Governments can outlaw those too. We need a p2p internet before it's too late. It doesn't have to be the fastest or the best. It just has to work well enough to bootstrap free access to information whenever the government tries to snuff it out. In Cuba they use thumb drives but we can do better.

There's a fundamental limit to what is blockable. Even if all strong cryptography is prohibited and all that can legally be utilised is a backdoored version, a steganographic option can be encorporated in a way that is mathematically undetectable - albeit at rather low bit rates relative to the absolute rate of the stream.

The problem for censors is that there is not such thing as optimal compression for a given stream, since the optimality of a given compression codec is a probabilistic function of all data streams that could feasibly be compressed with the given codec.

What do I mean by this? Inoptimality is fundamentally immeasurable (even when a more optimal version is feasibly calculable, it may be inefficient to utilise it due to the increased complexity involved in encoding or decoding - and the possible reasons behind any given encoding choice are indistinguisable from each other), so a sliver of a data stream could potentially be utilised to package encrypted data in a manner that is fundamentally indistinguishable from encoding inoptimalities.

In a world where a huge amount of out data is ultra-high bandwidth multimedia content couple with personal super-computers, crytographically indistinguisable steganographic communication channels of a more than useful bandwidth are well within the realms of feasibility.

That's technically true but largely irrelevant because it ignores the hard problem: if you're a covert agent supported by a major power, sure, you may have the opsec training and resources needed for that to be relevant but in most cases the question is not crypto magic but how it handles discovery, trust, and individual compromises.

You can have perfect steganography but as soon as a government informant says they got contraband data from you people are going to jail or worse. Similarly, all of the plausible deniability in the world won't help if they compromise your system and record you accessing that data.

Among other things, this kills widespread underground media dissemination because as the number of people increases the odds approach certainty that state actors will learn how to access it, and the risk to users increases constantly – how well do you really know the person who hooked you up with an invite code? Is the P2P node you're connecting to anything other than a honeypot? The hottie you hooked up with last night – really into you or just installing malware on your computers and mapping out your social network?

(Lest you think that's a stretch, consider e.g. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29743857 and ask whether the Chinese government is more or less concerned with activists)

Dissent against authoritarian governments will always be a game of cat and mouse - sometimes the cat will catch the mouse, there's no preventing that.

But I think that you're underestimating the power of the mathematics here in terms of the levels of achievable misdirection.

If the government gets into your unencrypted context you're pretty much fucked - I'll give you that - but it does not necessarily mean that anyone else is going down with you.

Let's say you have an unencrypted piece of data telling you that the XOR of the least significant bits of a multitude of data streams contains secret data and a descriptor for the next source node. Most of the data streams will be completely innocent. Even once I extract that data I'll have no idea where the contraband information came from.

This naturally further reduces your bandwidth, and you'll need the streams to contain content that non-dissidents have a decent chance of downloading together by pure chance to reduce suspicion.

There are huge difficulties - but that does not come close to meaning that nothing can be done.

A nation state doing traffic analysis will have people working full time to subvert the initial weak link of getting the software (which nobody else uses so simply possessing it will be seen as a sign of criminal intent) and keying information, doing statistical analysis to find why people have unusual access patterns to that innocent content and correlating people not known to be connected who are showing those same atypical patterns around the same time, etc. It doesn't matter if your source data is entirely fluffy kitten videos if there's a set of users inexplicably accessing the same set of videos in temporal or geographic proximity without a known link.

The other problem is trust: you said you'd have no idea where the key came from. Ignoring the high possibility of the state recording enough history to answer that question, the bigger risk is active subversion: using that software is evidence that you're trying to evade surveillance, which is risky no matter how warranted, and making those requests is clear proof that you're doing so. The hardest problem here would be detecting moles and honeypots: secret police distribute software versions which leaks your activity to them, distribute keys online and in person, etc. They're not going to arrest you as soon as you install it but will wait, possibly for years, seeing who else your activity links in.

Obtaining the software is hard, that is certain - but human beings have been successfully smuggling contraband for as long as there has been such a thing. And when you download the dozen specific fluffy cat videos, you don't just download that set - that would be fundamentally stupid - the set exists to mask the source, not to protect the receiver. The receiver would download a naively popular superset of the target set - you mask suspicion by hiding with the sheep.

