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SMS, SARS, And Censorship
angkor writes with a link to this article about "How SMS messaging in China forced the government to acknowledge the 'fatal flu in Guangdong.' And the steps the Chinese government is taking to make sure it does not happen again."
Anyone snared in its high-tech web can expect surveillance, intimidation, arrest and prison."
and that is different from the US and the UK how exactly? maybe they search for different words but the principle is the same.
john
All I Want For Christmas Is My Constitutional Rights
All I Want For Christmas Is My Constitutional Rights
Furthermore, SMS is nothing more than e-mail, basically (even little less, duh...). Problems will occur when foreign network companies will enter China, for example Vodafone. On the other hand, quite some Western countries are happy to co-operate with the Chinese government to apply censorship. Even from the land of the free.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
Offtopic - #7 seems appropriate for the /. readership, but you'll have to look it up...
It's not like you can rewrite firmware in your cellphone or write new one from scratch. Short answer: you will not see encrypted SMS or encrypted calls anytime soon (basically because operators must store them for up to two years, for help in "investigations"). Encryption in cellphones is going to be reserved for DRM.
When you bitch about those evil, unjust copyright laws, the RIAA/MPAA, DCMA and Microsoft here in the US.
We could have it a *lot* worse.
The philosopher Amartya Sen has argued that the best way to prevent catastrophic famine is to have freedom of expression. When the world community sees that an area is moving toward serious famine, it is able to respond in time to keep the problem from becoming too severe. But when a government hides how bad things are getting until it is too late, you have mass starvation. SARS seems to illustrate that the same may hold in the case of epidemic. If China had told the outside world about SARS earlier, then its spread could probably have been slowed. And perhaps it at least was slowed some inside China through the spread of information by SMS (if ordinary citizens knew how to respond to the information properly).
This post is dedicated to all of those
'Flamebait'? Not really; it's the way things are done in China. Sometimes people get so blinded that they assume any culture (i.e. Chinese) that differs to American culture is automatically "evil" and "oppressed", rather than actually practising tolerance for the fact that other cultures are different and not automatically better or worse. Perhaps we could have a bit more genuine tolerance here?
Okay.., while we bash the draconian dragon that is China, let's stop a while and think of other 'informed' societies.
e ch nology/134994939_esiod14.html
How many of the millions of car owners in the US knew that they had 'black boxes'.
How many of the 1,500 receipients of SCO's extortion letters registered a protest of any description?
How many are aware that MS is stifling a project named 'Schnazzle' - on questionalbe grounds?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesst
How is it that Germany, Poland and Australia have protested and asked SCO to shut up, while the silence in the US is deafening?
Why is it that cellphones and cellphone tech is more advanced in China than in the US?
A free society does not gurantee fairness.
A (seemingly) unfair society does have benefits.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
if it was such a cover up, how come *you* know about it.
It would be my guess that the most spectacular cover ups are the ones that get covered up not the ones that get uncovered.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
You're talking nonsense. The very fact that you can freely criticize the government without fear of a visit from the secret police is proof that you are not being oppressed.
I'll flip it around: of the journalists who did criticize the government's plan, how many are in gulags now? I'll answer:
So mainstream journalists supported the President. Look at any opinion poll and you'll see that the majority of ordinary Americans did too. You haven't proven anything apart from the fact that journalists are people too!
> deliberately killed several
> independant journalists
That's misrepresenting the facts. Reporting from the midst of a battle is a hazardous occupation.
Here's a story about the media altering photographs to make the U.S. look bad - doesn't sound like an "extension of the white-house press office" to me.
The Army reading list
PERSON1: Hey, we're going to blow up the bridge tomorrow. :)
PERSON2: Excellent. Praise Allah, the infidels will die!
P1: LOL, we better STFU before the FBI think we're really terrorists
FBI: Come with me, you terrorist scum.
several weeks later...
P1: Yeah, let's not do that again...
P2: No shit.
PERSON3: DIE INFIDELS DIE! Wha? My shoe won't blow up!
Chinese surveillance incident:
PERSON1: Help, everyone is dying, we need to do something!
PERSON2: Don't go outside if you can avoid it, wear a mask if you do, and don't touch anyone. Since our government won't help us, we need to get help wherever we can.
CHINESE GOV'T: You two, come with me. You're never going to see the outside of a cell again, ever.
THE END
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
First off, this is outrageous! Not like I haven't been made aware of China's repression tactics and such before, but it's still amazes me.
So, from the article:
But blanket censorship is reserved for extreme situations, and this fact reflects its long-standing dilemma: while it desperately wants to control the flow of news and opinion, especially dissent, it also wants an open, modern and efficient economy, including a state-of-the-art telecom and information infrastructure.
Wow! The statement that they're reserving censorship for 'extreme' situations is so bogus. Look at what they're doing! They're flat out trying to set up a fear driven filter system that would let them block a SINGLE WORD from entering ANY MEDIA source in the country! The idea that they could do this is amazing, and the fact that they're actually accomplishing it is even more so.
And as for an open economy, how the hell do you do that if the citizens can't participate? I suppose people get mind-numbed enough that even government driven mis-information is better than nothing, but at some point it becomes pointless doesn't it? The government will be forcing the economy down faster than it can grow.
Oh yeah, and... The authorities seem to have asked the websites to add the term Sars to the long list of banned words....
ASKED!?! PFFFFFFFT!
