Re: Another bad idea
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On 12 Jul 96 at 9:40, Arun Mehta wrote: [..]
As I see it, the Chinese communist government will not live to see more than a few years (if any) of the 21st Century. We are all aware of the devastating impact of telecommunications, TV and computers on authoritarian regimes. E.g. in the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Easterners watching West German TV was a significant contributory factor.
Some say Hong Kong might be a contributing factor.
Satellite TV is available all over China.The government may, for a while, be able to ban satellite dishes, but soon their size will reduce to that of a
BTW, similar problems in Iran fro what I've heard. I remember hearing a blurb that VOA Chinese Programs explained how to make a setellite dish out of aluminum foil, so pick up special VOA boradcasts I'm sure... (That's rather intersting, because you can crumple it up or wrap leftovers in it immediately.) [..]
What that does is give us a window of opportunity. Hongkong has one remaining year of guaranteed unfettered flow of information. China still has the Internet. What can we do?
I'm told by some friends that the Chinese, in large part due to the writing system, prefer FAXs over the internet. That's something to keep in mind. Hm... interesting project: a graphics program that works with PGP or PGPlib. One can import scanned images or draw onto the screen and then encrypt it for mailing. Are there any secure FAX protocols that could be worked into communications software and standard modems?
1) Collect the e-mail addresses as Allen suggested (including those in Hongkong), and send them a single, short message offering to teach them free of cost how to use pgp and all the goodies at http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/cbsw.html
Might be condescending. 'Civilized white man brings PGP to the barbarians...' They may well know about PGP, but not in a position to make that knowledge widely known. And if I were in a 'totalitarian' or restrictive country I'd be damn suspicious, maybe frightened by this ('are the secret police setting me up?' or 'will the notice if I reply?'). What if that person like the way their country is? They could inform the local authorities and set in motion a crackdown that would not have happened, perhaps. I'd leave the specifics to activists who are already familiar with the respective cultures, societies, politics, etc.... chances are they are already doing things along those lines. Otherwise, if you don't know what you're doing, you can unintentionally mess up somebody else's life, if not your own. Rob --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl@unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl@unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.
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Deranged Mutant