Slashdot Mirror
Is China's Control of the Internet Slipping?
Garp writes "According to the BBC news site the Chinese governments grip on the internet is slipping. Ever since they allowed use of the internet, the Chinese have been monitoring the information that has been flowing (jokingly referred to as the great fire-wall of china), in an attempt to ensure 'bad' philosophies don't infect their people. However, the internet is having a much more profound affect, out of the control of the government ..."
free thought invading, oh no!!!
I want 2D games back.
I would say that is prolly for the better for everyone, since we will be able to reach more people with more information. Perhaps this will help in the human rights debates that have been rampant in China over the past years.
Now the population of China will be subjected to the American way of life, destroying thier "innocent" standards.
Is there a way to kill direct uplink satellite Internet access? Other than killing the satellites? This would be a away perhaps for the Chinese to "get out".
kill 9 squid
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
I should think (and hope) so. Even with all the fuss about trade being the way to democratic reform in China, free access to the internet is probably one of the few things that will actually work..
Tons of unrestricted information should give the Chinese a chance to bypass the biased/false national news and make up their own minds. and that is probably a good thing.
Hate to break it to you, but there are actually two "i" in "slipping".
Stumbling in the dark
I hear slavering of jaws
Eaten by a grue.
Can't get there from here. That's impressive.
Despite how well their plan to monitor the internet has gone up until this point, did the Chinese governement really expect to keep certain parts of the internet from a billion people?
As with the sun's light
My mom was magnificent
Unquestionable
Unlike in the US where the government controls the media (e.g. currently its: terrorists are evil and the government should be allowed to do what it wants in the
pretences of stopping it. Basically forcing the media to suck up to the government).
In China it seems that the media is free and the government only controls its distribution (stopping anti government stories).
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
We all know that China's news institutions (government controlled) will soon be ignored. The Chinese government won't always be able to restrict their users from reading information from the BBC, CNN, and other institutions.
China's GOV has to face the music. They can't and won't control what their people see on the internet--at least not forever. As more and more people there use the internet, those people will find ways to express their views.
Well they let the cat out of the bag and now they can't get it back in. Politicians underestimate the possibilities of the internet, nothing new here.
The interesting idea is that AFAIK China has the largest population on earth, what will happen to the internet once the chinese politicians give up and let them roam free? Even if just a small part is on the net we will begin to see the influence of chinese culture. And what about language? Today english is de dominant language in the internet, but there is an awful lot of chinese speakin people that might get connected. Time for a new language class anyone?
- We are the slashdot. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be moderated -
I think it's really interesting that China has spent so much time and effort trying to protect its citizens from ideas from outside without realising that ideas that come from inside are just as dangerous. People who talk to each other cannot be fooled by propaganda, as the article mentions -- a mining disaster which killed 81 people was initially supressed, but when word about it spread on the 'net anyway the official newspapers ended up reporting on it.
The logical conclusion of this is that the much-protested firewall that China has put around itself will be of no help at all in supressing dissent, as long as chat rooms and even e-mail exist.
Summary:
In this paper the authors illustrate how two authoritarian regimes, China and Cuba, are maintaining control over the Internet's political impact through different combinations of reactive and proactive strategies. These cases illustrate that, contrary to assumptions, different types of authoritarian regimes may be able to control and profit from the Internet. Examining the experiences of these two countries may help to shed light on other authoritarian regimes' strategies for Internet development, as well as help to develop generalizable conclusions about the impact of the Internet on authoritarian rule.
The whole document is here
Of course it will slip even more when peekabooty gets finished and individual sites can't be blocked from a savay user.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
This reinforces a fundamental fact of human behaviour: People generally ignore laws. If there is a policeman standing at their elbow, they'll obey the law, but as soon as the policeman is not obviously present, they'll go back to doing whatever they feel is "right".
When it comes to mp3 trading, usage of illicit drugs, or discussing Chinese politics, there are three simple options in the hands of the government:
1. Allow them,
2. Put police everywhere (think 1984), or
3. Change how people think about such activities (public anti-drinking-and-driving campaigns are a good example of this).
The Great Firewall of China might help the government identify (and eliminate) any rebellious leaders, but it won't stop the spread of ideas and ideals.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
If you have -any- way access an outside machine that is relatively in your control (ie: shell access, which can be bought for a few dollars a month) then you can get by any protection.
Here's an article I wrote not too long ago about how to do it:
- - - -
Breaking Through Any Firewall or Proxy
There's different reasons for breaking through firewalls/proxies.
1) Get completely unfiltered access to the internet.
2) Get unmonitored, or secure, access to the internet.
3) Access services normally disallowed by the firewall.
The article will demonstrate various ways to get by most implementations of firewalls/proxies. In absolutely no way am I responsible if you do anything you're not supposed to, or even supposed to, be doing. If you get caught and fired, tough shit. If you access illegal information, tough shit. If you open up a hole and somebody breaks into your computer, tough shit. I'm not responsible. (This is for the lawsuit-happy bastards out there.)
Anyways, lets begin:
For all methods, it is expected that you have access to a machine on the other side of the firewall, and that it has access to whatever you need.
Your machine will be the CLIENT, and the machine on the other side of the firewall will be the TUNNEL. The accessed machine will be the SERVER.
Furthermore, this article also assumes you a basic knowledge of your browser's configuration, installing software on your CLIENT and TUNNEL machines, and logging in via SSH.
