>In July, 2024, a group of Chinese technologists and researchers met at an office in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, to discuss efforts to stop internet users bypassing the Great Firewall, China’s vast online censorship and surveillance apparatus.
>Even by Chinese standards, internet controls in Xinjiang are intense, a legacy of a years-long crackdown by the authorities targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. Preventing people from dodging these controls – to access banned websites or download secure messaging apps – was a key government priority, part of a “long-term struggle and technical confrontation” vital to nationwide “anti-terrorism” efforts, according to minutes of the 2024 meeting.
>That record, reviewed by The Globe and Mail, is contained in a leak of more than 100,000 internal documents linked to Geedge Networks, a little-known Chinese company that has quietly assumed a key role in developing the Great Firewall and providing similar censorship capabilities to governments around the world, including in Myanmar, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan.
>The Globe – along with researchers at InterSecLab, Amnesty International, Justice For Myanmar, the Tor Project and reporters at Paper Trail Media – has spent months combing through the leak. The files offer a key insight not only into how Geedge exports cutting-edge censorship technology to its authoritarian clients, giving them capabilities they might not otherwise have, but also into the evolution of the Great Firewall itself.
>[…]
>After its founding in 2018, one of Geedge’s first clients was the government of Kazakhstan, to whom the company sold its flagship Tiangou Secure Gateway (TSG), which provides functions similar to China’s own Great Firewall, monitoring and filtering all web traffic that passes through it, as well as attempts to bypass such censorship.
>The same tool has been rolled out in Ethiopia and Myanmar, where it has been instrumental in enabling that country’s military junta to enforce a ban on VPNs. In many cases, Geedge works with other private companies, including internet service providers (ISPs) such as Safaricom in Ethiopia, or Frontiir and Ooredoo in Myanmar, to enact government censorship, the documents show. No ISPs that have partnered with Geedge responded to a request for comment.
>In all three countries, Geedge was providing technology previously unavailable to its clients, expanding their internet censorship capabilities. By contrast, in Pakistan, the Chinese company appears to have stepped into a vacuum created by the exit of one of its Western competitors: Waterloo, Ont.-based Sandvine.
>In February, 2024, Sandvine was placed on a U.S. sanctions list for “facilitating human rights abuses” by providing “mass web-monitoring and censorship” to authoritarian regimes around the world. The company – now rebranded as AppLogic Networks – was removed from the list in October after it exited several dozen countries and promised to “focus on servicing democracies.”
>Sandvine quit Pakistan in 2023 amid growing scrutiny of its work there, and was quickly replaced by Geedge, which the documents show apparently utilizing existing Sandvine installations as well as providing new technology to power Islamabad’s Web Monitoring System, as the country’s national firewall is called.
>[…]
>As well as the countries named above, the Geedge leaks show the company works with government agencies in at least three regions of China – Xinjiang, Jiangsu and Fujian – as well as with an as-yet-unidentified national client labelled in the data as A24.
>It has ambitions to go further. In a speech last year, Geedge co-founder Fang Binxing – known in China as the “father of the Great Firewall” – said the company was “expanding into international markets, promoting Chinese solutions and technologies globally.”
>Mr. Fang, who has previously advised other countries – most notably Russia – on their own online controls, referenced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a key priority of Chinese leader Xi Jinping that involves building infrastructure and energy networks connecting Asia with Africa and Europe. A recent job ad posted by Geedge also mentioned the BRI. That ad sought candidates “able to speak English or another foreign language,” and willing to go on three- to six-month business trips to “Pakistan, Malaysia, Bahrain, Algeria, and India.”
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Archived version: https://archive.fo/itOR0.
>In July, 2024, a group of Chinese technologists and researchers met at an office in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, to discuss efforts to stop internet users bypassing the Great Firewall, China’s vast online censorship and surveillance apparatus.
>Even by Chinese standards, internet controls in Xinjiang are intense, a legacy of a years-long crackdown by the authorities targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. Preventing people from dodging these controls – to access banned websites or download secure messaging apps – was a key government priority, part of a “long-term struggle and technical confrontation” vital to nationwide “anti-terrorism” efforts, according to minutes of the 2024 meeting.
>That record, reviewed by The Globe and Mail, is contained in a leak of more than 100,000 internal documents linked to Geedge Networks, a little-known Chinese company that has quietly assumed a key role in developing the Great Firewall and providing similar censorship capabilities to governments around the world, including in Myanmar, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan.
>The Globe – along with researchers at InterSecLab, Amnesty International, Justice For Myanmar, the Tor Project and reporters at Paper Trail Media – has spent months combing through the leak. The files offer a key insight not only into how Geedge exports cutting-edge censorship technology to its authoritarian clients, giving them capabilities they might not otherwise have, but also into the evolution of the Great Firewall itself.
>[…]
>After its founding in 2018, one of Geedge’s first clients was the government of Kazakhstan, to whom the company sold its flagship Tiangou Secure Gateway (TSG), which provides functions similar to China’s own Great Firewall, monitoring and filtering all web traffic that passes through it, as well as attempts to bypass such censorship.
>The same tool has been rolled out in Ethiopia and Myanmar, where it has been instrumental in enabling that country’s military junta to enforce a ban on VPNs. In many cases, Geedge works with other private companies, including internet service providers (ISPs) such as Safaricom in Ethiopia, or Frontiir and Ooredoo in Myanmar, to enact government censorship, the documents show. No ISPs that have partnered with Geedge responded to a request for comment.
>In all three countries, Geedge was providing technology previously unavailable to its clients, expanding their internet censorship capabilities. By contrast, in Pakistan, the Chinese company appears to have stepped into a vacuum created by the exit of one of its Western competitors: Waterloo, Ont.-based Sandvine.
>In February, 2024, Sandvine was placed on a U.S. sanctions list for “facilitating human rights abuses” by providing “mass web-monitoring and censorship” to authoritarian regimes around the world. The company – now rebranded as AppLogic Networks – was removed from the list in October after it exited several dozen countries and promised to “focus on servicing democracies.”
>Sandvine quit Pakistan in 2023 amid growing scrutiny of its work there, and was quickly replaced by Geedge, which the documents show apparently utilizing existing Sandvine installations as well as providing new technology to power Islamabad’s Web Monitoring System, as the country’s national firewall is called.
>[…]
>As well as the countries named above, the Geedge leaks show the company works with government agencies in at least three regions of China – Xinjiang, Jiangsu and Fujian – as well as with an as-yet-unidentified national client labelled in the data as A24.
>It has ambitions to go further. In a speech last year, Geedge co-founder Fang Binxing – known in China as the “father of the Great Firewall” – said the company was “expanding into international markets, promoting Chinese solutions and technologies globally.”
>Mr. Fang, who has previously advised other countries – most notably Russia – on their own online controls, referenced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a key priority of Chinese leader Xi Jinping that involves building infrastructure and energy networks connecting Asia with Africa and Europe. A recent job ad posted by Geedge also mentioned the BRI. That ad sought candidates “able to speak English or another foreign language,” and willing to go on three- to six-month business trips to “Pakistan, Malaysia, Bahrain, Algeria, and India.”
!ping Democracy&Foreign-policy