China Orders E-Mail Screening

Greyfox writes: "According to this CNN article, China has ordered Internet providers to screen users' E-mails for subversive statements. See how fascist governments control the flow of information? Aren't you glad our government doesn't do this? Oh... Wait..."

Comments

Devil's Advocate

[Glorat]

Well, at worst it is only consistent with their general policy of internet filtering/censorship. If they have their "Great firewall of China" this is a logical extension of that firewall.

Maybe this will close up some of the relays ;)

[teambpsi]

Considering the number of relays in orbz and ordb that are out of the 210 and 211 sub-class A blocks i would think that perhaps this might be a good thing, in so far as the mail relays getting closed up

Since a majority of that "subversive" text being bounced off of them are for "american get rich way of life" propaganda ;)

Linux - the key to oppression?

[Sinistar2k]

Now thanks to Red Flag Linux, filtering the thoughts of your citizens is cheaper and more reliable than ever!

Back in the day, you'd have to pay Microsoft big bucks to squelch dissenting opinions and always had to worry that radicals spreading Western ideals would be able to exploit OS vulnerabilities and cause trouble. Not any more!

I wonder if China will GPL their filtering software?

(By the way, I'm not being down on Linux. I'm just dismayed at the irony of a government using one of the most free [as in liberty] operating systems to actually reduce freedom.)

Typical liberal leftist name-calling

[Anonymous Coward]

China is a *communist* country, not fascist. Please, try to get it right. The left you love and adore is equally capable of crushing human rights. Numerous examples abound - look at the media's darling Castro - Cubans die of old age and malnutrition in jail for having dared to speak against the socialist regime in place there. Political extremes, right or left, are indistinguishable to the man in the street, both crush all liberty.

Read the Chinese Constitution first.

[karmma]

It's already in the The Chinese Constitution. This "new" policy is merely an application of an existing law to new technology.

Article 40. The freedom and privacy of correspondence of citizens of the People's Republic of China are protected by law. No organization or individual may, on any ground, infringe upon the freedom and privacy of citizens' correspondence except in cases where, to meet the needs of state security or of investigation into criminal offences, public security or procuratorial organs are permitted to censor correspondence in accordance with procedures prescribed by law.

Do any readers here actually believe that snail mail to and from China is any less scrutinized than email will be? My sister lived and taught in China for a couple of years (we are Americans). Letters and packages I sent to her were routinely opened and inspected before they were delivered to her. I can safely assume that if she and I had access to email at the time, those correspondences would have been equally intercepted and reviewed as well.

Dealing with those spammers from China

[Paul Wright]

I get loads of spam from China, or advertising Chinese websites.

Looks like sending the postmaster a note congratulating him on joining the Falun Gong might work well.

Re:The difference between China and the U.S. . . .

[dj28]

Your extremist views pretty much negate any thoughful comment you had in that post, and that's a shame. There is a big difference that I pointed out in my original post. Email sent here in the USA does not have limitations on pornography (look at all the porn email now, although a lot of it constitutes spam), violence (unless it's a threat toward someone specific), or any idealogical/religous/cult thoughts. That isn't so in China. Sending a lot of emails we send here in the states would be illegal in China. Putting China's screening techniques on the same level as the USA's once again shows your liberal bias. Remember, it's easy coming up with complex conspiracy theories. Backing them up isn't so easy when they aren't true. That's the easy way out.

this has to stop..

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what, I'm really getting sick of the bigotry that I see here on Slashdot. Anytime a story is posted based on our rights, department of justice, business, etc... there always has to be a flame aimed towards the United States of America. I'm assuming most of the readers here have mostly a leftist view on most political issues, and that's absolutely fine.

But what about the conservatives who read Slashdot? What about us? How do the people who read Slashdot with a right winged attitude feel about biased comments that contain negativity, and to some of us, a fallacy (sp?) towards our government, economy, policies, etc...

Comments as well (I'm posting this anonymously for a reason). Whenever I post a comment that will go against something I read in an article that will have a conservative view to it, maybe 75-80% of time time it will get modded down to -1 (52 posts, no flames, Karma 2, you do the math). Whatever happened to getting 2, 3, 4, everyone's side of the story?

The moderation system on slashdot is awful and wrong. Using an analogy of a hostile government. If I say anything remotely conservative, I will get modded down. Hmm... seems fair enough.