A Linux/Unix box is preferable for the TUNNEL, but not required by any means. The software is freely available for any system.
1) HTTP Tunneling Through SSH
Often, only some ports will be firewalled (80, 21, etc) for caching, filtering, and monitoring purposes. However, they leave direct access available for other ports (25, 23, etc).
If your browser must use a proxy to access the web, but you don't require a proxy to get mail, this is probably the implementation.
If you have direct access to non-popular ports, you can access almost any service as long as you change the port. Generaly, the main purpose of bypassing this firewall is to have unfiltered and/or unmonitored web access. The method can of course be modified to meet your needs.
Install a proxy server (ie: tinyproxy) on the TUNNEL machine. For security purposes, set the listening port to an odd port (ie: 8999, REMOTE_PROXY_PORT) or set access rights to only localhost. Install an SSH (ie: sshd) server on the TUNNEL. For security purposes, set the listening port to an odd port. Do NOT set access rights to only localhost because you'll access the proxy through ssh.
Install an SSH client on the CLIENT machine. Select a random port (LOCAL_PORT) and then set the browser's proxy to localhost:LOCAL_PORT.
Run SSH with LOCAL_PORT forwarded to REMOTE_HOST:REMOTE_PROXY_PORT.
(CLI ssh: ssh -L LOCAL_PORT:REMOTE_HOST:REMOTE_PROXY_HOST -l USERNAME REMOTE_HOST)
Once connected and logged in, if the proxy and the tunnel are working correctly, you've got completely unfiltered web access.
(NB: Using a SOCKS5-compliant proxy would offer an almost completely unfiltered and unmonitored connection, as long as the application supported SOCKS proxies.)
2) SSH Tunneling Through HTTP
Some implementations allow only HTTP access, while blocking all other ports.
Check out Corkscrew at http://www.agroman.net/corkscrew/
Corkscrew is a tool to allow full SSH access through a strict HTTPS session. Then through the SSH access, you can create another tunnel to allow access to all other programs.
Conclusion)
Hopefully this allows some of the people out there to worry a little less about getting caught doing things they're not supposed to. The reason for using SSH in both cases is because it's encrypted. In the event you are caught, at least you're only caught for breaking teh rules, there's nothing additionally criminalizing.
SSH can also be used for a lot more interesting things. Using Windows, you can instal Cygwin, ssh into a *Nix box and tunnel over X connections, and end up working as if you were actually at the machine.
Anyways, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
--unformed
Today patriotism in China means loving the Party and loving Socialism," said one contributor. "You can destroy China's environment, but you can't criticise the Party.
I just loved that quote. Replace China with America, Party with President, and Socialism with Democracy and you have everything we have here.
Yes, I know this is a troll, but considering the state of our country, the quote just cracked me up and I had to share. Feel free to mod me into oblivion.
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
Well, my guess as to why China is having a hard time censoring their citizens viewing, is simply that of manpower.
:)
With how fast content is created and updated on the internet, even with active filtering software, would require a fulltime staff of tens of thousands of people just to find blockable content.
I imagine the Chinese goverment is slacking in their efforts to completely block "objectional" content, just by not throwing enough manpower at it.
Now, I in no way condone censoring any information, but lets get real...
If the chinese goverment wants to control what their citizens think, their going to.
Now, what needs to be done, is some of that new-fangled "electronic warfare".
What I mean by that, is for people who care about censorship to setup free speech propoganda websites wherever they can.
There going to have to be diffrent, so the automatic software doesnt automatically filter it.
And its going to need to have real information.
If you care about billions of people being censored, stand up, and do something about it.
If not, sit down, go back to whatever you were doing, and forget that anything ever happened.
Anyways, thats just my take on things.
-Una
In the West, about 90% of all internet activity goes through 9 portals which are controlled by a tiny cadre of huge media conglomerates, each run nearly as the singular expression of one person's ego.
We will not be forced into oppression, but seduced by it and ultimately the internet will become a weapon of tyranny.
It will be interesting in the coming years to see how China evolves from their current state. The article talks about a man who was put in jail for a few years (a concrete cell as they describe it) for having a web site with a forum where people were talking about democracy and such. It is really very said, coming from a country which strongly supports people's rights to criticize, to see a person be put away for having a venue for free speech in the real true meaning of the term.
The section about the mine collapse was interesting as well. For those who didn't read the article, there was a mine collapse killing 81 people the "the government" did not want publicized, to the point of threatening journalists. It was released on a web site, and before long, mainstream journalists started picking the story up as well. This is really a revolutionary thing in a country where the press has historically been 100% controlled.
The public being informed is a major step in a country progressing into a "modern free government." Imagine the economic powerhouse they county may be able to transform itself into if more power and rights are given to the people.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
...this BBC article was posted one day after the thirteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Timothy's control of his typing is sliipping as well.
I'd like to get your attention for "Cloudish" (www.vanheusden.com/cloudish); a distributed anonymizer. Maybe usefull in the china-context?
A history teacher I once took some courses from in High School (Military History and US History) subscribed to an interesting theory; The fall of Russian Communism resulted from McDonalds.
The fact that there were McDonalds restaurants in Russia fed the public there the image of how Americans live, and with that as a model, it became increasingly obvious that Communism was failing to fulfill it's mission of Utopia. In 1984, Orwell realized that as long as the government asserted that everything was improving, people would not be too inquisitiveabout the subject. In Russia, this became impossible, and the people lost faith in their government.
