June, 06, 2006 - China Tightens Grip on Web

By Eli Milchman
13:45 PM Jun, 06, 2006

The French organization Reporters Without Borders condemned the Chinese government Tuesday for its increasing censorship of the internet.

RWB claims that the Chinese government has expanded its efforts to block Chinese citizens from accessing Google, Google News and Google Mail, and that software programs like Dynapass, Freegate and Ultrasurf, which were designed to allow users to bypass China’s censorship methods, have been “neutralized.”

"It was only to be expected that Google.com would be gradually sidelined after the censored version was launched in January," RWB said in its statement. "Google has just definitively joined the club of western companies that comply with online censorship in China. It is deplorable that Chinese internet users are forced to wage a technological war against censorship in order to access banned content."

Bill Xia, CEO of Dynamic Internet Technology, the company that designed Dynapass and Freegate, said that his company has already figured out the method used to block their network, that they have already updated their servers and that traffic is recovering from the sudden drop they noticed on May 24.

“(The Chinese government) has been updating their blocking technology without success, but this time they used more resources and monitored our network more closely,” Xia said.

Internet users in China can still go to Google.cn, a version of the search engine introduced in January that Google itself censors -- by hiding the search results of subjects which may be sensitive to the Chinese government -- in order to maintain a presence on computers within China.

Google could not immediately be reached for comment.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,71091-0.html?tw=wn_index_5