Absolute trust is fundamentally impossible (the place where there is no darkness is a legitimate concern here). How do you even know that the public keys on your machines are true, that the hashes of your OS ISOs are not false, that every semblance of the assumption of security that you are working within is not simply a cleverly laid trap designed to lead you to naively reveal your hitherto hidden intentions?

Eventually, you just have to run with "fuck it, I'll do what I can to cover my arse - let the chips fall where they may".

The fact that it is fundamentally impossible to know the underlying intention of any foreign consciousness or computational context does not necessarily mean that none can ever be trusted, only that they can never be fully trusted - and that you should use whatever degree of caution you believe is justified for the given situation.

I think it's very risky to conflate different classes of threat. Yes, the state could suborn a CA but simply using SSL does not make you stand out. Using software which is designed to evade surveillance is by itself a bad thing to be caught possessing and unless it's perfect it will leave traces which will draw attention.

The problem I'm concerned with is the promise: tell people that something like this works and they are likely to trust it – at least until news spreads about other people getting caught by basic statistical traffic analysis. This is basically the Bitcoin anonymity trap: the marketing guys like to run around telling people it's anonymous and people often miss the distinction that any mistake will cause it to fail open with a full public history.

I'm a massive fan of decentralization and it seems that bittorrent has shown that it is resilient against oppression, while the magnet link hosting sites are regularly taken down, the protocol its self has shown that it can continue to thrive.

In this way it shows that decentralized networks are the way to circumvent oppressive people.

The on-going movement towards decentralisation is something to celebrate as is the transformation of users, slowly becoming peers.

The UK is already rolling out more and more censorship infrastructure for example. All ISPs have porn-filters enabled by default (which you can opt-out) and additional block lists that you have to circumvent through technical means (e.g. wikipedia was blocked due to the Scorpion's virgin killer album cover). Now they also want to expand those filters to cover "extremism".

+1 the USA and UK are definitely on the path of governmental control of content/privacy on the Internet.

A bit off topic: I am in the USA and it surprises be constantly how most of my friends and family buy into American exceptionalism. Mostly, they don't travel much to foreign countries so they don't realize that the USA is one of MANY great places to live. The world for the most part is an awesome place but the news media convinces people otherwise. Re: China: even though China has problems with internal ethnic violence (source: I took an online class in English covering history, economics, and politics taught by three professors in China) my impression of people in China when I was there is that they are generally happy with their society. It is not my place to tell other people what form of government they should have.

Just on a positive note - HTTPS has done wonders BC it destroys any granularity in censorship. For instance BC English Wikipedia isn't blocked you are able to look up any topic and authorities have no way of knowing which topic you've looked up.

They could block all of Wikipedia ofcourse, but it'd be overly draconian, hard to justify and people would be upset (though itll happen eventually. They're working on a wikipedia clone right now)

Wikipedia (also apparently expressvpn.com) is already blocked in Turkey, and I am indeed very upset about it, but there's nothing I can do about it and I think it'd be the same with the Chinese. Such oppressive governments really won't mind denying their citizens access to the single greatest source of information for their citizens if it plays into their hand.

could you please stop representing 1.4B Chinese? if the government is so bad, why there is no systematic resistance given the fact that Chinese people had a long history of fighting the repressive regimes?

Fear of the Government that is even in your pocket?!

As someone who grew up in the East Block, reading such naive comments as yours leaves me divided. It's good on one hand that you've never came even close to an oppressive government so not even your imagination allows you to grok. On the other hand facing the development in the world, it's quite concerning.

> As someone who grew up in the East Block

so you grew up in the old communist eastern bloc, and you want to blindly compare what you suffered back then to what is happening in China now?

I didn't grew up in communism, I grew up after the 1978 reform in China. My entire extended family work for the private sector with my closest family members running their own successful private businesses. Did you guys have that in the eastern bloc (not east block)? I got Internet connection back in the early 90s and I have been openly posting comments on Chinese forums criticising some of CCP's policies for the last 20 years. They didn't give a sh!t about it and I never got myself into any trouble. Can you guys do that back in the eastern bloc days? Starting from my middle school, they have been teaching me that the market economy is the only viable solution, they encourage the best students to study in western countries and offered numerous benefits for that, e.g. a long list of tax benefits if you study in the west and go back to China later. Did your eastern bloc "motherland" encourage you to do that?