In China, it seems as though a similar evolution is occuring; The alter-ego of Soviet Commuism, Chinese Communism, is being exposed to it's antithesis. Russian Communism focused, as I understand, mainly on supression and communitization of materialism, but was then faced with the holy grail of materialism, McDonalds. Chinese Communism, now that they have seen how materialism works, focuses on supression of intellectualism among their masses, and is now faced with intellectualism's holy grail, the internet, which allows the masses to see the intellectual side of Democracy.
Obviously, the Orwellian Prophecy has come partially true in this part of the world.
"Inside an imposing building in Beijing is the Ministry of Information Industry, where a hi-tech police force keeps watch over the internet 24 hours a day. Its job is to keep ordinary Chinese people from accessing unhealthy information. That could be anything from Playboy to the BBC." -BBC News, China Loses Grip on Internet.
"The Misistry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly different form any other building in sight. It was an enormous Pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred meters into the air... [it] concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts, [anything from Playboy to the BBC]" -1984, by George Orwell.
The only difference between Oceania and China is an external one, and it is essential. China has no external enemy to pour material into to prevent it's citizen's rising standard of living. Instead, it has Europe, the United States, and many other regions of the world that have accepted democracy and capitalism.
I'm a concientious
This is bad news, even for Linux, as Microsoft has already mentioned that even if it does not like pirated software it does indeed increase its presence and the reward may in this case come some time later. The potential rewards from China are huge.
Is it me or does it seem that the internet is Essentailly a new version of the Old Radio Free Europe/ VOA RAdio network?
But then again, so it you 'I' key.
They maybe able to speell though.
It is possible that that was a deliberate sliip intended as a pun :-)
Pity that the "great firewall of China" doesn't also filter outbound spam from numerous mis-configured proxies and relays, or indeed chinese spam from the numerous spam-gangs that operate there.
It's a good thing China's control is slipping. Now maybe we can return the internet mantle to its rightful owner:
The Swiss.
Triangle Boy is one of the methods Chinese surfers are using to get around the 'Great Fire Wall' of China.
http://www.safeweb.com/tboy_whitepaper.html
Here is the gist of the free program.
Anybody who downloads triangle boy gives the ability to secretly lend his or her Internet address to users behind restricted firewalls. That, in turn, hands such users the electronic keys they need to receive unfettered access to the Web.
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
The article brought a question to mind: do P2P news clients exist? Decentralized news content strikes me as an ideal way to circumvent government restrictions on the media... but is this implemented anywhere? If not why not?
I'm a bit skeptical as to whether or not this will change China that much. I travelled through Vietnam a couple of years ago, and the internet was pretty much uncontrolled then (this may have since changed), if locals want to find out about the rest of the world they can.
While I wish it wasn't true, I starting to feel that as long as you give people a chance to improve their lot (which does happen in China) freedom doesn't seem that important.
Plus, if it does ever take off, the government can always launch propaganda floods about the evils of the West (just find a few crime storys), or that fails, there is always the army.
Personally, I feel that freedom will come to China only after a very long time. Reformers will have to penetrate the system (as per the Soviet Union) and reach it's upper levels before change will happen.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
sorry this got long (and scatterbrained)
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
"At 0300 the printing presses at The People's Daily are in full flow. The newspaper is the mouthpiece of the Communist Party. Its stock in trade is industrial output figures and the latest Communist Party dogma.
It is not a good read. "
Sounds a lot like The New York Times. Or NBC. Or CNN. Or ABC. Or CBS. Actually you could just flip the words "Communism" and "Democracy" throughout the whole article, and you have a story about the US!
hehe
Why stick up for big business?
Maybe, but somebody's control of the english language definitely is.
-- james
when the chinese finally get uncensored internet, and all they find is hamsterdance, goatse and trolls.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
somewhere in China...
Mei Ling: Hey Wang, come here!
Wang: What is it?
Mei Ling: This web page says that our General Gao's chicken is made with MSG!
Wang: Those commie bastards!!
http://www.fair.org/ - watches the news agencies. It's interesting to note: take a journalism class or talk to a journalism student. It's not about getting the truth or getting the word out to people - journalism about the bottom line. They tell you that up front. As such, it is my opinion that the media should not be owned by companies - it should be operated independantly. Hopefully, in the future, I hope for a revolution in the same vein as separating State from the media. Corporations should be separated from the media. They have absolutely NO place there.
h tml
f o.shtml
Here's one that isn't owned:
http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow.
And here's some that are:
CBS
http://www.viacom.com/thefacts.tin
NBC
http://www.nbc.com/nbc/header/Corporate_In
. . . And these are not some conspiracy Web pages - this is the company's Web site which they control.
Here is a quick overview of the "internet" which your government has not allowed you to see:
There are tons of nude celebrity pictures. They're all fake.
Liquid herbal viagra is everywhere, and you don't need a perscription!
There's this HUGE collection of MP3's that you can get for free...OOPS, too late.
The Germans like to play with poop.
There's a web page devoted to some guy's abnormally large asshole.
Tommy Lee is hung like a horse.
How will the internet really change China? Will subversive forces in chatrooms preach the values of democracy? Listening to them would be akin to listening to two grizzled *nix admins bitch about vi and emacs.
:p
Worthless.
For every honest-to-Bob truth on the 'net, there's about a thousand lies/errors/misprints/etc.
If the Chinese people start relying on the internet for information.. Well, I'd be more afraid of that than any communist power being in charge.
