Fang Binxing, Father of China's 'Great Firewall,' Admits To Skirting The Censorship He Built

Los Angeles Times:

The man known as the father of China's so-called Great Firewall is defending his invention, which blocks out hundreds of thousands of foreign websites, and admits to owning software to evade the censorship he helped create.

Read the whole story: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Xiangwei Gong]

04:55 PM on 02/21/2011

My columnist friend Bill in Beijing sent me his blog on his personal experience of climbing over the wall: Over the wall and down the rabbit hole: http://www.nuzcom.com/over-wall-and-down-rabbit-hole Worth a read!

[MikeyJaii]

01:49 PM on 02/20/2011

He couldn't help himself, he had to watch some porn.

[emmeaki]

01:16 AM on 02/21/2011

Yeah, he had to do some research to make sure he was censoring the right sites!

[mike72]

12:33 PM on 02/20/2011

In reprospect, unless there is a balanced power of information weapons, all nations shall maintain a strategic control over their country's information landscape.

[hypnotoad72]

10:48 AM on 02/19/2011

Not surprised. Those creating security will inevitably put in little back doors for their own benefit. And it helps them when it comes time to compete - especially in cases like this or in cases like, oh, product activation algorithms - why pay Microsoft $300 for an OS when you wrote the activation protocols? Never kill the cash cow of piracy and it's interesting to note which countries have the highest piracy rates - hint, more and more jobs are starting to be offshored to those countries as well, surprisingly)... (and the backdoor scheme is part of the "cooperating vs competition" mindset and its ramifications again... in a competitive paradigm you know that you'll likely be betrayed eventually. (not always, but the odds...) If you work together for mutual benefit, cooperation, betrayal is less likely. (it might still happen, but a high chance of betrayal vs low chance, which is preferable? )

[one1byke]

07:36 AM on 02/19/2011

I guess he just had to have his REDtube...

[xsanetimes]

07:45 PM on 02/18/2011

duh, all net admins do this. Build a firewall but have special backdoors for themselves

[hypnotoad72]

10:50 AM on 02/19/2011

Either to rescue a system locked out by accident or for nefarious purposes. I remember an incident from a local government a few years ago where a disgruntled employee locked out the entire town's network... these days, ALL employees are deemed "walking potential-criminals" by default. Makes ya feel all nice and warm and fuzzy all over, doesn't it? Thankfully there's prozac to counter that nasty feeling of anxiety... and the side-effects that drug entails...

[netzwerg]

03:06 PM on 02/18/2011

".....and admits to owning software to evade the censorship he helped create."

You can download it here: www.torproject.org

[David4FreePress]

01:39 PM on 02/18/2011

WOW. He could sell those and make a mint.

[JasonMcl]

01:27 PM on 02/18/2011

All packets are blocked equally!

(But some packets are more equal than others.)