Why hasn’t Tor been blocked? II

A few weeks ago I wondered aloud why Tor hadn’t been blocked, and came to the conclusion that the Chinese government is not concerned with determined users circumventing the GFW for non-threatening purposes, and allows Tor as a backdoor for this reason.

The problem with this argument, however, is how does the government know what constitutes non-threatening purposes? The government can know, and I believe does know, exactly who is using Tor and when, but they can not know what the user is writing or viewing with Tor. Tor is a tool for users like me, who want to get around the GFW for non-threatening purposes and have a bit of privacy from their ISP (it’s none of Beihang University’s or the internet police’s business what I tell my parents in an email); but it is also a tool for dissidents. Does the Chinese government care enough about the privacy of my email and my being able to access benign content on a few sites that they actively block, such as Wikipedia, Technorati and WordPress.com to allow this powerful tool to exist for dissidents? When put like that, I seriously doubt it.

So, why hasn’t Tor been blocked? To help further identify suspected dissidents? Consider the following:

I’m sitting at home using Tor. The Chinese internet police see my computer periodically connecting to a Tor directory server. They know I am using Tor. Ok. Here’s someone using Tor. Who is he? Well, his IP address is linked to Beihang University. A quick check with the Beihang University IT department reveals that he is Kevin Smith in building AB apartment XYZ, his passport number is 123456789, he teaches English and has no record of political activity aside from voting in those despicable American national elections. Not too likely that he is a dissident.

Wang Guolu is sitting at home using Tor. The Chinese internet police see his computer periodically connecting to a Tor directory server. They know he is using Tor. Ok. Here’s someone using Tor. Who is he? Well, his IP address is linked to China Netcom in Dalian. A quick check with Dalian China Netcom reveals that he is Wang Guolu who lives in building CD apartment UVW on Renmin Lu. His ID number is 987654321, he has a low paying job at a local factory and is suspected of being a member of the FLG. A relatively low paid factory worker using advanced internet anonymizing software? That just screams dissident.

Why else might Tor not be blocked?
-My original backdoor theory might be true, but I rather doubt it now.
-Nanny doesn’t know about it? Nanny blocked psiphon’s homepage in a few short weeks. Nanny is currently routing Torpark downloads to Google’s homepage. Nanny knows about Tor.
-Some progressive people at Nanny know about Tor and allow it as a backdoor while the less progressive people at Nanny don’t know about it, but should they ever find out that’s the end? Sounds farfetched.
-_________________________________________. (you fill in the blank)

If it is because Tor helps identify dissidents then the question as to whether Tor will one day be blocked becomes “Is the government more afraid of allowing dissidents to use Tor, and ordinary citizens who learn about Tor and want to use it to learn more about the world than what the Chinese government would prefer them to know, than it is successful identifying suspected dissidents via said suspected dissident’s use of Tor?” As Tor becomes more popular in China and as ordinary Chinese start using the internet for more than kiddie stuff like MMORPGs, getting the latest celebrity gossip off Sina and video chatting via QQ, I think the government will block Tor.

Some people in the American government don’t like Tor. Some feds in Germany write letters to people operating Tor servers asking them what they are doing. Can we really believe that the Chinese government isn’t allowing Tor only because of some reason that is more beneficial to them than blocking it like the one I’ve given above? If that reason should ever go away, that will be the end of easily using Tor in China.

The Tor developers say they are working on a technology that will enable use of the Tor network even if a government tried blocking it. Let’s hope that they finish before that happens.

Tags Tor, GFW

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