The "Great Firewall of China" is not so great after all

China's all-seeing, all-knowing "Great Firewall" is once again failing to live up to its iron-tight billing. American researchers have been monitoring the elaborate filters that block the many words and phrases that the People's Republic of China deems objectionable, and has found that a fair number -- as high as 28 per cent -- are actually getting through. And, in moments of peak usage, the filtering was even more erratic. How do they know this?

According to Science Blog, researchers at University California, Davis and the University of New Mexico have been firing censorious words at the filters to see what passes through and what gets rejected. They've even developed something called the ConceptDoppler, which will track online censorship radar-style. They've concluded that the firewall serves less as a filter than as a type of "'panopticon' that encourages self-censorship through the perception that users are being watched," Science Blog reports.

Google users have already found a way around the censors. Just misspell the search term and you can usually find what you are looking for on Google.cn. Here's an example with "Tiananmen Square".

The researchers tell Science Blog that China's methodology of blocking by keywords has considerable limitations as it is successful in blocking people from accessing information based on topics. But, use a little creativity (such as the example above), and the information can be obtained. The effectiveness of the filter lies in people's belief that the government has managed to find a way to block all access to the information. Frustrated, net users in restrictive countries give up and the power of the filter grows in the collective conscious of the populace.