Don't get me wrong. Yes, I'm an American living in the U.S. No, I have no idea what it would take to actually run a country with such a huge population. But, I'm fairly certain this isn't going to help anyone and will eventually be the govt's down fall. I try not to be judgemental, but I just can't believe that this kind of stuff is for the good of the people.
If you don't have something nice to sig, then don't sig anything at all.
The problem would be the same as all other non-centralised encryption techniques (pgp etc). It's damned inconvenient. For a start each person you talk to is going to have to have some kind of key for you (or you for them) which makes the whole thing massively impractical.
You clearly can't just use encryption to and from the server (ssl type things) because the government will control the servers... p2p encryption is the only way, but its not really viable.
Is it just me, or should we smuggle 1 billion copies of '1984' into China?
It *was* a voluntary 'blackout' in that no media company in thier right mind wanted to appear:
1) "unpatriotic"
2) supportive of Saddam
3) supportive of terrorists
4) "unpatriotic"
You were either "with us or against us, good or evil". With such a black-and-white standard to be judged against, no one would get in the way of the holy crusade if they knew what was good for them.
Wow, had it not been for the link inside that article I wouldn't have known SARS had hit the US at all (sarcasm). 404 total cases (insert joke here). The media has suppressed all information about any US-based cases - even Google news can't find a single story about US infections. Impressive censorship for a free country.
Of course by now we all know SARS only active when it's cold, so this coming winter should be interesting... but meanwhile dozens of stories are running about SARS being wiped out completely.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Of course, in order to be able to do such a thing, they must enjoy a democratic society (which usually goes hand in hand with freedom of expression).
Although the SMS messages in China forced the government to acknowledge the problem, it is not likely that those in power can be overturned, should they fail to act to stop the epidemic, so their incentive to action is quite limited.
Here's a talk by Amartya Sen, check the paragraph on Political incentives, news media and democracy.
Next week - So they like to machete people to death in Rwanda, who are we to critisise, it's how they do things there.
Also followed by "Closed trial hijinks in Saudi Arabia" and "Killing fields, schmilling fields", a comedy drama set in 1970s Cambodia.
If you really believe that crushing freedom of speech and individual rights is equal to a society based on personal freedom, I have a bridge I would like to sell you.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
Granted, having recently read Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution (Here is the /. review), I am probably somewhat oversensitive to stories like this.
Be that as it may, what makes this interesting to me is not only China's response, but the fact that 120 million people were using SMS to discuss and act on a single issue. And, there are other examples of this as well, such as the toppling of the Philipine president, tactical organization of WTO protestors, and the organization of protesters against the war in Iraq.
Thinking on a broader scope, these all seem to me to be examples of self-organization in the complexity theory sense of the term, and it has the potential to be more important than email because:
- it can be done on a relatively inexpensive devise I can slip into a pocket.
- the user does not have to be "logged in" in the same way that one does in order to get email on a computer. (Yes, I am aware of the Blackberry, but it doesn't have the market share SMS-capable phones have.)
- it is nearly instantaneous. The user is told that a message has arrived, and does not have to periodically check an account.
- it doesn't have the language issues the web has because if people send SMS's to recipients in other countries, they will share a common language with the person to whom they have sent the message. The recipient is an intelligent translator who can retransmit the message in another language as necessary.
It would not surprise me to see global movements applying nearly instantaneous pressure on local governments in the not-too-distant future using SMS. With the increasing popularity of MMS and phones with built in cameras, we will even get pictures.
Bureaucracy loves company.
And if a journalist would get fired for witing his opinion, wouldn't that be oppression?
No, because it's not the government doing it. All an editor can do is fire a reporter, and there's nothing to stop that reporter going to a rival newspaper and competing with his former employer. An editor can't have that reporter thrown in jail or anything.
Some journalists are hired to write "op ed", and some are hired to write accurate factual accounts. If a journalist does the former but was hired for the latter, then it's bias and the journalist should be fired for misconduct!
Hmm, the US was bombing Cuba? You got any links to any sites that might support that theory at all?
Is this (sars hoax) affecting other cities? (I'm sure that it is; i'm just curious which ones...)
As of mid-April (when I was doing SARS research persuant to flying guests to Boston from Japan and Vancouver) most Chinatowns in the US had taken about a 50% hit in business. I think the CDC may have even issued a counter-advisory, and as you've mentioned many local governments tried to show the public it was just a hoax. Despite all that I still had a hard time getting people to go to Dim Sum...."it's only prudent!" (No, actually, it's racist).
* We don't have any gulags anyway. You're thinking of the Chinese, the North Koreans, the old Soviet Empire, the old Iraq, etc.
What do you call Guantanamo Bay then?
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
The thing is, it doesn't even require a rumor. My wife started worrying about going to a chinese resturant because "the people their might have relatives in China, and they might have been visiting". Not assertions of truth, but fears. And fears that weren't quite groundless. (It might be/have been true.)
It seems to me that chinese resturants currently still have a larger proportion of chinese customers that was common previously...but this is so small that it could easily be statistical fluctuation.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Is Communism so fragile that a few extra-heavy-duty flu cases will destroy it?
In a word : Yes
No but, yeah but, no but...
Trying to elminate the P2P "sharing" of copyrighted music/movies is not infringing on your f*cking free speech rights.
The parent you're replying to is absolutely correct, and you provide a stunningly crafted example of exactly what he's talking about.
When you read stories about how we currently live.
We could have it a *lot* better.