Firewall USA to Firewall China

[lmccarth at cs.umass.edu]

Alex Strasheim writes:
> For what it's worth, I have a friend who just got a job with Apple's
> operation in China.  According to him, Hong Kong is fully wired, but
> mainland China only has about 5,000 net accounts outside of government or
> acadamia.  All 5,000 of those accounts seem to be served by a single 64kbs
> connection to the outside world, which suggests that they're email only.

In that case, I expect it will be fascinating to see what happens to *.hk
when it gets swallowed by China. Presumably the Chinese govt. will at least
try to enforce the regulations (registration etc.) it has announced so far.

What is the Hong Kong part of the net doing in anticipation of the 
transition ?  Depending upon what happens in the next couple of years, it
seems to me that *.hk could be an impressive Trojan horse for the mainland
authorities to handle. I suggest that anyone who wants to deploy crypto tools
behind the Great Firewall should seriously consider outfitting the Hong Kong
populace with them.

-Lewis	"You're always disappointed, nothing seems to keep you high -- drive 
	your bargains, push your papers, win your medals, fuck your strangers;
	don't it leave you on the empty side ?"  (Joni Mitchell, 1972)