US-funded Lantern program allows Chinese to dodge Great Firewall and view banned websites
Software program funded by US government that helps internet users get around censorship is rapidly winning friends on the mainland
Lantern, a new software programme which allows internet users to circumvent government-imposed censorship, is seeing rapid growth in China as more people are using it to bypass the Great Firewall of China to access websites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
“China just cleared 10,000 users,” Chris Holmes, a product manager behind the computer application, told the in an email. “Two weeks ago, it was probably 200.”
Holmes is one of five software developers at Brave New Software developing the application, which is currently available in a beta version.
The software allows users in countries with free internet access to donate a share of their internet bandwidth to users in countries where some websites are blocked, such as China or Iran. Once they log in, a share of their traffic is channeled through the network.
Lantern calls itself a trust network, because it sends this traffic only through users separated from him or her by four degrees, or, in other words, everyone a user could meet by four rounds of introductions. Snooping by government agencies could therefore not be ruled out, Holmes said.
