Falun Gong wants financial support from US in the guise of fighting censorship

Ten years after a government crackdown drove it underground in China, Falun Gong is trying to position itself to get U.S. government funds to help defeat Internet censors worldwide. The spiritual group's efforts to stay in contact with its members in China spawned a sophisticated effort to evade Chinese censors, which has now expanded enough that it was used by Iranian protesters to get around government controls in June.

Zhou Shiyu, a faculty member at Rutgers University in New Jersey and spokesman for the group, said that at the center of the effort is the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, made up of about 50 software engineers and Falun Gong practitioners. GIFC didn't get any of the $15 million earmarked by the U.S. Congress in 2008 to support efforts to defeat Internet censors, in part because of Falun Gong's anti-China stance.

This summer, China backed down on plans to mandate all new computers come with Green Dam filtering software, which combats porn. Rights groups said it potentially blocked any politically sensitive content at the user level.

Falun Gong's software enables users to navigate to blocked sites without being detected. It is available through a dynamic URL, making it more difficult for Chinese filters to identify and block. According to GIFC estimates, a million people a day use its software in China, and 400,000 in Iran. Besides, it is popular in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Myanmar.

No program could get around China`s Internet control after July 5 riots in Urumqi, when Uighurs turned against the majority Han Chinese, as China has simply cut off all Internet services in the region.