[Wikimedia-l] Blocking of HTTPS connection by China

[Tim Starling]

> On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 2:31 PM, Ryan Lane <rlane at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> A very small minority of users don't have HTTPS
>> support, or their computers are so old that it makes the site unusably
>> slow. That's a *very* small percentage of users, though.

There's also the small issue of a billion people in China who can
access our site by HTTP but not HTTPS.

Making *.wikipedia.org unconditionally redirect from HTTP to HTTPS
would have the effect of making it completely impossible for them to
read anything, whereas currently, it is only difficult to read
information on certain politically-sensitive topics.

HTTPS would be useful for reducing government snooping in developed
countries like the UK and Australia. But it's not a solution for China
(because HTTPS is equivalent to null routing) or the US (because they
can use court orders to accomplish whatever they want to achieve on
the server side).

-- Tim Starling