Some thoughts on the Chinese Net

Several people have posted to the list that the Chinese, censored, 
Internet will fail. Usually, the claim is that the censored network will 
fail mostly because of technical reasons, namely the inability of the 
Chinese government to censor everything. The other significant claim made 
was that the Chinese problem is "behind" the "firewall" leading into the 
country... Suggestions have been made that RSA is involved with China to 
implement this censorship.

I would suggest that the Chinese solution to these problems is singular, 
and simple: the total inability to conduct any transaction anonymously.

How can this occur? It takes two parts; one simple, one somewhat more 
difficult.

The simple portion is a national (Chinese) database associating true 
names with key IDs. These keys will be usable only to sign documents, not 
to encrypt information, similar to the Federal DSS.

The more complex portion (from my perspective, at any rate) is a 
modification of the standard TCP/IP protocol, requiring that each packet 
be signed by its originating user. This would require lots of software 
modification on the Chinese end, as well as a conversion process at the 
National firewall. (This is where the censorship takes place; the 
censors don't filter out unwanted information, they sign acceptable 
information. They then store a reference to the bit of information with a 
hash. If the hash checks out, they don't need to re-sign the data. This 
allows a ramp-up after a while to provide adequate quantities of 
information).

The real question is who's going to design/implement this protocol? The 
answer is Western sofware companies which want to do business in China. 
RSA would obviously be called upon to design the protocol, as well as 
perhaps provide certain implementations of it. Another likely candidate 
is Microsoft, whose Windows OS has been declared a National Standard by 
China. It would hold obvious financial benifits for MS to develop a 
Chinese TCP/IP protocol for Windows. Any company which wants a monopoly 
in a country of > 1 billion people could probably get in on this deal.

Now that all information has a recognizable source, dissidents in China 
can be arrested, and unacceptable information never makes it into the 
country.

Can anybody say why this can't be implemented? Or why China wouldn't 
implement it?

This is obviously a worst-case scenario, but one which appears, at least 
to me, to be technically feasable.

I'd love to hear otherwise.
Jon Lasser
----------
Jon Lasser (410)494-3072                         - Obscenity  is a crutch  for
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Jon Lasser writes:
> The more complex portion (from my perspective, at any rate) is a 
> modification of the standard TCP/IP protocol, requiring that each packet 
> be signed by its originating user. This would require lots of software 
> modification on the Chinese end, as well as a conversion process at the 
> National firewall.

They could use no stock software, and they would grind every machine
in the country to its knees doing the signatures. RSA signatures
aren't cheap.

Furthermore, you couldn't check the signatures at the other end fast
enough and it would probably be easy enough to steal keys. I doubt
this would fix their problem.

Perry

On Wed, 14 Feb 1996, Jon Lasser wrote:

> Several people have posted to the list that the Chinese, censored, 
> Internet will fail. Usually, the claim is that the censored network will 
> fail mostly because of technical reasons, namely the inability of the 
> Chinese government to censor everything. The other significant claim made 
> was that the Chinese problem is "behind" the "firewall" leading into the 
> country... Suggestions have been made that RSA is involved with China to 
> implement this censorship.

I think it *will* work, in part because China has a very long history of
repressing and persecuting its own people.  Besides, if they really get in
a tight spot, there's always "the nuclear option." 

If you think I'm kidding, read the news about China threatening to nuke
Taiwan if they declare independence. 
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