/. [Dissidents Seeking Anonymous Web Solutions?]

[cypherpunk]

> Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/13/0250226
>    [1]DocMurphy asks: "I'm working with some dissidents who are looking
>    for ways to use the Internet from within repressive regimes. Many have
>    in-home Internet access, but think it too risky to participate in
>    pro-freedom activities on home PCs. Internet cafis are also available,
>    but although fairly anonymous, every machine may be infected with
>    keystroke loggers that give governments access to and knowledge of
>    'banned' sites. Dissidents not only want to remain anonymous
>    themselves, but also wish to not compromise the sites they access. Any
>    suggestions for products/procedures/systems out there making anonymous
>    access & publishing a reality under repressive regime run Internet
>    access?"

There were some good ideas presented, the best of which were probably
to first compose an email at home, then PGP encrypt it, then stego-ize
it, then put it on a USB token and bring it to the internet cafe, and
send it there.  For receiving, download a bunch of junk from a mailing
list used for this purpose onto the token, go home and de-stego and
de-PGP it.

This doesn't work though for web browsing. For that you need a real
time channel. You can go to various proxies, and some people run them
specifically to help the Chinese, the slashdot replies talked about
this. But first, the Chinese block them when they find out, and
second, it makes you look suspicious if you're visiting one.

Be nice if there were a high bandwidth stego channel that was widely
available. For example, imagine an open source P2P multi player game
which intentionally included a reasonably high bandwidth channel of
random data. It would be a service to the public to play this game and
thereby provide people who need it the ability to communicate
undetectably. Dissidents could use a hacked version which would
replace some of the random noise bits with their messages. Only the
recipients could distinguish the results from noise.

CP