service. Authorities also seized the developer's earnings, which totaled 1,080 yuan, or about $165.
Some internet businessmen have faced far harsher punishments: Earlier this year, a 26-year-old entrepreneur who sold VPN services in Dongguan, near Hong Kong, was sentenced to nine months in prison.
How far away from having this happen in the West are we, really?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:04PM (11 children)
The (l)users are fucked... but is that any news? Have you ever seen a regular Joe setting up a chain of retransmitters he built himself out of discarded/stolen electronics, to access the net at 5 kilobytes per minute, in order to *CENSORED* some enemy *CENSORED* (ehehe) and to escape the attribution? I mean, these... user things that infest modern networks... i suppose you could call them people, they are so easily stopped by most trivial filtering...
There are ways to resist, and ways to evade. But don't expect anyone to tell you how. If you do not dedicate your useless life to study of communication protocols and exploits, why should you have same freedom from punishment as someone who does?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:15PM (5 children)
... is this someone from the Chinese govt. defending their policy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:58PM (4 children)
i wish i was employed. Also not defending anyone.
It is wrong of Chinese government to do such things, but since they are a vile, hierarchical and oppressive organisation, as any government is, they will continue with their bullshit.
It is probably lack of coffee, that made me express my thoughts on the subject so badly. For that, i apologize. My overall point was that relying on third party to magically grant you access through enemy firewall is not a good solution for you.
In my opinion, the best solution is to find some flaw in enemy systems, and use it quietly, in a way that is not attributable to your IRL personality. Otherwise you are placing trust in someone whom you cannot verify, and that is unacceptable.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:33PM (3 children)
Well then you're in luck! SoylentNews always has work for untalented losers. Can you code a regex?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @11:29PM (2 children)
Until the other site (from which the original codebase was derived) starts doing Unicode[1], has an I-already-read-that feature, does everything without JavaScript, and Degrades Gracefully, I suggest that you STFU.
[1] 18 years and still nothing; S/N had Unicode support within 6 months.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:58AM (1 child)
I'd also add that the guys managing the SN codebase regularly publish what they're working on, which they do for free. They also take community feedback seriously. The slashdot guys get paid, don't give a fuck what their community thinks, and try to force-feed them what nobody wants.
Take a moment and thank the people of SN who keeps the lights running, the coders and the editors.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @03:13AM
You forgot to say "And Fuck Beta"
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:45PM (4 children)
A trivial filter a day keeps the Dick Niggers away. Oh wait. No it doesn't. They just dig their dicks deeper into your pussy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:21PM (3 children)
lol how does this pass through that filter? You don't even need regex to match one single phrase used repeatedly. Also, pretty sure a filter is censorship. Care to weigh in ANYONE from SN leadership? No not editors, people who actually have a say in how SN is run.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:20PM (2 children)
The poster might be using some kind of code injection or similar attack for this, or might be using unicode codepoints instead of plain ascii. There's always the possibility it's actually one of the staff, but that's a little tinfoil even for me.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:54PM
I wouldn't put it past TMB as a massive troll of the more liberal users here. The text is eventually processed to be displayed, and it is currently pure text on the page so it is still trivial to search for a specific phrase and no regex is needed. Since he has access to the codebase it should not be difficult for him to apply the filter after the post has been regularly processed.
Personally I think it may be time to work on decentralized models. I just took a look at the slashcode github repo and the last commit was from April, where is TMBs filter code? This site is running in "benevolent dictator" mode and I for one do not trust it. The anonymity protections are trivial and TMB even said it was possible for him to dig through the database and unmask IPs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:49PM
The usual. Unicode lookalike letters, HTML encoded characters. Buzzard will save us from bad posting by dumping untested regex into the lameness filter and breaking comment posting for everyone. As a staff member, Buzzard should know better.