(Look at the 'unbiased' 'democratic' ideals of our friendly neighborhood Tocqueville institute. Look at Microsoft's FUD spread. Look at the FUD spread of Linux users. Look at FUD from anyone, anywhere. Most of what you see and read is just that - FUD.)
Because they can't monitor what goes on in an encrypted tunnel. That's really the only weakness to this design, is that people can (and do) restrict encryption, which puts you back in the same boat...
Read some of Hannah Arendt. She is one proponent of the, now classic, J-Curve Theory of Rising and Declining Satisfaction.
The idea, basically, is that all is well until the public's expectation for change becomes greater than the rate of change allowed by the government. When that happens, you get a revolution.
This is why Reform is so dangerous to totalitarian regimes - it's not the reform itself, but the rate of reform that does the 'damage'. Gorbachev wanted to reform the USSR's Communist Party - but he went too slowly, the people's expectations got too high, and the Berlin Wall fell.
The same is happening in China, and not just in the Internet-space. Economic reform almost caused a revolution - which manifested inself in the Tiananmen Square protests - because it was percievd as going too slowly, and NOT because the Chinese wanted the supposed end result of a Western-Style liberal democracy.
It's actually the process of change that people want, and not the end result. (which is good, as it means we have things like, you know, Progress).
Your examples entirely prove the point. Mainstream media (all over the Western world, not just the US) is exceedingly homogenised. As you noted, there is criticism, but it's all the same.
The USSR strove mightily to only get the one message out to its people, and had a massive security apparatus to try and make it happen. In the US, it happens automatically. Turn on Fox, and find out what Rupert Murdoch wants you to know. CNN, and it's what Ted Turner wants you to know. Funnily enough, it's more or less the same stuff.
So, to the examples given previously (IRA, Bhopal et al) allow me to add
School of the Americas (training in torture, terrorism, intimidation and other such goodies. It's in GA, for what it's worth, and the details of what it does are readily available if you know to look)
Pay close attention: it wasn't "the government" that didn't want it publicized, it was the local provinicial government that didn't want it publicized--to reporters from the official Party newspaper! Notice they stopped interfering when the news finally made it to Beijing. Reading between the lines, what happened here was the provincial governor/commissioner/party hacks didn't want the central government learning about their screw-ups and sending them to a "re-education" camp for a few years.
---dragoness
It's not the article that's interesting so much as the interest and reaction from /.ers. The reaction seems to be be a natural concern for the freedom of Chinese people instead of kneejerk racism. A good sign of changing opinion. We're seeing people as individuals instead of judging them by the actions of their governments.
Click here!
Truth is Lies.
Freedom is Slavery.
Love is Hate.
the internet is populated with more junk than useful stuff, it's good to see china creaping towards democracy that is closer to the "ideal democracy". No country has the "ideal" democracy, but the current government is far from free. Especially when people are being put in jail for stating the obvious that everyone is thinking.
"Is China's Control of the internet Sliipping?" oops! looks like your finger should have slipped off the "I" key a little sooner
"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
- Princess Leah, a long time ago and far, far away...
There is always someone smarter than you...unless you are Jason Isaacs in Armageddon and get to be "pretty much the smartest man on the planet". Trying to lock down a civilization will only ever work for a short period.
Whatever causes us to complain about laws and/or rules in th U.S., we do have it pretty great in comparison.
Remember this story?
/ 01 22238&mode=thread&tid=153
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/19
Posted by timothy on Monday February 18, @11:02PM
from the can-you-read-this-in-beijing dept.
chowbok writes: "The Weekly Standard writes that despite expectations, the Chinese Government has been very successful in suppressing free internet access for their citizens. Key to this success was the assistance of Cisco, who built a giant firewall tailored to the state's needs, Yahoo (who helpfully censors search results and monitors online chats), and other Western companies."
I think it would be better if the chinese government banned the internet in that country anyway. They obviously aren't doing much since 70% of the spam on the internet is coming from/through china. If they did something to stop the spam, you'd see the total spam drop quite a bit.
no, actually I just fucked up
sliiiiiiiiiiiiipping????
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Radio-Free Europe. I think the USA should set up very high end wi-fi along the borders and broadcast DHCP into china. Smuggle in cards, and repeaters...it would be fun for the whole family!
America would be loved...err. hated because of porn, er loved because of porn..err..shit what was my point!
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
You guys seem to be under the impression that the Chinese block news.bbc.co.uk and CNN.com.
They dont exactly do that. They block them occassionally - sometimes for months at a time.
Now I cant get to the BBC. Last week I could. Now I can get to CNN. (I am in China).
I think they do this to make the BBC and CNN a difficult to get to news source - while the peoples daily is always online...
Also most of the people here dont give a damn about democracy - go into one of the many internet bars round here - everyone is playing Counter Strike or using ICQ in Chinese...
I am in China (Shandong) and am posting as an AC as I forgot my username and password... Also it might be a bit unwise to post my name - tho I would if I hadnt forgot my username and password.
he wrote. "Thanks to all of those who care about democracy in China. Goodbye."
Of course the exact same thing thing happened to the "resistance" movement's radio station in Guatamala in the 1950s.
Turns out it was all staged.
Oh-- it also turns out that there was no resistance radio station-- it was the CIA flying around broadcasting over head.
Trust no one. You have no friends. The Computer is your friend. You can trust the Big Computer.
Whenever a politician wants to prevent you from thinking, you know they are afraid you will realize just how little they believe in what they are saying.