The eastern bloc failed for an obvious reason: communism. Chinese killed that rubbish back in 1978. Learn something.

First: congratulations to you for not being one of those who have to suffer in your country! You must be so proud. Do you think with this wage inequality in your country, you are representative for the Chinese population?

> I got Internet connection back in the early 90s and I have been openly posting comments on Chinese forums criticising some of CCP's policies for the last 20 years.

I don't know what you have been criticizing there or how but you are aware that your government puts even artists in jails for "criticizing" are you? Why do you think they force Apple to take those VPN apps down if free speech is no problem?!

We also have those people moaning up to today how good it was because back then in socialist utopia, they just needed to know the right people or be in the party. Everything else worked for them then. Today they have to face real competition, rules and regulations. They fail now and therefore tend to support other radical parties that may bring them their former benefits back. This is why you see so many of those methods and ideologies coming back on the right in former East Block countries. So no...it's not about socialism. As bad as it was. It's humans, power, influence and money.

And no my eastern block motherland did not encourage me to exploit western countries education systems so I can learn how to exploit/manipulate the economic system too and come back afterwards. The best (or wealthiest, most influence see above) were able to go to Russia though and we were not so brain washed due to the lack of the media flood so people who left, stayed in the West. In the end the system broke apart and Democracy and the Free Market replaced it. Learn something.

> Chinese killed that rubbish back in 1978. Learn something.

Well...good luck on your next election then!

You make it look like your country did not become some scary undemocratic thought police thing. There is a reason why you don't write "free market economy" as anybody else from the west would in such a glorification speech. You depend on a illusion of economic stability just like the socialist systems back then. The only difference is now that because you've been the sweatshop for the rest of the world for so long, the world thinks it depends on the continuation of the show. We'll see how that will work out in the end. Your government doesn't think it will end good or it wouldn't implement those crowd control mechanisms and make people disappear who may cause critical thinking in the first place

You are correct, the PRC doesn't care that much about nobodies venting on web forums. People like you pose no threat so you are ignored.

Now try organising something to act on that criticism, like people in the West can do. You'll suddenly discover that it's very different.

And yet using a VPN is still somehow "against the will of the people" ...

You'll notice the same usernames and patterns of argumentation every time there is an article with comments remotely criticizing (or even questioning) China.

Some quite interesting "opinions" on that ones comment history.

There are honestly a lot of similar patterns of argumentation, attack, deflection, and amplification that I've noticed across these platforms whenever China is mentioned; as a native Chinese speaker, vast populations of Chinese internet communities and social media services are pretty unreadable to me because you see the same dozen arguments by Chinese netizens unfolding over and over again. His/her assumption that my response is attacking "free speech" is a pretty common response I see, where any attempt at discussing or criticizing Chinese policy is redirected toward some aspect of liberal democratic values, regardless if the original commenter is a "westerner" or whether or not it even fits in the context/scope of the original question.

From reading through some of the China threads you came upon, I'm not really sure if you are really familiar with the concept of "free".

you = he

...it was late.

So far, most of my comments regarding those "criticizing/questioning" China stuff are mostly about the censorship/GFW, because I strongly believe the GFW is a protectionism tool to protect and grew the Chinese Internet sector.

Am I allowed to have my own opinion on that matter when I am a Chinese living in China working in that sector? Maybe your definition of freedom/free speech is a pretty censored one?

> the GFW is a protectionism tool to protect and grew the Chinese Internet sector.

How do you reconcile this belief with the following:

1) The GFW blocks sites and content related to dissident groups and individuals in China, such as Xinjiang and Tibetan independence groups.

2) The GFW blocks sites and content related to Falun Gong.

3) Personal VPN usage will be blocked.

4) Many foreign news sites are blocked.

1. illegal organisations by Chinese laws.

2. illegal organisation by Chinese laws. btw, they spam my mobile all the time, it is pretty rude to call someone's mobile 5-6am on a weekend morning to play prerecorded message like "CCP is bad, they jailed many Falun Gong members".

3. "will" is a very interesting term. Posting here using VPN, let me know when it is actually blocked.

4. I read CNN/BBC/Foxnews quite often, they are not blocked, no VPN required.

> 1. illegal organisations by Chinese laws.

