Bypassing extreme internet censoring? (hypothetical!)

#1

Let me just say, all of this is purely hypothetical, I’m not a conspiracy nut. I’m not planning on overthrowing my government and installing a new government either :3
It’s important to a story in development by someone I know.

First of all, if a future totalitarian government wished to monitor and censor all internet traffic, and prohibit connection to foreign networks (of course the government itself would still be able to do that), how would it go about it?

My idea was some sort of replacement for the Internet Protocol that only allows you to connect to networks with a certain signature.

How would one then bypass such censoring? In other words, how would one connect to networks that don’t have a particular signature for example.

My idea on that was to use old hardware with old software (still using IPv4, for example) to connect to other networks or computers with the same protocols.

Which brings me to my final point: how would people communicate? There would only be a few servers using the old protocols still running (without the government’s knowledge), so how would one easily find eachother, with standard present-day applications?

TL;DR: how do you use present-day household technology to circumvent a hypothetical future censored national (i.e. cut off from the rest of the world) internet, and would that ‘national internet’ work?

I hope someone can help me with this.

#2

before the internet people just used yelling and it worked fine

#3

So, it’d be some system that only allows you to go through to certain sites you mean? Depends where the block exists. If it existed in your computers hardware or software, there would be modded cards or cracks made to circumvent the system. If it was at the ISP end or something, that’s a much more difficult system to get around, because all your traffic has to go through them. You could also use a proxy that just forwards the webpage you want to you but shows it as traffic from another site.

#4

For story purposes, I don’t know how possible this is, but people could create things like the google bots to search as much as the internet as possible, in order to find the said servers.

Another way for people to communicate would be for them to find some way to hitch lifts using the government servers, or creating backdoor ports into the government server via a virus of sorts, and that way they could use the servers to talk to eachother. Of course you would have to have previous knowledge of the backdoor, along with the correct software.

Another things they could do, assuming that they managed to get a virus onto the government system, then they could perhaps (provided they had enough skill in coding) alter the way that the servers blocked peoples internet, perhaps letting certain people through, or certain sites allowed, or maybe even taking away the block altogether, but taking away the block would definately cause suspicion, and would probably get found out.

A different method they might use is to not use the normal internet altogether, but perhaps create a “pirate internet” of sorts, similiar to pirate radio broadcasters. Maybe they could start using radiowaves of a frequency not monitored, or using a normal frequency, but encrypted. What I’m thinking of would be similiar to WiFi? Provided that I’m not mistaken on how WiFi works.

If these are used in the book suggested, could you tell us the name of the book? It sounds like quite an interesting read.

tl;dr
Lots of different ways to go about it.
Want book title.

#5

totalitarian government wished to monitor and censor all internet traffic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Project

How would one then bypass such censoring?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet

#6

One word, Hamachi.

#7

and yelling

#8

“Hey, Pierre! Remind me again where we are meeting tonight to discuss our revolution against the totalitarian regime, the penalty for which would be a horribly painful death stretched out over several days and making imaginative use of spaghetti and kitchen sponges!!”

“We’re meeting in the old warehouse, Jean Claude, and woe be us should we be discovered by the secret agents and/or government listening devices that permeate our modern society! Ha ha!”

#9

Where’s DansonDelta? He should be writing about how we’re all sheeple that believe every word our master overlords say. Then he would go on to list all the injustice in this world and how we turn a blind eye to it blah blah blah blah.
Like HE ever does anything about it.

#10

Where’s JohnKiller118? He should be writing some shit that he himself is totally incapable to understand. Then he would go on to highlight how awesome he is despite being horribly mistaken, he would pretend to be the smartest guy around like a total hypocrite.

#11

I sense… a storm…

#12

Where’s Kaze? He wouldn’t have posted in this thread.

#13

“The storm is coming.”

#14

#15

Sadly.

#16

We’re way past that point already.

#17

“FUNNY IMAGES? I’VE GOT YOUR FUNNY IMAGES!”
“NIP SLIPS? FIVE FOR TEN DOLLA! NIP SLIP VIDEO, PICS HERE! MAYBE PARIS HILTON BEAVER SHOT, YOU LUCKY!”
“CATS WITH CAPTIONS!”
“LONGWINDED UNINFORMED RANTS ABOUT PIRACY, POLITICS, VIDEO GAMES! YOU SIR, YOU LOOK LIKE YOU WANT TO ARGUE ABOUT POLITICS! CARE TO- MA’AM, YOU LOOK LIKE A CAMWHORE! CARE TO STEP INTO MY BOOTH AND DISROBE FOR OUR PAYING AUDIENCE?”
“CHILD PORN HERE, GET YOUR CHILD PORN HERE!”

#18

Yeah, it’d be the ISP. I’m not sure about the extent of censorship within the country, but the main thing is that there is no communication with the outside world.

I’m looking for something more along these lines.
The idea is that someone finds some old computer that somehow escapes detection by the system blocking traffic with the outside world because the way it accesses internet is different from what it is then.

Wouldn’t it be possible to use the network infrastructure without using the standard protocols?

Let’s say for example there’s the Censored Internet Protocol (CIP) in the future. Couldn’t you then use the infrastructure with IPv4 (which is completely forgotten about by that time) and communicate with other people using IPv4?

The problem is that it’s supposed to be a coincidence, so there won’t be any elaborate schemes to circumvent the system involved.

I’m afraid this is very, very preliminary and isn’t by an established writer, so it will certainly not be published for many years.

Thanks for the links mattemuse.

#19

It’s you, isn’t it.

#20

Trust me, ipv4 won’t be forgotten for many, many years.

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