[privacy] Tales from inside the Great Firewall

["Dude VanWinkle" <dudevanwinkle () gmail com>]

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5191294.stm

Liu Xiaobo has taken part in every political movement in China in the
last 30 years including the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations and the 1979
democracy wall movement.

He has been to prison twice and is banned from publishing any articles
inside China.

"In China, where there's no freedom of speech, the role of the
internet is much bigger than in Western countries which enjoy free
speech.

Since the days of Mao Zedong, the authorities have created a very
closed prison of information. There is only one voice. But with the
appearance of the internet, cracks are appearing all over this prison.

The internet is the best gift god could send to China for the people
of China to claim their rights.

In the 1990s, when I wrote an article and wanted to send it to the
foreign media, I had to ride my bike across the city to ask foreign
friends to fax it for me. I was lucky if I could send one article a
month like that.

And I couldn't see anything I'd written because the Chinese media
wouldn't publish it.

With the internet, I can e-mail my articles abroad as soon as they're
finished. The internet has changed my life dramatically.

More and more people are using different software developed to bypass
the authorities' control and to get access to the blocked websites.

Whatever method the government uses to block the internet, it's doomed
to failure because of technology and because of people's desire for
more and more information."

------------------------------------------

-JP<http://50.lycos.com/020404.asp .... sigh>
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