Huang Qi about picidae

It sounds like fun, but the risks are real.

Others had to pay a high price for their activities on the Internet. Huang Qi is one of the best-known Cyber dissidents of China. He was imprisoned for years because he ran a Home page. On his site 'Tianwang' people were able to search for missing people.

Huang Qi
"On March 31st 2000 I published a letter of a mother on my homepage, who accused the police of having beaten her son to death. I further published a picture of her dead son. Just 60 hours later I was arrested."

Today Huang Qi faces his past with a smile. He was imprisoned for five years, for three of them he had to sleep on the floor, with his hands and feeds tied up. 2004 he got the 'Cyber-Freedom Award' from 'Reporters without borders'.

Huang Qi was released two years ago. He didn't allow himself to be muzzled. He reopened his site 'Tianwang'. Which was promptly blocked by the government. To reach it one has to break through the 'Golden Shield'. Although different possibilities exist, no-one is able to access the Internet free on a permanent basis.

Huang Qi
"Until today there has been no good way to break through Internet blocking. But the Method of the Swiss artists circumvents censorship with such ease that I have only seen very rarely."

picidae is based on an ingenious and simple idea: say it with pictures. With this simple trick one undermines Chinese censorship, because it searches for suspect words.

Anyone who invokes an Internet page via picidae, immediately recieves the automatically generated image of this web page. E.g. of the blocked site 'Tianwang'. Due to an elaborate technique the user does not recognize that he is surfing on an image. Everything appears to be normal.

picidae as a window on the world - it works without additional programmes and needs no extra technical knowledge by the user. For that reason, picidae is especially attractive for Huang Qi. His site is a network for ordinary people, who do not own a computer.

Huang Qi
"The Swiss method works also in Internet cafés, because one does not have to install Software. Anyone can use it. That's really unique. This technique will have a revolutionary effect."

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• commentary
• analysis
• documentary