I think democracy will slowly creep in to China. With each passing leader will come reform. People are not stupid.
Now the question is, do they want to let it explode and cause chaos or a complete revolution, or do they want to let it ease into the culture slowly.
Of course, if you're in favor of China breaking up into pieces like the USSR, you'll think of ways to cause an explosive revolution. If you care about peace and love, you'll let them ease into it. Push them but don't shove.
eTrade SUCKS
everyone knows that China is the source of all evil. I mean they are so different. They are there for thousands of thousands of years, they don't chew/spit tobaco, they are short and they are yellow.
by the way : Good article! I love your tie!
Wasn't China our issue? Why do we have to always discuss about America?
Brilliant, mod that man up
some people just can't see the wood for the trees
"Is China's Control of the internet Slipping?"
Why does every proper word in this title begin with a capital letter, except Internet? Most people seem to agree that the word Internet does indeed begin with a capital I.
Does anyone think that if china "loses control" of the Internet, they will just shut it down or (rather than filtering what you can't see) have extremely strict control on what you can?
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Maybe China's censorship of the net has just been blown out of proportion in a big snowjob by western media with an extreme paranoia about socialism.
Rather than the Internet is having a capitalist affect on China, perhaps it's having a socialist affect on the West.
If my country, the US, wasn't so hypocritical about its own human rights abuses I'd tend to take it all more at face value, but it isn't. The US is full of shit in a lot of ways and I say that as a proud American. How do you reconcile a drug war against the citizenry with all this free market let the monopolies do as they please crap? That's pure bullshit and it has to change.
Anyhow, back to the topic, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and several major cities in Mainland China including Shanghai and Beijing are fully liberalizing ethernet net access this year and promising 2Megs up and down for twenty bucks a month with no restrictions. Meanwhile, PacBell will tell you that they have to charge you five grand a month to connect your wirelss net to a DS3 because they have no choice but to use ATM and Sonet. Why is that? Oh, because they have no QOS on ethernet networks and they need QOS for their value added services. And anyway, your download on Kazaa might get interrupted for a half second every other day and that would be a huge tragedy so they need to charge these outrageous prices and can't offer straight ethernet backbone service. Yeah right. Sounds like, we're incumbent because we got the money, fuck you. The American way.
Who's losing control here again?
At a talk he gave at Worldcon in 1998. I can't find an online citation, so I hope he'll forgive me if I mangle his words:
Intenet censorship for China is like the old "marching Chinese" idea (if everyone in China marched 10 abreast past a given point, the line would never end because it would take more than one generation for the population to pass that point). Only now the question is, can the Chinese government shoot people faster than they can get on the Internet?
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Its China, man. Leave them to it. They`ll figure it all out in their own time. They were the first civilisation on the planet...now they`re dabbling with Communism...they`ll dump it soon enough.
The Chinese government is unsophiticated in its efforts to monitor Internet use. But that doesnt't mean that the Americans can surf the web with privacy
Your internet surfing is being monitored by CIA( if you use safeweb) , FBI (that thing that they install at ISPs ),NSA ( tapping the fibre optic cables)
Good Luck!
The internet is having a similar effect on the US.
We have always believed ourselves to be
enlightened, benevolent, and all round good guys.
Now we see our money and weapons used to
oppress the Palestinians. A people who don't
have enough to eat and are fighting their
brutal oppressors. We have become
disturbed! The Israelis always said that they
would handle the "situation". They said that
we should not ask too many questions. Now, with
the Internet and non-traditional news sources
we are seeing the real situation for the first
time. We are disturbed, we don't look so
benevolent any more. What should we do?
Ban the Internet! That's it. Then we can
feel better about ourselves.
dont forget China have had a goverment for 10,000 years and the USA has had one for little over 200, and with respect you even dare to comment and say "our way is right" and assume you know your way is best , with govermental experience as a qualification for "giving advice" as to what one of the oldest countries on the planets citizens should and should not be allowed to see
the USA doesn't even get close.
I think a lot of people cant even understand another countrys goverment , even conceptually
Look at Star Wars for example, it had a federation , a counsel
You could of conceptually used any goverment model you could think of (in the whole universe!), but you chose the USA because you couldnt imagine any other goverment model than your own.
with respect to the Chinese, USA know absolutly nothing of managing a country yet, let alone giving advice
who knows maybe the USA's way is right and Chinas is wrong give it another 10,000 years we shall see
SD
--
I noticed that you are using another account to mod your posts up (+1 Underrated).
Keep up the good work, troll.
I would think that it's not the foreign media giants they should be afraid of. You can tell me that all of the media giants here in the US are owned by huge companies bent on twisting my thoughts to something favorable to them, and maybe they are.
The point of the internet is that here anyone has a voice, giving you virtually unstoppable exposure to random people's opinions on their homepages, forums, etc. which are going to be almost impossible to block out every one of unless you were to block every page but the media giants. But that's not going to happen soon.
Everyone who posts here is playing a part in the liberation of the world vs. media giants simply by writing what you think and hitting submit.
I bow before you, defenders of freedom.
~Ben
I hadn't realized that china /controlled/
the internet, I'm glad they're losing control of it!
I don't get a couple of things. First, if the Chinese govt. is feeling threatened by the Internet, why don't they just change the default policy of the firewall to deny? Instead of keeping a "deny" list, keep an "accept" list?
But, it seems, the issue isn't even really the firewall - the reference in the news article is to an INTERNAL event that spread via email and a web posting.