>2. illegal organisation by Chinese laws. btw, they spam my mobile all the time, it is pretty rude to call someone's mobile 5-6am on a weekend morning to play prerecorded message like "CCP is bad, they jailed many Falun Gong members".

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the belief you stated in your OP:

>> I strongly believe the GFW is a protectionism tool to protect and grew the Chinese Internet sector.

> 3. "will" is a very interesting term. Posting here using VPN, let me know when it is actually blocked.

From CNN[0]:

> Beijing said in January it would restrict virtual private networks, or VPNs, and this month reportedly told the three big telecoms companies to block individuals' access to them by early next year.

Companies are already pulling out of the VPN market in China. You might be familiar with this given the thread we're replying to.

> 4. I read CNN/BBC/Foxnews quite often, they are not blocked, no VPN required.

Le Monde, WSJ, NYT, Reuters, The Economist and TIME are blocked[1]. The NYT and BBC have gone through periods of being blocked and unblocked over the past decade.

--

[0] http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/25/technology/china-vpn-censors...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...

no one ever denied the fact of internet censorship in China. the point is that the biggest impact of GFW is the block of sites like Google/fb/twitter and its largely for protectionism.

blocking WSJ is bad, really bad, but let's be honest, how many Chinese would be reading WSJ? 0.1%? Sure, that 0.1% still counts, they should be allowed to read WSJ or Reuters, but it is not remotely comparable to the impact of blocking, say, youtube. how many Chinese would be watching youtube? I'd argue hundreds of millions could be watching.

With all these numbers in mind, and the fact that there are highly popular replacement services in China for every single one of those blocked one like google/fb/twitter, you tell me what is the primary goal.

it is also worth pointing out that blocking WSJ/Reuters and similar web sites are bad decisions, but blocking Xinjiang/Tibet independence movement sites are totally different matter.

What reason is there to block information about illegal organisations? Is information about ISIS blocked?

To be fair, we censor a lot of content distributed by such organizations.

Well maybe you shouldn't use a locked system then. There are enough and better alternatives and always have been.

It's not like this is a surprise at all. People have warned about this for years but the fan base and the cool design were stronger. I'm pretty sure there will be no uprising in the western Apple community about that at all.

there isn't going to be a technical solution to the problem of terrible world governments, the only real solution is going to be to change the governments.

In democratic countries, at least you have that possibility. Elsewhere it might not be possible at all. Nationwide censorship and surveillance are probably pretty effective technical “solutions” for preventing change.

Why are they different things? Isn't, on some very fundamental level, the act of changing the governments a "technical solution"?

As corps/IC agencies/.mil's around the world tighten the nooses around the population, it will only empower people to engage in similar behaviors.

Who's to say one can't technically compromise and take advantage of AmaGoogAppBookWeiTenUbtakte infrastructure and use it for any ends, in similar ways corps/IC's agencies/.mil's do for their ends?

After all its still hardware and software with flaws like anything else.

Looks like I won't be owning any Apple products in 5 years then.

But they still have the built-in VPN client in iOS, don't they? As long as they don't block this particular feature in China, I don't see that as a big reason for panic.

PPTP and L2TP are blocked, we mainly use Shadowsocks. And what Apple did is removing apps that provide Shadowsocks local client. e.g. Surge, Shadowrocket, Potatso‏...

It should be noted that using a non-china based iTunes account still allows you to install vpn apps and run the app inside Chinese borders...

But The Great Firewall could and sometimes does already block all VPN traffic so it would not be any use.

If the VPN actually works the app might still be useful. It is a game of cat and mouse between the government and the VPN providers.

> What happens in China now could happen in 5 years in the rest of the world.

China? This has been happening in the US and Europe for years.

Look how heavily censored all social media is now.

I understand that we all at HN know about the media censorship, but when you are trying to convince someone who disagrees, some evidence would be very useful.

Depending where you live, there are likely laws prohibiting communication in public about sexuality (think graphically explicit pictures where accessible to children, think non-standard sexual expression), politics (think inciting hate against groups of humans and calls to kill them), culture (think sharing a song you really like with your peers), and many more.

You might say that these restrictions and censorship is okay because you agree with the given reason. But exactly like that, people in china might agree to the reasons their government is giving them for their censorship. Who is right?