Slashdot Mirror
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."
Well, I think it's perfectly understandable that the Chinese government block these SMS messages. It allows them to control their own country, instead of having to deal with rumor-spreading rabble rousers. Also, 120 million people hearing about this via SMS is small compared to the overall population of China, which is somewhere a little above one billion. That's a similar percentage to the 20-some million in the states who have heard about the penis length crisis.
Hello.
Nothing like addressing a deadly disease by imprisoning anyone who gets worried about it and sends a message to a remote family member to have them send "a cure." I guess I should say it once again... Information wants to be free!
Pesky citizens allowing the truth to get out!!!
:-)
They closed down the Internet Cafes!
The Government now need to remove all mobile phones.
Breaking news is that they may ban speach altogether
Slashdot Beta should die a painful death.
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.
The Good folks at Villain Supply are selling a VAGUE, PANIC-PROVOKING COMMUNICABLE DISEASE for a mere US$149,999.99.
As the age of SARS has proven, nothing scares the gullible, scientifically illiterate population like a vague, panic-provoking communicable disease. Just tack a scary acronym onto any poorly-defined set of flu-like symptoms, and watch the fun begin.
Your Vague, Panic-Provoking Communicable Disease comes with several medical journal articles identifying the disease in the most non-specific terms possible, a batch of press releases, and 25% ownership of a face mask factory.
Mod me down if you must, but I couldn't resist.
I'm not Seth.
..we'll see encrypted SMS? On the other hand, if it's not already, it'll probably soon be a criminal offense to send any encrypted messages over there as well..
mov ax, 4c00h
int 21h
Typical chinese government really, cover it up and silence those who speak. Abuse the power they have for their own benefit. Actually, sounds like pretty much most governments
Well ... China has around 30,000 government employees whose sole function is to monitor and censor communications over the Internet.
The fact that SMS was used in this case isn't a big deal. The current cellular platforms deployed in China do not allow filtering, tracking, etc. at the basestation level. However, as someone who worked on these danged things, the new base stations have features that track and filter all SMS traffic.
At the end of the day, network communication is not anonymous and it is sad that people who do not have a total understanding of technology get others into trouble.
> did a single mainsteam journalist criticize the government's plan?
What channel were you watching? The way the media covered it, we were losing the war during the first weekend.
"In March last year it required all websites and domestic and foreign internet providers to sign a "self-discipline pact" obliging them not to disseminate "harmful texts or news likely to jeopardise national security and social stability, violate laws and regulations, or spread false news, superstitions and obscenities"."
I love the references to rumors, superstitions, etc. When will the Chinese government take into account the lessons of history and realize that the best way to cultivate rumors and suspicion is to have a population as in the dark as the one they have created. You let your media report freely, and rumors will be quickly shot down with reliable references. You control your media, and you lost the trust of your citizens, who, not knowing any better source, trust the equally-uninformed rumors which then spread like wildfire.
In addition, I read with utter amusement China's wish to maintain a huge telecom and information infrastructure. Would someone like to explain how a nation so inhibiting of communication and information expects to make use of such technology... It's hypotrical, China would love to look Western while keeping its citizans controled in this fashion, and they'll never prove sucessful.
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...
Guess who one of our major customers was ... the Chinese Government!
Luckily it never got off the ground...
-- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
"The Great Firewall of China" is China's most spectacular cover-up? What? That doesn't even remotely compare to when 62 dams in China failed in the course of one night. No news of these dams collapsing came out of China until years later despite the fact that this huge catastrophe caused at least 20,000 deaths (some estimate as high as 230,000 but really nobody knows) and over 1,000,000 survivors became homeless or famine-struck as a result of the floods.
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.
> did a single mainsteam journalist
> criticize the government's plan?
Yes, many mainstream journalists criticized the Bush administration. Here's a Peter Jennings quote:
âoeItâ(TM)s no secret, now, that a great many American allies are very opposed to attacking Iraq unless the President makes a better case for it.â?
The Army reading list
Your neighbor's car kills over 1000 people per year? Man, your neighbor needs some serious driving lessons...
CC-licensed translations of Japanese fiction: http://tonygonz.blogspot.com/
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
in the San Gabriel Valley... someone began circulating an email stating that several cases had been found locally and named specific restaurants and markets that had been closed.
The first time I read it I thought it was a hoax, but then a friend who worked at a local hospital called me and told me they were distributing it as a general alert at the hospital.
