Internet connections and mobile phone signals were cut for 30 miles around scene of clashes in Sichuan, state media reports

Source: The Guardian

“Several years ago, writer Du Daobin posted several essays on the internet, protesting such things as unfair taxes and the corruption of the media. He was then charged with ‘inciting subversion of state power,’ arrested, and after many legal twists and turns, tortured in prison. Daobin, along with several other dissidents with similar stories, decided to sue Cisco Systems (PDF) earlier this year under the legal theory that it aided and abetted China’s violation of the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991. As the case moves forward, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security has stepped up its surveillance, harassment, and interrogation of Daobin and the others. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has now joined the Laogai Research Foundation to draw attention to the case. As part of its opening move, it has asked Cisco to make public statements in support of human rights, hoping that the company’s influence with the Chinese government will provide some modicum of protection for the threatened dissidents.”

Source slashdot /.

host:~user$ ssh -D 8888 login@myserver.org

(There is also a nice GUI for those who are not familiar with the command line.)

Then I configure my system preferences to use the socks proxy on 127.0.0.1:8888, which can also be done in Firefox Network settings. (see screenshots)

As the Chinese Government also tries to block external sites, such as Youtube and Openleaks, by filtering DNS requests, it’s necessary to filter this too. One could e.g. point them to 127.0.0.1 (in system preferences) and then send through another ssh tunnel:

host:~user$ sudo ssh login@myserver.org -L 53:127.0.0.1:53

(sudo because 53 is a privileged port.)

But actually it’s easier by just hacking the firefox configuration:

Luckily, with SOCKS5 Firefox can control which side of the proxy handles DNS lookups. By default, it does the lookups locally resulting in the scenario above. To change this, set network.proxy.socks_remote_dns = true in about:config. This makes the SOCKS proxy more like a regular proxy, where DNS is handled by the remote end of the tunnel.

… or one can install iodine and tunnel all DNS requests accordingly.

Have phun!

The 2010 Nobel Peace Price 2010 goes to human rights activist and non violence advocate Liu Xiaobo.

Congratulations!

The full Blog entry about this Boinboing TV episode can be found here

Here is a montage of the todays debate of the 7th session in the United Nations Human Rights Council that has taken place in Geneva, Switzerland.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZH_Rdyt-XU

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyOawzWfc4c

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t3jRaOK3K0

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz5K2-MpD-M

Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9We2n85daMk

Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6VIa0cq76s

Wanna put the Tibetan Flag on your Cellphone? Here is an image in the right size for Ericsson Cellphones. (The image is licensed under the Wikipedia Gnu general public license. This means it’s Free, like “Free Tibet”).

Get the original File here (for other Cellphones).

I urge tibetan activists, journalists and news reporters to use encryption technology to secure and assure internet communication. To bypass the chinese firewall (e.g. to access the internet from Lhasa) it is most advisable to use Tor or similar anonymiser software. (see my blog post from the 18th of march 2008).