Chinese offered tools to crack the Great Firewall

On the eve of the Beijing Olympics the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC) has released a toolkit that will allow people in China to access any web site they want.

The set of five tools is designed to get around China’s formidable online censorship systems, dubbed the Great Firewall of China. They include tools for encrypting traffic, hiding the user’s IP address and enabling FTP downloads.

"Just as the Berlin Wall once fell when the East Germans came together and demanded their freedom, we too will give those living in closed societies the technology to take down the Great Firewall that separates them from the rest of the world," said the GIFC.

"More and more people in closed societies are becoming aware of the power of our technologies and the power of information. As more and more of them are empowered by information freedom, no Firewall, no Berlin Wall, and no Iron Curtain will be able to hold them back – it's simply a matter of time."

The toolkit is available for a free download from the GIFC web site. The group claims over a million Chinese use them to evade the censors.

The GIFC keeps a list of the sites most commonly visited by users of its tools. YouTube, Google and Wikipedia are among the most common.