how are chinese protesters able to post videos with the great chinese firewall controlling internet?
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Well.. even if we knew.. it would be really dumb to explain it here publicly so that the Chinese censorship machine would also be able to see it and use that info to stop it.
Well, the exact way is secret of course. And shouldn’t be digged at too hard lest the Chinese government just stumble on a reddit post explaining it and then fixing it. But basically, no wall is perfect, there’s always holes if you look hard enough. Even the Iron curtain and Berlin wall let some people through. But the great Chinese firewall do nothing about passing along physically. For example, as soon as a thumbdrive reaches a computer not governed by that firewall, uploading is simple. There are also ways to bypass firewalls, every lock is beatable, it’s just a question of time
In short VPN or just PN.
While the Chinese government shuts down most access to known Vpns, it’s nearly impossible to block all IPs available. I can set up a email sever that isn’t blocked then tell some one in china to save content to it. It will run until their IT teams find and block it… Then rinse and repeat after the server is registered elsewhere.
Or worst case scenario, like they do in Cuba and N. Korea, store content on memory cards and bring them to another country to then upload to the web.
1- The Chinese firewall doesn’t control the internet, it only blocks access to some sites from within ISPs located there. Anyone can set a VPN, and it isn’t illegal, even the government provides VPN.
2- Some areas aren’t under this protection, like Hong Kong.
3- For things like the lockdown “protests” (that are basically color revolutions funded by imperialist countries), the ones recording are journalists from other countries. They either can ship the physical media, or they can use VPN to send the recordings
The great firewall basically works in four different ways:
1. Completely blocks access to some platforms/IP (e.g., twitter, WhatsApp, Reddit, known TOR entry nodes, etc.)
2. Completely forbids some sort of traffic (e.g., VPN-like traffic)
3. Intercepts traffic to allowed platforms and applies keyword filtering
4. Huge moderation teams across state supported media platforms
Being able to hide traffic (e.g., special hidden TOR entry nodes whose traffic is designed to blend in with standard HTTP traffic) will allow users to bypass points 1 and 2. The physical transfer of storage as another user mentioned will also work to exfiltrate info.
Using euphemisms (Winnie the Pooh instead of Xi Jinping), non-text media (screenshots, photos and videos), will bypass point 3, at least until the moderator teams catches on.
Point 4 is trickier, but it’s basically a race against the clock. Subversive content will be removed, but it might survive long enough to be saved and forwarded somewhere else.
None of this is secret… They are technical limitations (mostly), not really anything that can be done about it.
What I’m not sure is why point 4 is based on accept-by-default (i.e., they could block all publications until moderators reviewed it), but I guess it would put too much strains on the communication, instant messaging would become impossible, for example. So they have to live with it.
Unless the country runs an Intranet (which would cripple the country in many ways), outside access must be possible. If outside access is possible, there’s several ways of accessing the internet in ways that are untraceable. These ways aren’t secret, the government knows about them, there’s just little that can be done if you want the benefits of the internet in your country.
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