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".