I know the editors will not read this comment, nor will anyone who read this care, but I hope that anyone who does read this post will maybe understand that sometimes you should take into consideration other people's ideas and thoughts and not just have a one track mind and think that whatever Slashdot rights is legitimacy

--Anon

Privacy on the Internet

[omnirealm]

Like it or not, privacy is not a fundamental provision of the Consititution. If you place your messages in the public domain (which is what you do whenever you send an E-mail over the Internet), don't be surprised when it is screened, read, etc., by either the government or anyone who happens to own the router that your message passes through.

If you wish to have privacy, then you must send your communications over a private, secure channel, which the Internet is not. For example, the U.S. Postal Service is an entity that sends information securely; you can rest assured that your letters will never pass through the hands of a third party. But if you transmit information by posting a postcard on a bulletic board, it is free to be read by anyone who passes by, including government law enforcement officials.

You can attempt to make your messages sent through the public Internet "private" by encrypting the messages (which is perfectly legal and will continue to remain legal as long as our government is a free government). But that does not GUARANTEE privacy.

There is a general mistrust of government in general in this forum, which is sad. While I agree that the size and scope of government should be kept to a minimum, we should be able to trust the elected officials in a republican system, since we choose who our representatives will be. And we should certainly trust the executive branch (the ones actually screening the public E-mails) to do what they need to enforce the laws our elected representatives pass. If they aren't, then the people should vote accordingly for representatives that will fix the problem.

And despite what most people think, law enforcement officials are WAY to busy to concern themselves with the details of your private life. They are only concerned for the information that will help them protect the public from criminals.

Re:Privacy on the Internet

[J'raxis]

Like it or not, privacy is not a fundamental provision of the Consititution.

No, but it can be inferred from the third, fourth and ninth Amendments (and probably bits and pieces of five and six). The third Amendment has been interpreted to mean that people have a right not be under constant surveillance by law enforcement. The fourth Amendment, The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, should be obvious. And the ninth Amendment is the one that says, basically, that just because the constitution only protects certain enumerated (spelled-out) rights does not mean the people do not have other ones, that arent explicitly forbidden elsewhere.

If you place your messages in the public domain (which is what you do whenever you send an E-mail over the Internet), don't be surprised when it is screened, read, etc., by either the government or anyone who happens to own the router that your message passes through.

Sending email is no more placing messages in the public domain than using the postal system is. Placing messages in a public forum (e.g., Usenet, Slashdot, etc.) would be, however. Simply because email is sent plaintext through a bunch of third-party routing servers does not mean it is public, no more than postal mail being handled by a dozen different postal workers, makes postal mail public.

There is a general mistrust of government in general in this forum, which is sad. While I agree that the size and scope of government should be kept to a minimum, we should be able to trust the elected officials in a republican system, since we choose who our representatives will be. And we should certainly trust the executive branch (the ones actually screening the public E-mails) to do what they need to enforce the laws our elected representatives pass. If they aren't, then the people should vote accordingly for representatives that will fix the problem.

Yeah, youre right, the people should. They should be able to trust the government, and should vote accordingly when the government betrays its ideals. Unfortunately, youre describing a functional constitutionaldemocratic-republic, not the United States, here.

[Law enforcement officials] are only concerned for the information that will help them protect the public from criminals.

The problem is what, exactly, gets defined as criminal.

Give me a break!

[anomaly]

I can't believe the comment about our opressive government! Obviously you people have not studied oppression in history!

Clearly we must be vigilant in our maintenance of our freedoms, but to compare China with the US in terms of controlling information is simply demonstrating a lack of education.

Have you looked into what China did to US reporters during the Tiananmen square uprising? Contrast that with the US media in President Clinton's face demanding to know what exactly he had or had not done with "That woman, Miss Lewinsky."

The government having the capacity to screen emails at ISPs may be unpleasant to you. If so, encrypt your email. Carnivore _may_ be something that we need to stop, but it is NOTHING like the opression suffered by the people of the PRC.

Get off your self-righteous horse, and live under martial law at the hands of a despotic dictator for a while. Then come whining to me about "oppression" in the US.

Re:Give me a break!

[Rogerborg]

• I can't believe the comment about our opressive government! Obviously you people have not studied oppression in history!

And neither have you, or you would understand that all dictatorships are benign - to begin with. The 2nd amendment to the Constitution recognises exactly that.

The intention or the degree of oppression is not the issue. Dictating directly or through propaganda what is right and what is wrong - as opposed to serving the will of the electorate - is oppression. I'd say that we have a government so composed of incumbents and hereditary heirs that it already views itself as master and not servant. A benign master perhaps, but a master none the less, and you don't give power to a good man that you wouldn't want his bad successor to have.

