U.S.-China Surveillance

Just in time for the Olympics, the Guardian is reporting a development in how the Tor network diffuses that appears, at least temporarily, to obviate any established methods of web censorship. The Tor network was developed by the US Naval Research laboratory to anonymize (but not necessarily encrypt) Internet traffic. The Chinese government has been able to constrain the diffusion of Tor nodes in China by simply blocking the servers where Tor software is distributed. This new development renders such a strategy ineffective:

Instead of joining the Tor network directly, thereby revealing your intention, you first connect to a computer set up by your friends or colleagues, who then introduce you to the Tor network (a “virtual bridge”, they call it). Because the Chinese cannot know in advance who these friends of yours will be (technically speaking, their IP address), they cannot pre-empt by blacklisting. Once you do connect through the bridge to the Tor network, it is almost impossible for surveillance agencies to know that you are using Tor.