The Chinese government censors the Internet: if you're in China, you can not see all of the Internet.
I would like to propose some subversive software that makes it impossible for the Chinese government to maintain the practice of censorship effectively.
I'm using China here, but this would be
applicable to any country with censorship limiting free speech.
I propose that we write a compact http proxy that people can run on their Windows desktop. Like p2p programs, the proxies stay in touch with each other and maintain a list of the other proxies.
Web browsers in China can connect to any of these proxies and through the proxy access the entire web, including sites that the Chinese government blocks by ip address.
The idea is that the power is in having a vast and changing number of proxies, making it impractical to block them all by ip address.
There is a piece of client software also, that a Chinese surfer could use, but this is not required to use the pool of proxies, so even people who can't get their hands on the client software can benefit. What the client software does is try to locate one of the proxies and then, when it has found one, it will read the list of proxies, and pick a fast one. It could even use a different proxy for every http request.
It could also use encryption to encrypt the traffic between proxy and client, making it impossible for the government to eavesdrop. This kind of traffic should be disguised as regular https.
I imagine that a few generations of this software may be needed before it really becomes strong.
Careful thought has to be given to ways of limiting abuse of this system (such as hammering individual web sites through the proxies).
Also, we need a campaign so that many people in the "free world" will have the solidarity to run the proxy app. Maybe a something like the yellow wristband can be worn to indicate participation.
I apologize if this is poorly written or not worked out. Perhaps it is something that can be done though. If it's possible, we really should: it's worth it.