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1title: Chaos Computer Club offers help to victims of censorship in China
2date: 2008-08-04 00:00:00
3updated: 2009-04-18 19:12:41
4author: vt100
5tags: update, pressemitteilung
6
7In response to widespread outrage against internet censorship in China,
8the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) offers aid in circumventing the censorship
9measures to the affected athletes and journalists.
10
11<!-- TEASER_END -->
12
13The so-called "Great Firewall of China" \[6\] consists of an assortment
14of filtering and blocking technologies, most of them installed by
15corporations from the US and Europe. The Chinese government uses these
16systems to disable access to websites whose content does not suit them,
17or even modify website content en route to the user.
18
19"Censorship in China is a symptom of a surveillance state that has been
20technologically supported by western corporations for years", CCC member
21Björn Pahls comments on the situation. "Since its formation, the CCC has
22always worked against all forms of censorship, which has become
23commonplace in so many states today".
24
25The CCC describes technologies and methods of circumventing censorship
26on a dedicated website \[1\]. Journalists and visitors on their way to
27China are offered USB-thumbdrives containing the Tor-Browser \[5\]
28software. The availability of these so-called "Freedom Sticks" is
29limited only to the duration of the Olympic Games. Also, German digital
30rights activist group FoeBuD e.V. offers "Privacy Dongles" through their
31web store \[7\].
32
33To circumvent the Chinese censorship, the Freedom Stick uses the Tor
34network. Tor is a worldwide system of servers, run by volunteers to
35combat censorship and suppression of information by anonymizing data
36packets transmitted over the Internet. It encrypts the data and routes
37it through different servers within the Tor network, rendering useless
38any efforts of tracing it back to the source. A controversial new German
39law on data retention, currently on appeal at the German Federal
40Constitutional Court, criminalizes the operation of Tor network nodes.
41This complicates the work of volunteers that support democratic
42movements in dictatorships and oppressive states.
43
44"We are calling upon the German authorities to stop criminalizing the
45operators of servers of the Tor network. The behavior of the authorities
46is detrimental to the people in oppressive states, whose lives are at
47risk. China is only one of many examples", says Björn Pahls of the CCC.
48
49### see also:
50
51- \[1\] <http://chinesewall.ccc.de/>
52- \[2\] [Photo of the Freedom Stick, free
53 usage](/press/releases/2008/20080804/Freedomstickgetrennt.jpg)
54- \[3\] [Tor and China, Roger Dingledine at the
55 23c3](http://media.koeln.ccc.de/browse/congress/2006/23C3-1444-en-tor_and_china.html)
56- \[4\] [Censorship in Germany
57 (German)](http://www.ccc.de/censorship/)
58- \[5\]
59 [Tor-Browser](http://www.torproject.org/torbrowser/index.html.de)
60- \[6\] <http://greatfirewallofchina.org/>
61- \[7\] [buy Privacy Dongle
62 (German)](https://shop.foebud.org/product_info.php?pName=privacydongle-torpark-auf-usbstick-p-151)
63
64Media contact: Chaos Darmstadt, presse(at)chaos-darmstadt.de