U.S.-based Internet giant Google is funding high-tech research into software that can detect when and where governments and Internet service providers are interfering with normal Web traffic.

Google on Monday accused the Chinese government of disrupting its e-mail services inside China, as netizens complained of inaccessible accounts and attempts to steal their passwords.

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""At the end of the project, the team hopes to provide a suite of Web-based, Internet-scale measurement tools that any user around the world could access for free," Georgia Tech said in a statement on its website."

Which will be blocked and declared illegal ASAP by all governments which censor the internet.:jap:

Freedom! Information! Democracy!

Go Google!

Google may be a huge company, but taking on a country like China no less may not be wise...

only Google ? in China, MAJORITY of social media are blocked - no YouTube, no Facebook . . .

what Chinese government concerns, not the information technology, but the SPEED and FREEDOM of communication - especialy something they don't want everyone to know that soon :-) aha . . . information is the king !

There's already a service like this, kind of, find it very useful:

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

This checks whether a server is down, or it's just your connection that can't reach it. Of course in Thailand the govt' tells us when they're messing with things with a nice MICT message.

Google may be a huge company, but taking on a country like China no less may not be wise...

True but it doesn't look like they have much of a Choice. If what they're saying is true, then they're on China's target list already, and they already have a team of Chinese agents hacking away at their service. Given absolute control of ISPs, that's a scary prospect; they could do all sorts of stuff.

One Example I can think of: China implements an anti-terrorism measure whereby it intercepts all security tokens and replaces them with their own. Most users won't even think twice about clicking OK to the new, uncertified security certificate. I also happen to believe that somebody in control of ISPs can actually fake both the certificate and the certifying authority, making fake certs impossible for end users to detect. But like I said - such sophistication isn't necessary when you're a dictatorship and can make up laws as you see fit. Chinese internet users are not going to sue the government, nor would that make any sense.

Now if you have a fake cert, that means you can do man in the middle attacks at will. You can then get email passwords, and all email archives from Gmail using dissidents. If you're China, you can automate the process, and make it possible for the government to look at any Gmail account that has been accessed from within China at the push of a button.

That is a direct attack on Google, and its business model - it has to fight back technologically. I assume the two factor authentication scheme it just introduced is another product coming out of the China attack. Knowing the company, I assume they have a separate team working on the "China problem".

It's now a cat and mouse game between the two sides. I don't think China wants to shut Gmail off - they just want to listen in. Google is surely going to pull some strings in Washington too.

A (crappy) government could probably lean on certificate authorities to issues certificates for them, or to give them the capability to make their own.