News: "U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship"

[Tim May]

This report says the U.S. Gov't. has plans to make "SafeWeb," the Web 
proxy company it helped fund through the CIA, available to Chinese 
citizens who want to bypass their government's censorship.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010830/wr/tech_china_internet_report_dc_1.
html

(I can already hear Aimee moaning about this anarchic undermining of the 
official Chinese government...until she realizes it has been blessed by 
a "legitimate" organ of the government.)

So, what happens when Iran decides to finance systems in the U.S. to 
bypass U.S.G. censorship (e.g., of talk by freedom fighters)? Or when 
Denmark finances a system to bypass crackdowns on teen erotica in the 
U.S.? And so on.

Here's a brief excerpt:

Thursday August 30 3:23 AM ET

U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship -NYT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - United States government agencies hope to finance 
an American-based computer network designed to thwart attempts by the 
Chinese government to censor the World Wide Web for users in China, the 
New York Times reported in its online edition on Thursday.
....
According to the report, the agency is in advanced discussions with 
Safeweb, a small company based in Emeryville, California, which has 
received financing from the venture capital arm of the Central 
Intelligence Agency (news - web sites), In-Q-Tel. The discussions were 
confirmed by parties on both sides, the newspaper said.

Safeweb currently runs its own worldwide network of about 100 privacy 
servers -- computers that help disguise what Web sites a user is seeking 
to view -- which are popular with users in China, according to the 
report. The newspaper said the privacy servers have been a continuing 
target for the Chinese government, which has blocked most of them in 
recent weeks.