These Activists Are Plotting To End Internet Censorship In China

I hope we put ourselves out of business, said Charlie Smith, the pseudonymous head of Great Fire. And he was serious. After all this Chinese Internet monitoring watchdog GreatFire.org is no ordinary case.

Started in 2011 by three anonymous individuals tired of Chinas approach to the internet,itinitiallytracked the effects of the countryscensorship system on websites. Over time, ithas risen to become perhaps the most trusted authority on the subject.

The Great Fire site itself is censorshipdatabase. Visitorsto input a URLto determine if the website isblocked inChina. It is available in English and Chinese, and periodically tests its collectionof over 100,000 URLs to produce a history of the availability/restriction for each one. A hugely useful resource in its own right, GreatFire has come to mean a lot more than just checks. These days, thethree founders document new instances of internet restrictions and foul play in China viathe organizations blog and @greatfirechina Twitter account.

Great Fire is regularlyreferenced byReuters, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and other global media including TechCrunch, of course. Stories it has dug up have included apparent attacks on Apples iCloud service, the blocking of Instagram and messaging apps, restrictionson Google services(of course) and most recentlydetails of a man-in-the-middle attack on Microsoft Outlook users in China.

Thats made the site and its founders a go-to resource for media, activists andanyone with an interest in the internet in China.

In terms ofblogging, weve amazed ourselves, said Smith. Smith highlighted the recent Microsoft attack and the role that Great Fire played publicizing it.

The story began like many others with a post on the Great Fire blog. That was picked up by media which gave the finding aglobal platform and attention.Microsoft entered the scene when itconfirmed that a small number of customers [were] impacted by malicious routing to a server impersonating Outlook.com and suddenly what was initially a small discovery had become a topic in media across the world, China included.

It got me thinking, if wewerent around who wouldve exposed that? Its a serious thing, Smith said.

Great Fire is an invaluable resource for Asia-based tech reporters, but blogging and retroactively documented censorship isnt going to down theGreat Firewall, as Chinas internet censorship organ is known. For that, Smith and his fellow vigilantes have a more sophisticated plan of action that they call Collateral Freedom. Its a concept that leverages cloud-based content networks to give blocked websites and services a new, unblocked lease of life in China.

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These Activists Are Plotting To End Internet Censorship In China