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."

Comments

It's the same the world over

[freedommatters]

"Its technology allows it, for example, to search the country's entire volume of email traffic for words such as "Falungong", or to monitor any individual's text messages.

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

Big news?

[Groote Ka]

The China government is already for quite some years working on censorship of electronic media. I cannot imagine that this is the first time they monitor and 'regulate' SMS traffic. When it is the first time, the Chinese are not as smart as I would have thought them to be.

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.

Hypocrisy or Censorship - take your pick...

[jkrise]

Okay.., while we bash the draconian dragon that is China, let's stop a while and think of other 'informed' societies.

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/businesste ch nology/134994939_esiod14.html

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.

Re:China and Human Rights Abuse

[sql*kitten]

Btw, The US also has censorship problems. Just look at how american news sources acted over Iraq - did a single mainsteam journalist criticize the government's plan?

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:

• None, because in the West we have a little thing called freedom of speech, and
  
• We don't have any gulags anyway. You're thinking of the Chinese, the North Koreans, the old Soviet Empire, the old Iraq, etc.
  

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!

Couple of things...

[techturtle]

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.

Re:I can see their reasons

[James_Duncan8181]

'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?

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.

Re:China and Human Rights Abuse

[molo]

* 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?