The Internet is a can of worms, and the worms have been let loose. If China wants to keep control of the information, they are simply going to have to drop the 'net.
Good luck, guys!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The future is uncertain so let it guide you. The Chinese/U.S./Cubans/British/Irish/Church can manipulate the media, but they could have a lot of explaining to do in the future if they block off peoples way to grow with their lies, half truths and bias. There is no reason to believe that the Chinese cannot come up with reasonable news feed while avoiding 'human rights' and 'subversive' politics while still keeping people 'entertained' and culturally distinct, burgers or no burgers. Confucius
[still] rules. Where is my Chinese dictionary?
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Tell me that doesn't send a chill up your spine.
does it really matter?
I support terrorism!
All this talk about China's attempt to control content coming in, but nothing about its traffic going out, is amusing.
China's AS's are great candidates for blocking given the hourly scans from chinanet.cn and other notorious abusers. Scans, relentless spam, and other ilk seems to be the primary product of China's information technology society (and we thought their manufacturing created garbage!).
Then there's last week's article about China launching attacks on US Internet networks in order to "balance the world order" or such. And I want AS connectivity to China for what again?
Snip the cables and let them spam themselves...
*scoove*
You struggle nobly against those who would use arbitrary language rules in an attempt to humiliate or dominate.
If the word still has a high probability of being interpreted as intended, what's the difference...
I'm just curious to what term would be used to describe this.
Genocide is the mass murdering of an entire generation/group of people/race/religion.
Maybe Monarchrocide?
It's called Regicide.
The CIA's venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, has funded a project called Triangle Boy:
m ity.software.idg/
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/02/15/anony
This CNN article from Feb. 2001 talks a little about it. But at that time it supposedly hadn't been deployed. Since then I've heard that Chinese Internet users are using Triangle Boy for secure connections to the outside world, bypassing the government firewalls.
"The fact that there were McDonalds restaurants in Russia fed the public there the image of how Americans live, and with that as a model, it became increasingly obvious that Communism was failing to fulfill it's mission of Utopia"
Why study 100 years of Soviet history when you can come to SlashDot and find out it was all down to a bunch of low-quality burgers and weight problems. Shovel it down, America - you`re not going to get that many calories when you`re doing 10 years for smoking a joint, or copying a fscking video game.
5% of the worlds population, 25% of the worlds prison population (half of it for non-violent crime)
The vast majority of Chineese people live in rural areas and are utterly uneducated. Only a relative few live in or near cities and have any sort of education or access to the internet in the first place. This may slowly change of course, but for the short term at least China's ability to overshadow the internet is basically non-existant.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I was in an Internet place in Yunnan a while ago. The shop had large official posters pasted on the wall setting out the obligations of the managers (register each user's id, don't gab with friends, check the computer when a user's finished, give a receipt, etc, etc) and the obligations of the users (one user to a terminal, no smoking, no shouting, no pornography, etc, etc).
In fact, the place was a smoke-filled madhouse, with two or three users at each terminal screaming back and forth, the manager had to be pried away from his friends to find me a seat, I was never asked for id and no surprise I didn't get a receipt when I paid.
The point is that this is what China is really like -- lots of rules and regulations upfront but everyone instinctively knows most are for show and ignore them. Of course, that's "most" not "all" and some how some way Chinese seem to know which rules are for real.
Internet shops have now spread to almost every town in China; price is a fairly uniform 2RMB/hour, about 25 cents US, and they're crowded all day and night. In many places, the settings are locked, so it's not easy to set up a proxy server or clean the cache and history unless you've got your own machine. It's also true that in the past month, for some reason, many foreign sites that were blocked have become available.
stage4 has published the latest section of their interview with 70's hacker and now security expert Captain Crunch. He talks about the shortcomings of any government trying to restrict net access.
Security expert Captain Crunch says that China's attempts to create a 'national firewall' restricting it's citizens access to the internet is "like trying to put perfume on a pig - it's totally useless man! It's not gonna work...".
http://www.safeweb.com/tboy_whitepaper.html
The real problem is that the israeli way of treating paestinians creates a lot of desperate people. Desperate people with nothing to lose and a grudge against the country that opresses them
You have it backwards. Antisemitic hatred often forces any regard for logic and history to take a back seat. The Arab and Palestinian aggression PREDATES the occupation. The occupation was a very reasonable reaction to continued unprovoked attacks from the territories into Israel.
Given the lawsuit against IBM for helping the Nazis. And given that the Chinese firewall is run by Cisco/Yahoo.
Is there going to be a lawsuit agasint thes two in 50 years by the children of political prisioners, claiming "your informing killed my dad/mum" ?
(hint: sell short)
Blah, another decent post censored by the moderation nazis. These offtopic witch hunts kind of remind me of bored old ladies watching their neighbors grass grow so they can tell them to mow it when it reaches a certain length.
This kind of crap makes slashdot less fun.
Could you elaborate on the "US" part? I don't remember that from my high-school history books.
Would be good to know what it is, since China carries a rather serious chip on its shoulder from this time.
-cmh
I tried out Freenet recently, and if there were any political dissidents using it, it wasn't apparent. The single biggest application of Freenet seems to be child pornography.
Find free books.
Criminal prisoners. Makes me wonder about the other prisoners... are those political prisoners?
The Internet is somehow promoting free speech and knowledge in China while the rights of Americans slowly dissapear (see Patriot act) in large part because of it.
