In an effort to help journalists in Beijing surf the Web anonymously and unhindered by China's censorship, the Chaos Computer Club out of Germany has been distributing these little USB sticks with a Tor-enabled Web browser installed. They call 'em "Freedom Sticks". Here's an excerpt from their blog, explaining how they (and Tor) work:

To circumvent the Chinese censorship, the Freedom Stick uses the Tor network. Tor is a worldwide system of servers, run by volunteers to combat censorship and suppression of information by anonymizing data packets transmitted over the Internet. It encrypts the data and routes it through different servers within the Tor network, rendering useless any efforts of tracing it back to the source. A controversial new German law on data retention, currently on appeal at the German Federal Constitutional Court, criminalizes the operation of Tor network nodes. This complicates the work of volunteers that support democratic movements in dictatorships and oppressive states.

The impact of these Freedom Sticks among these journalists may not be very big, but it does illustrate an important point. Having software pre-installed on a USB stick is a great solution for people who may not be quite computer literate enough to swing it themselves, i.e. the average user who may not be tech-savvy.

While Tor is a bit slow, it's certainly a safe tunnel through the Great Firewall. And while other solutions may be a bit technical, you can't get anymore primitive than putting a stick in a hole.

Even your average Olympic journalist can pull that off.



Related: Using a VPN to beat Chinese censorship

 

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