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Vice Blog

New York - Psiphon


We realize this has already been all over the nerd blogs and whatnot, but we thought it warranted mention if only for the pandemonium it stands poised to wreak on certain parts of the world. Some guys at the University of Toronto have created a program called Psiphon that allows you to set up your own proxy server, which you can then tell your friends in repressive places like China and Iran how to log on to so they can bypass all their government's Web censoring tools. This may not seem like such a great leap forward to those of us whose use of the internet is exclusively consumed by lo-res porn and videos of guys getting their hands lopped off by helicopter blades, but consider that when we were in China for the Vice Guide to Travel  DVD some guy got busted (probably for life) just for joining the Democratic party online.

In that case Yahoo sold him out, but if this thing works like it's supposed to it would have been nearly impossible for the government to track down the owner of the proxy server and needle him into ratting out his friend. We've also got a bud who works on nanotubes at the University of Illinois, and you know what the first thing all FOB Chinese geniuses do when they get there? Watch Tiananmen Square footage. Seriously, they all do this before even setting up an email account. Their whole country's been itching to see this shit for almost 20 years without getting arrested and this might finally be their chance? Can you imagine all those people suddenly that pissed at the gov? LA Riots ain't got shit on that.