As a matter of fact there is an easy way to prevent direct uplink satellite access in China. It's a death warrant.
Soundbites by the more progressive leaders made it sound like they believed that such change was not only vital but was unavoidable... eventually it would happen, with our without them.
Is this an example of how you can only control your people so much before the innevitable happens. Ironic that China has housed so much wisdom in the ancient past and now must relearn what so many others know. "Be not the rock, for while it is strong and sturdy the water finds its way around it and eventually erodes and breaks it. Be the water, it flows and is patient and all must eventually yield to its flow."
The irony is that the Chinese government distrusts the US government and Microsoft while embracing an Open Source solution (Red Flag Linux?). If anything, they should embrace Microsoft and work with them to get the control that they want. The source would be closed. They would be in control.
Either that, or they can subvert the GPL and distribute binary-only versions of a Linux distro with tricks up their sleeve.
It remains to be seen how/if they can control the Internet by creating "special versions" of various software.
Just being the devil's advocate here...
"US trained and funded death squads kill 1/3rd of population of East Timor to supress an independence movement that could damage the interests of US oil companies in nearby waters". I'm not sure whether they really killed 1/3rd of the population but it does remind me of the general business practices of big oil:
MARY HARRIS "MOTHER" JONES ON THE 1914 MINERS' STRIKE AGAINST THE ROCKEFELLER HOLDINGS (Colorado Fuel and Iron Company) IN SOUTHERN COLORADO: The miners armed, armed as it is permitted every American citizen to do in defense of his home, his family; as he is permitted to do against invasion. The smoke of armed battle rose from the arroyos and ravines of the Rocky Mountains. No one listened. No one cared. The tickers in the offices of 26 Broadway sounded louder than the sobs of women and children. Men in the steam heated luxury of Broadway offices could not feel the stinging cold of Colorado hillsides where families lived in tents. Then came Ludlow and the nation heard. Little children roasted alive make a front page story. Dying by inches of starvation and exposure does not. On the 19th of April, 1914, machine guns... were placed in position above the tent colony of Ludlow. Major Pat Hamrock and Lieutenant K. E. Linderfelt were in charge of the militia, the majority of whom were company gunmen sworn in as soldiers. Early in the morning soldiers approached the colony with a demand from headquarters that Louis Tikas, leader of the Greeks, surrender two Italians. Tikas demanded a warrant for their arrest. They had none. Tikas refused to surrender them. The soldiers returned to headquarters. A signal bomb was fired. Then another. Immediately the machine guns began spraying the flimsy tent colony, the only home the wretched families of the miners had, spraying it with bullets. Like iron rain, bullets fell upon men, women and children. The women and children fled to the hills. Others tarried. The men defended their homes with their guns. All day long the firing continued. Men fell dead, their faces to the ground. Women dropped. The little Snyder boy was shot through the head, trying to save his kitten. A child carrying water to his dying mother was killed. By five o'clock in the afternoon, the miners had no more food, nor water, nor ammunition. They had to retreat with their wives and little ones into the hills. Louis Tikas was riddled with shots while he tried to lead women and children to safety. They perished with him. Night came. A raw wind blew down the canyons where men, women and children shivered and wept. Then a blaze lighted the sky. The soldiers, drunk with blood and with the liquor they had looted from the saloon, set fire to the tents of Ludlow with oil-soaked torches. The tents, all the poor furnishings, the clothes and bedding of the miners' families burned. Coils of barbed wire were stuffed into the well, the miners' only water supply. After it was over, the wretched people crept back to bury their dead. In a dugout under a burned tent, the charred bodies of eleven little children and two women were found -- unrecognizable. Everything lay in ruins. The wires of bed springs writhed on the ground as if they, too, had tried to flee the horror. Oil and fire and guns had robbed men and women and children of their homes and slaughtered tiny babies and defenseless women. Done by order of Lieutenant Linderfelt, a savage, brutal executor of the will of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. The Autobiography of Mother Jones, Chicago, 1977, pp. 191-193
This statement is indicative of western ignorance of modern China.
The literacy rate in China is 81.5% [CIA WorldFactbook], which when you consider the difficulty of memorizing 10's of thousands of ideograms is pretty good. There are over 11 mil university students in China right now, which means roughly 15% of people go on to university.
Second, agriculture represents only 15% of the chinese economy (50% industry and 35% services) [CIA WorldFactbook]. While apx. 50% of the population is still rural (far higher than in the US) that's far from "the vast majority".
Third, in 1990, China had 102 cities with populations over 1 million [UN Statistics Division] and probably a lot more today given China's rapid urbanization (which creates a lot of problems). In fact, as many people (apx. 210 mil in 1990) live in China's "large" (1mil+) cities as in the entire United States.
China is, of course, still relatively poor compared to the US and Western Europe. And large regions of western China are still underdeveloped. Given income levels, it is no suprise that that only a small percentage use the Internet (it's not suprising that A/C's, TV's and other modern conveniences are purchased first). But we should try to update outdated views of China as we start the 21st century.
i was teaching basic internet classes to chinese kids on the mainland in '99. on the day of the 10th anniversary of tiannamen square, a really simple block was arranged to prevent online information access. we were met by a line of guys standing in front of the computer lab who, without any explanation, stopped us from entering the building. i heard some of the net cafes around town were closed too. the kids were pretty cool about it. "it's for political reasons", they told me in their sweet, reasonable fashion. we went and did something else that day.