As you say, it doesn't look too bad right now. Of course, it gets just a little worse every year, but not so much that any one incident is enough to force the issue, and all the controls and crackdowns are justifiable. It's unfortunate that we can't move towards a more liberal society that treats people as innocent until proven guilty, but, hey, there's a lot of bad people in the world, right? Just one more restriction, then we'll be done, promise.

And so we go. Are you willing to bet that in 30 years, the next generation isn't going to look back and say "My god, why didn't you stop this peacefully when you had the chance?"

Yeah, exactly like the U.S.

[Gannoc]

Because if I sent an email saying "I think President Bush is doing a bad job." to someone, the secret police are going to bust in and put me in a labor camp.

Somebody please be rational

[Lord Ender]

Threre is a HUGE difference between censoring people's emails (what china will do) and simply reading people's emails. In my opinion, anything sent in plain text over the internet should be considered public anyway!

I can't believe you got a +5 for say reading email and censoring an entire population are the same thing. My God!

Encryption recommendation

[3ryon]

People in China should check out Spam Mimic which hides messages in what appears to be SPAM.

Example message: "Death to the facist regime"
Encrypted to read (paste the below in at their website and it will translate it for you):
Dear Friend , Thank-you for your interest in our publication . We will comply with all removal requests . This mail is being sent in compliance with Senate bill 1623 ; Title 7 , Section 302 ! This is not a get rich scheme ! Why work for somebody else when you can become rich within 58 MONTHS . Have you ever noticed people will do almost anything to avoid mailing their bills plus nearly every commercial on television has a .com on in it . Well, now is your chance to capitalize on this ! We will help you use credit cards on your website & deliver goods right to the customer's doorstep ! You can begin at absolutely no cost to you ! But don't believe us ! Mr Jones of Alabama tried us and says "I was skeptical but it worked for me" ! We are licensed to operate in all states ! If not for you then for your loved ones - act now . Sign up a friend and you get half off . Thank-you for your serious consideration of our offer ! Dear Colleague , This letter was specially selected to be sent to you . This is a one time mailing there is no need to request removal if you won't want any more . This mail is being sent in compliance with Senate bill 1627 ; Title 4 ; Section 307 . This is not a get rich scheme ! Why work for somebody else when you can become rich within 58 MONTHS ! Have you ever noticed nobody is getting any younger & more people than ever are surfing the web ! Well, now is your chance to capitalize on this ! WE will help YOU increase customer response by 200% and deliver goods right to the customer's doorstep . You can begin at absolutely no cost to you . But don't believe us ! Prof Anderson who resides in Wyoming tried us and says "I was skeptical but it worked for me" . We are licensed to operate in all states ! We urge you to contact us today for your own future financial well-being ! Sign up a friend and your friend will be rich too . Cheers !

I Don't See a Huge Difference

[Greyfox]

The US has become a country where I can go to jail for writing or talking about a piece of software that lets me access a piece of media I paid for. Simply publishing a math paper now requires consulting with high paid lawyers. Laws are being drawn up that will mandate the control of information on all consumer devices and bypassing those controls will buy you jail time. Foreign nationals are kidnapped on a daily basis both for these crimes and others, and secret courts are being discussed to "Try" them.

Thus far it's true that for the most part the government doesn't kill its citizens. Well, unless they're black and pulled over by a jumpy cop doing racial profiling or something. Or they live a lifestyle the government doesn't like. But apart from that, the government doesn't kill its own citizens! Truly!

And it's true that the media will keep them honest! Nevermind that the media is mostly owned by the same corporations which have been steadily lobbying for the removal of your rights for the past several decades.

But true, we're nothing like the Chinese and we don't really have anything to worry about!

Re:I Don't See a Huge Difference

[90XDoubleSide]

I can go to jail for writing or talking about a piece of software that lets me access a piece of media I paid for.

Has it? Last time I checked, when a huge corporation tried to go after someone for practicing free speech there was a huge public outcry and the case was dropped. This is the difference between democracy and totalitarianism, which is what the original poster was trying to point out. In our country, unjust laws like the DCMA are fought tooth and nail, are currently not being enforced very rigidly, and will probably be struck down in court or repealed in congress, or at least amended, in the near future. Want to go over to China and try to get them to change the law to allow freedom of religion?