Helping people circumvent the Chinese firewall is tantamount to
abetting a crime-and thereby unethical, unless a competent
international body (like the U.N) officially makes a statement to the
effect that China is a fascist state where citizens are brutally
oppressed by the Government and denied any human right whatsoever. If
a competent body were to make such an assessment of the situation in
China, then by helping people in that country to evade the firewall,
the Wikimedia foundation (since the persons involved are, apparently,
Wikimedians-whose primary goal is to make Wikipedia available to
Chinese users) would indeed be serving the cause of freedom, liberty
etc. However since no international body has officially deemed the
situation in China to be as bad as that in N.Korea or some such place,
the abetting of such a crime cannot be justified. Secondly, the fact
that (as Anthony said) the U.S government is likely to give grants to
those who help bring down the firewall itself proves that America
wants the firewall brought down so that it (the U.S) may achieve it's
geo-political objectives in China. In that sense aiding criminals (as
indeed those who violate Chinese law are) will be unethical-even if
those criminals (to us) seem to have reasonable intentions. And going
by (only) the U.S assessment of China is unfair-there is an
international machinery in place to pass judgement on human rights
violations in various countries. Now for the Wikimedia Foundation or
those who are acting on it's behalf (even though they may deny doing
so) would be highly unethical. Now as for the U.S Government
supporting you guys, please consider which is more important to the
American Government- the rights of the Chinese people to access a
website or diplomatic relations with China.
As for Dan: If a teenager who "exercises his right to free speech" is
shot, yes the regime in that country is a fascist one. However if a
teenager breaks the law of his country, willingly (assuming this law
is not a violation of any Human Rights) he can be punished as his
country deems fit. In this case the firewall-law does not seem to be
violating any human rights-if it is then the UNHRC would've certainly
made an issue of it. So, if a Chinese citizen violates this law he
will probably be tried for treason-a crime punishable by death in
almost every country which still allows capital punishment. Let me
illustrate with an example-in India homosexuality is an offence
punishable by incarceration. Does this mean that any gay person who is
jailed in India is being deprived of his fundamental rights? No.
Because no competent body has claimed that Section 302 of the Indian
Penal Code is a violation of International Human Rights laws. The case
with China is the same. Unless some international organization
declares officialy that the Chinese firewall is a serious violation of
human rights we cannot presume that we are doing the ight thing by
"upholding the rights of the (what we call) oppressed Chinese people".