The problem with a communist state is that there is a conflict of ideas between stability and progress. I have studied this quite a bit wrt the Soviet Union.
In order for a society to progress technologically, it has to have free speach of some sort. The more free speech it has, the more ideas get shared and the more technology can advance. That's why the "information revolution" is, for the most part, self-propogating.
However, in a closed society such as the Soviet Union and China, there is a certain level of control that the government needs to keep on speech otherwise the populace will talk about how they don't like their situation in life.
The contradiction is like a business who needs techies to make the IT infrastructure work but doesn't necessarily want to let them out of the basement for fear that they'll scare away the customers and the salespeople.
The end result is that these 2 conflicting ideas make a government seem bipolar. If you look at the Soviet leadership, there was a pattern of alternating conservative (ie, pro control) and liberal (ie, free speech) leaders. There's a joke that the way you can tell which leader is which is by their hair...bushy or bald
Lenin-liberal (ok, debatable, but between the revolution and his death, very relaxed) bald
Stalin- arch-conservative, very bushy hair
Khruschev-liberal (that's why he went on a "leave of absense for health reasons" when the pendulum swung the other way) bald as a baby's bottom
Brezhnev-conservative, had hair like Elvis
Andropov-liberal, didn't live too long, bald
Gromiko-conservative, didn't live too long, hairy
Gorbachev-liberal, started glasnost and perestrojka, balding with red-wine stain
Yeltsin-conservative in a different way, manipulated privatization to make him and his friends rich, hairy
Putin-the only guy maybe to break the trend. seems to be conservative, but has "thinning" hair. Of couse, there is no more Soviet Union, so....
Alot of this contradiction can be seen in the way that Soviet scientists were treated. For example, as long as they held to the party line, they were given all the priviledges that they could ask for. Once they started to dissent, they were imprisoned and did the same work but at a gulag.
For a good example of this, I recommend Solzhenitsyn's The Inner Circle or some of the biographies of Sakharov.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
"Today patriotism in China means loving the Party and loving Socialism," said one contributor. "You can destroy China's environment, but you can't criticise the Party." For the first time ever the internet is allowing people from every corner of China to engage with each other in conversation and debate. And it is changing China in other ways too.
If the people of China have a revolution and overthrow the tyrants, I hope they decide to have no "government"; a free wide open china, like the wild, wild west. Be Polite or risk getting shot in a duel. Every community is responsible for ensuring it's members are not perkulating nuclear granades. I wonder how China's gun laws compare to the democrats and some republicans ideals of wanting to disarm it's United States citizenry?
A democrat will tell you that those "militia's" were state run, but we all know from the stories our grandaddy passed onto us, it was the American Farmers who drove the British out, not state run militia's; perhaps this is why both parties love to beat up on American Farmers today?
Sounds like AOL.
This is so true. I used to hold the ignorant view of China until I went there for a vacation earlier this year.
Mind you, I didn't ventured into the really small villages (pop less than 1000) and rural areas, but I could tell things are a lot different that what I used to perceive it as.
I was in a fishing village in souther China with no paved roads, but they had buses with VCD videos playing. And in the same area were more Internet cafe than I'd image people could use. Sure enough when I went in there were half a dozen kids, no more than 12 years old, playing network games.
I spent 2 hours in there checking email and reading news. I certainly didn't feel like anything was being blocked. They had 128bit I.E. browser so I was able to do my banking too.
I could go on forever. Bottom line is that people should stop making ignorant comments about China unless they've been there.
Troll.
There are no internet censors in the People's Republic of China.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Heh... If they don't do anything about the spam that comes from those domains, the government won't have to do anything. The rest of the world with firewall them off.
I'm a Chinese, currently in the U.S. When some time ago slashdot posted a story about a Chinese linux company didn't publish their source code there are a lot of discussion in Chinese linux community so I know they can read slashdot. The reason you don't see many Chinese people here is probably because most slashdot stories and discussions are more about politics than technology, or technology that is too far away for average Chinese people. And the general air here is not very Chinese-friendly (my personal view, of course). If you really want to check out the linux community in China, here's a link:
http://www.linuxforum.net, it's in Chinese, good luck!
Well I've been there too. I had some distant cousins that live in small farming villages and visiting there was like stepping back 100 years. Yes they had electricity and tv's and refrigerators, but that was it. None of the kids went to school past middle school in order to help with farming. It was quite sad in a way.
actually thats not quite right either
In the beginning, most capitalist socitety's had a incredible concentration of wealth, very few people could afford to own the means of production. Land was owned by the "noble classes"
Marx was convinced that the great masses would never have the resources to own captial. Thus he reasoned that the masses would rise up and over throw the extreamly wealthy.
What he didnt count on was publicly held stock, wide spread education, and that the investment of the extremely wealthy would make the whole country more wealthy.
Thus marx's prediction never came to fruition.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I wonder if the chinese Internet users pay half price for half they get? Since they are only getting half the content of the Internet
Is their glass half-full or half-empty ?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Clearly this site doesn't understand Football.
The rest of the world is getting worse.
This post is NOT off-topic. Please dont mod it down. It is poignant, on-topic, and informative.
One can only hope. Death to the Communist murderers!
Read story here.
I'm currently posting from a net bar in shanghai. I'm blocked from reading this article.
All internet cafes in Beijing were shutdown this monday. 24 people died in a fire in an internet cafe, and the government says "the internet is destroying our children". The story can be found here.