Some Chinese geeks have been playing with the new government-mandated Green Dam censorship software over the past couple days. People are reporting their findings on Twitter and on blogs. Eisen blog posted the screenshot above, taken after the software blocked his efforts to visit a porn site on Internet Explorer. He points out, however, that he had no problem accessing the site when using Firefox, concluding that the tool might prevent the average kid from accessing porn but not the determined tech-savvy kid. Interestingly, @shizhao reported that the software transmits reports to Jinhui Corp. when the user tries to access dodgy websites. Not clear if that only applies when IE is used, as with the filtering.
Roland Soong of EastSouthWestNorth has translated feedback posted on the software manufacturer's user forum (since closed) by teachers and parents who've been using Green Dam. Here are three of the many comments:
Let me say something here. We were forced to install the software. So I have to come to this website and curse. After we installed the software, many normal websites are banned. For example, it is normal for students to like games like 4399, but no more ... many news reports have certain normal words but they are banned ... for example, when <Network News> reports that there is a campaign against pornographic websites, the software bans the story because of the term "pornographic websites." Don't tell me how great the software technology is, because this is a piece of junk. When we need to look up some course-related material, there is always some provocative advertisements so we can't access them anymore. Why doesn't the state just ban those advertisements directly? I want to curse someone out ...
And another:
Can I determine the content of the text filtering? Today, a teacher posted an exam question which talks about "students playing touch-ball game." The Word document was shut down. I spend a long time trying to determine the cause. This was really depressing. It will be a lot of work dealing these kinds of things in the future.
And another:
After testing, I found out that the software can record Internet usage data as well as being spyware with the ability to obtain periodic screen captures. When schools are compelled to install this software, there is the serious worry of computer security about the private information of teachers and students. There is no guarantee that personal information is not being secretly collected. It is a huge problem when teachers feel unsafe when they use the computers.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman may have defended Green Dam, but it's his job to defend everything any part of the Chinese government does unconditionally. Many others in China clearly don't agree with him and are publicly saying so. Even the state-approved Caijing magazine has a long critique of the government's Green Dam mandate, arguing that decisions and control over censorship to protect children should be left in the hands of parents and teachers - that centralized censorship even when well-intentioned "throws the baby out with the bathwater." I hope somebody translates the whole thing. It concludes: "The government can use all kinds of mechanisms to guide and urge parents to take responsibility [for their children], but it not become the omnipotent "great parent.""
As the week progresses I'm putting more of my money on the likelihood that the Green Dam filtering software edict will not get implemented, or efforts at enforcement will fade quickly. One thing Western observers need to remember is that China has a long history of edicts targeted at the tech, telecoms, and media sectors going un-enforced, quietly retracted, or morphed in practice into something very different. There was the failed attempt to ban encryption software back in 2000. There were multiple failed attempts to force Reuters, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, etc. to sell all their news exclusively through Xinhua. Both were defeated by strong lobbying by international industry groups. The effort to impose a real-name registration requirement on Chinese Internet companies died after fierce opposition from Chinese industry. And last year's new requirement that online video websites in China must have majority state ownership appears to have gone ignored. Etc.
great blog post. Your last paragraph highlighting previous failed attempts by the government offers a glimmer of hope. I hope the GNI can play a lead role then in lobbying against this.
Posted by: kaleidoscope | June 09, 2009 at 01:16 PM
This is not a censorship software. It's a garbage software that can be uninstalled easily. And you have to instruct it to work before it can block any pornography. You can also instruct google to filter pornography. Why do people get political over garbage softwares? The real politics here is that a company can use a garbage software to steal money from the state (the use fee is in the millions, for just one year!), not that the state is trying to use the software to block politically sensitive information. Why do people keep talking about the false politics but not the real politics here?
Posted by: faked quartet @ obama inauguration | June 09, 2009 at 04:39 PM
If it can be uninstalled easily, then why must one have an administrator password, known by state officials, to uninstall it?
China's government is afraid of its people...
Posted by: Dave | June 12, 2009 at 07:44 AM
Technical analysis shows that Green-Dam doesn't block UltraSurf effectively. A simple workaround to defeat green-dam is to change the port number in c:\windows\system\filtport.dat (installed by Green Dam) from 9666 to any other number such as 9667. UltraSurf works again.
The technical analysis also shows Green-Dam is a browser text/image filtering software rather than a firewall software. I would say China government has been defeated in firewall circumvention battle in network field. The frontier has moved from network to browser field.
Posted by: UltraSurf project leader | June 12, 2009 at 07:45 PM
"why must one have an administrator password, known by state officials, to uninstall it?"
You are BSing people Dave. On Windows any user with admin rights can uninstall software.
Posted by: Charles Liu | June 12, 2009 at 08:28 PM
In addition, the memo Becca posted states clearly what's been provided for free is the "1st year subscription" of the anti-malware.
So as it appears not only is the end user not obligated to use it, it's only free for one year.
Don't tell me, the computers will stop working after one year because of some magic admin password, Dave.
Posted by: Charles Liu | June 12, 2009 at 08:41 PM
Chinese programmers of Green Dam allegedly stole code from Solid Oak Software of Santa Barbara...
"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A California company claims that the Internet-filtering software China has mandated for all new personal computers sold there contains stolen programming code" reports the Associated Press.
Posted by: arc | June 12, 2009 at 10:25 PM
I've just checked, and there is definitely some filtering applied to Firefox 3 with Green Dam 3.17: when I try to search Google for "porn" or "sex", the search request is silently killed, but the browser stays open. This behavior went away when I used the update feature to get version 3.173, which seems to use less blacklists. However, if I try to go to sites that are still listed in the adwapp.dat blacklist after the update, the page load is silently killed, even though I am using Firefox. I am confident that it is not some other pattern matching mechanism triggering on the domain name and happening to overlap with the blacklist, since the .net versions of some .coms in the list are not killed.
I'd also like to clarify that the Web filtering vulnerability can be exploited through more browsers than IE, including Firefox. It is still in version 3.173.
Posted by: Scott Wolchok | June 13, 2009 at 02:05 AM
Scott, I installed Green Dam on my box and was not able to repro the crash. I had Windows 7, Moroa AV, and Defender.
Did you guys disable conventional safeguards like antivirus and firewall? If you did I must insist that is not a valid test, as Green Dam is content filter only, not meant to replace conventional safeguards.
Posted by: Charles Liu | June 23, 2009 at 07:16 PM
There was never a mandate to force installation of this software. According to the original 5/19 MIIT announement, the software is to bundle on hard drive or CD-ROM. There may have been confusion over the term "preinstall/bundle", but both MIIT and the software maker have clarified this point as early as 6/10, that what is distributed is the setup file, and users are not required to install or run Green Dam (IMHO unfortunately ignored by the media at large, who seem to have opted for sensationalism)
I have made a post about it on my
wifi technology Blog
Posted by: Mr.wifi | June 30, 2009 at 02:07 PM