Breaking down the Great Firewall...

No, this isn't a clever campaign to start a world movement to get rid of the Great Firewall and liberate China's netizens. With the arrival of the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, it seems that this would be an appropriate time to focus on The Great Firewall of China, or the Golden Shield Project (as it is officially known). The Golden Shield is a censorship and surveillance program run by China's Ministry of Public Service. While the Chinese government has been using the Great Firewall to censor and block websites in China since 2003, many of us do not have a full understanding of the Golden Shield Project and its intricacies. This article is not meant to start a revolution against the Chinese government to bring down the Great Firewall, but a means to gain a better understanding of something that many Americans and Europeans have little knowledge about--Internet censorship using GSP.

While most Americans and Europeans do have the right to choose what sites they visit and surf the Internet freely (again the keyword is "most"), other countries' citizens are stifled by government censorship of the Internet. In China any site that expresses opposing views or states a negative opinion of the government is banned. Not only will the site be banned, but the authors may face criminal charges and a lengthy prison sentence. While many sites have recently been unblocked by the Chinese government because of the Beijing Olympics, many other sites including, pro-democracy advocates, Taiwanese government and media, and blog sites are still banned. The idea of having privacy rights or any type of Internet privacy is a concept that many Chinese citizens have little understanding of.

The concept of the Great Firewall started in 1998 and began operating in 2003. The need for the GSP stemmed from Communist regimes fearing that the Chinese Democracy Party would develop an extensive and powerful network that couldn't be controlled. The GSP acts as a firewall (hence the nickname) and blocks content based on IP addresses and a massive database of banned websites. The IPs are banned and prevented from gaining access to blocked content basically by using a proxy server the opposite way we would use it (think: reverse proxy). GSP combines IP filtering with DNS poisoning to maintain control over the Internet in China.

Along with IP blocking, URL-, DNS-, and Packet-filtering, the GSP has a unique characteristic: it doesn't just ban sites based on these methods, but also bans websites based on the content. This blog would be banned instantly because it shows methods for gaining access to "forbidden sites," but also any content that is considered subversive by the government would be subject to banishment (this means any pro-democracy, pro-Tibet, and pro-anything else the Chinese government is against).

The final point that has been brought about because of the Great Firewall is self-censorship. While sites that should be banned do slip through the cracks, many Chinese citizens end up practicing self-censorship and not visiting these sites anyway. It makes perfect sense: Just because the site hasn't been banned yet, is it still okay to look at? Why take that chance and end up in prison like many Chinese bloggers do? The thought that you are being watched by the Golden Shield Project even if the site is allowed on the network is a mighty force...people tend to act differently when their bosses, or the authorities, are paying attention.