Internet Anarchists Try to Crack Chinese Firewall?

There is a gushing story about how wonderful a few “hacktivists” at the University of Toronto are going to put together a program that will defeat all of the oppressive Internet censors on the planet. Yes, these rough, raga-muffins, who feel that information should be free, are out to subvert the will of the Chinese government who is censoring its people.

I smell a rat.

Hacktivists have never contributed to the greater good of the Internet. They often destroy things, expose secrets, both governmental and corporate, and gorge themselves on stolen and priated software. But somehow, this article says that these guys are the “good guys.”

From the Star here:

Revenge of the nerds
Three computer geeks at the U of T are renowned developers of anti-censorship software, including a program out this month that could allow people to outwit the world’s most repressive regimes

ANDREW CHUNG
STAFF REPORTER

Looking at them you might not guess it. But deep in a basement room on the University of Toronto campus, three unassuming computer hackers with messy hair and wrinkled T-shirts are working to tear down China’s “Great Firewall,” the most sophisticated Internet censorship system in the world.

They are self-confessed computer “geeks.” They don’t go to the gym much, or see much sunlight. They talk about “routers” and “nodes” and “secure socket layers” like they were saying, “Hello,” or “How are you?”

But the computer smarts of Ron Deibert, Nart Villeneuve, and Michael Hull, combined with their passion for politics and free expression, have led them to develop a highly anticipated software program that allows Internet users inside China and other countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Burma, to get around repressive censorship and not get caught.

Their innovation is called Psiphon, and it’s being launched at the end of this month.

What does Villeneuve, 31, who spawned the idea of Psiphon, think about challenging the likes of China? He puts down his Che Guevara mug and thinks for a moment. He shrugs his shoulders and smirks: “It just seems like the right thing to do.”

While working at a print shop, he started reading Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky, and when his roommate got a computer, he started roaming around hacker chat rooms. He found out how to extend the hours of their dial-up Internet for free.

He became a fervent anti-globalization activist, and got his first taste of tear gas in 1999 at the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization. He started writing about the growing world of hacktivism.

While it won’t be a silver bullet, Qiang says, Psiphon will be a key tool for the relatively small but highly influential group of outspoken journalists, bloggers and activists inside China who dare to access information from the outside in the hope of creating a more open society.

The program effectively turns anyone’s personal computer into a proxy server. Once the software is installed on a computer in, say, Canada, that person creates a contact list of trusted friends or family members in censored countries and sends his or her IP address to them. No advertising needed.

But Psiphon doesn’t stop there. Unlike most Internet traffic, Psiphon data is encrypted and shoots around the world on a network reserved for secure financial transactions, so a censor cannot see what the person is accessing. And a censor wouldn’t be able to tell a Psiphon request from a MasterCard purchase.

“We’re making the Internet run the way it’s supposed to,” says Villeneuve with his trademark little-boy smile. “Because people have broken it.”

Notice this is not freedom for all Chinese citizens? Just the elite, ararchists and activists. If this worked so well, why not bring it to everyone?

These are admitted criminals. And somehow, they have tapped into the protected financial network of a major credit card company, and they are going to use a P2P proxy network to channel traffic over that protected network?

Sorry, but I think this is a smokescreen so Internet Anarchists can tap a protected financial network and try to get away with it. I would believe that it is more likely that they will spread a trojan horse program designed to take down credit card companies by flooding that network with bogus packets. These guys don’t give a damn about the Chinese citizens, only their own delusions of grandeur in finding ways to use the Internet to bring down capitalism.

I have more comments on this over at Hot Air.