Friday, February 1, 2013

Great Firewall Engineer Han Weili Calls for Job Applications


On January 26, the web site of the state-sponsored Yunnan Information Daily published an article entitled "Fudan Professor Publicly Calls for Applications for Great Firewall Employees" [复旦老师公开招长城防火墙员工]. Some excerpts:
On January 24 someone using the ID "weili" posted an invitation for Ph.D job applications to the software college board of Fudan University's "Sun Moon Brilliant China" forum saying: "Anyone interested in improving the GFW, if you're interested get in touch with me." The incident triggered the attention of other users, and launched a technical debate around the matter.
Yesterday, [Fudan University software instructor] Han Weili confirmed that he was "weili" in response to a email request for an interview. He declined to be interviewed citing as grounds that "the post was in-artfully worded and he was not authorized by other parties."
. . . .
In his solicitation, Han Weili said he had been "working on this Topic for over 12 years," and responded to users' reactions about this technology saying "as a scientist providing a kind of technology, this is no big deal."
"That is just the nature of certain technologies, you just don't get it. Han Weili said "You can not participate and be all holier than thou, but there's no need to denounce others who try to improve it."
Han Weili believes this technology "is just a set of access control systems. The basic concept is block unauthorized access." But he admitted that there were two issues with this technology: "The first is a lack of transparency in strategy, the second is that Great Firewall strategy execution has a false-report rate that is too high." 
在复旦大学“日月光华”论坛软件学院分区,1月24日,一名ID为“weili”的网民发帖招聘博士生,“有谁对改进GFW有兴趣的,有兴趣可以先联系我。”(图①)事情引发了其他网民关注,围绕技术性质展开了一场辩论。
. . . .
昨日,韩伟力在回应采访请求邮件时,默认“weili”是其本人,并以“帖子写得不够规范,也无对方授权”理由,婉拒了采访。
. . . .
在招聘帖中,韩伟力自称“在这个Topic上研究超过了12年”,他回应反对该项技术的网民称,“作为科学家提供一种技术,本没有啥。”
“有些技术见解就是如此,你们无法理解而已。”韩伟力说,“你可以做道德帝不去做,没必要谴责别人去改进”。
韩伟力认为这项技术“就是一套访问控制系统。基本概念就是阻碍非授权的访问”,但其承认该项技术存在两方面的问题:“一是策略制定不透明;二是防火墙策略执行误报率太高。”

Translation: Xu Zhiyong's Statement in His Own Defense

 Source: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/694913.html China Digital Times: On April 10, 2023, Xu Zhiyong, a well-known human rights de...