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Comment by Taniwha | Hacker News Reader

Um, Hong Kong is OUTSIDE the Chinese firewall (for now)

More likely they are doing this to preserve anonymity

The article says it's to share news with tourists in HK, who would have previously been behind the firewall.

> But news of the protest has been heavily censored in mainland China, with any mention of the mass movement wiped off the Chinese internet.

> Hong Kong’s protesters have therefore turned to Apple’s AirDrop feature to get their message across to their mainland Chinese compatriots. That the messages are written in simplified Chinese—Hong Kongers use traditional Chinese—confirm that the intended audience is Chinese tourists.

This is about protesters subverting the purpose of the firewall, not a technical loophole. Tourists from mainland China might not know about the protests, because of the firewall. Protestors are using AirDrop to directly deliver photos and information to the tourists, which is probably much more effective than physical posters that people can ignore or rip down.

Question--could a directional wifi antenna be used (plus amplification) to AirDrop things from HK across the border into Shenzhen?

On that note, I stayed at an international hotel chain on the Shenzhen side's border that had terribly slow but unfiltered internet. Google.com auto-redirected to Google.hk. I always wondered if they used a VPN or maintained a covert internet beam from across the river...

EDIT: Derp--another comment already posted this question.

If it's an international chain they likely have VPN set up at the edge, and have licences allowing their VPN connection filed with the party

As I already wrote, if things like FB, Google, WhatsApp etc. are all blocked and most Western news sites are blocked/censored...will you suddenly know they exist because you crossed the border and go scour them for news about these protests...?

You cross the border and, to your surprise, see 250k+ people protesting about freedom. You search Baidu for HK protests as that's your go-to search engine and all you know. What do you think you'll find...?

Visitors from mainland China still mostly use popular apps that is censored no matter they are inside or outside the mainland, like WeChat.

Similar to how USB was used to overcome the airgap by Stuxnet. Flow of visitors to HK and back to the mainland means information gets past the firewall. Those people can pass the files on via the same method.

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