Governments with a flair for exercising autocratic control over citizens have no qualms about blocking social media sites in their countries. Just ask people in China, Iran and North Korea who have no access to Twitter, for example.

But developers at freedom of speech advocates Lantern have built an Android app that lets users in Twitter-censored countries set up and access their accounts, with the help of users in countries where it isn’t blocked. proving that the internet can never truly be 100% censored.

FireTweet is open source and uses secure servers and peer access points to provide internet access to blocked sites. What that means is that if you live in a country where there are no internet restrictions you download the app, and in doing so allow people in more restrictive regimes to route their Twitter traffic via a secure, anonymous connection to your phone. You shouldn’t see any difference in your performance, but essentially you’ll act as an access point for users in censored countries.

Those wanting to access Twitter can download FireTweet and get started right away. According to the website, it’s easy to use, so there shouldn’t be any hassles with signing into Twitter. To help out and act as an open access point, you can download Lanternm which will allow you to provide access to many other blocked sites as well.

[Source –FireTweet via FastCoCreate, image – CC by Open Source]