I ended up going to the Police Department, scared, to find out. Turns out the email was a fraud, and that the PD had been recieving 500 calls a day about it. The establishments mentioned had seen a decrease in business of 50% as a result of some A-HOLE playing a joke. This is similar to what happened in China, I think. I would applaud if they caught the originator and put them in prison.
SECOND EMAIL.
. SLASHDOT: Home of the vicious nerd.
Please don't give GWB ny more ideas!
The German magazine "Telepolis" (from Heise.de) has an interesting article about SARS in the USA.
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....
On Slashdot, deaths, famine and the routine detentian and torture of political prisoners, breaching basic human rights, is insignificant next to the fact they can't "share" music on Kazaa.
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
"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?"
More info about media coverage: basically just an extension of the white-house press office.
The military is also worthy of attention, having deliberately killed several independant journalists
US covers up just as much, maybe more.
Before the Cuban missile crisis, the US was bombing Cuba day and night, trying to undermine their economy by destroying sugar fields, trying to start an uprising against Fidel. Was the covered in the news? no.
... that's just one example, there are thousands that are known, and probably 10 times more that aren't.
The US is just as guilty as China is, the USSR was, and any other country out there is... you just don't hear about it =)
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
I'm in China using a Chinese free mail service. There isn't much spam (2/week), but 70% of which is about FaLunGong.
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.
A lot of excellent restaurants got extra health inspections and red-tape harrassment for the first week- and then, after the hoax was demonstrated to be a hoax email alert that someone sent (probably a variant on your california one) they still faced weeks of harassment- at the hands of the general public. It's been a bad time in Boston for the gainfully employed, and they had it even worse for a time. I'm betting that there are an awful lot of small-regional economic crunches because of hoaxes like these. (this was before the public pan on smoking in Boston went through, so now they've just been hit again, while everyone adjusts.)
Is this (sars hoax) affecting other cities? (I'm sure that it is; i'm just curious which ones...)
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
The same is happening in China. Various news agencies are not reporting actual news worthy events in China, as it would get them kicked out. There is a tremendous market in China. CNN would rather skip the truth than report what is actually happening.
The biggest human rights abuses occurr in China. Millions die in accidents there every year that you never hear about. Local communist organizations still kill people routinely.
Economic reforms have occurred in a vacuun. Without political reform, all of this investment and wealth will be for nothing. The leaders of China still believe they are communist. The local communist groups still kill people and oppress the rest. People are still disappeared for talking to reporters who want to report what is really going on.
China is a nation that murders its citizens. It denies the most basic of human rights. It is still ruled by incompetent men like Jiang Zimen. China is a disgrace to the world community.
I would use my real name, but I am afraid for my fiance's family, who still live in 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.
Try some of the below messages, sent to the contacts as listed in apnic.net. (I also send them in Chinese as translated by Altavista, but /dork won't let me post that here.) I figure one of two things can happen--the surveillance state apparatus wastes some time on unfounded messages, or a spam supporting admin in .cn gets a bullet in the head. A win-win situation if you ask me.
Your encrypted message has been received. The weapons you ordered for the "Free Tibet" and "Remember Tiananmen" forces in their fight against the Communist PRC are on their way through the agreed route. May your brave men prevail in the fight for freedom and the defeat of Communism.
Thank you so much for the beautiful picture of the Dalai Lama you sent me. I'm glad to hear that such formerly forbidden information can flow freely in the oppressive People's Republic of China without you being put up against a wall and shot! Congratulations!
In the wake of the recent Party Congress that has handed power to a new generation of corrupt politicians, I must congratulate you for your continued bravery in being a beacon of protest of the policies of the PRC. Your advocacy against the one-child policy, forced sale of blood by peasants, electronic pollution, and other evils of Chinese society is commendable. Particularly, risking your life to smuggle arms to Tibet makes your esteem in my eyes much the greater.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
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.
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.
1'v h33rd dat g0v7's l15t3|\|1|\|g. Wh4ts 4ll di5 54r5 th1|\|g? 4nyw3y, l3t d3m c3n5or th15!
;)
Although I suspect this might be tad more difficult with Chinese letters.
--
I refuse to use
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!
1. A disease breaks out and spreads rapidly.
2. The news spreads across SMS, the internet, etc.
3. Authorities use the information gathered to avoid future epidemics.
How China handles a medical crisis
1. A disease breaks out and spreads rapidly.
2. The news spreads across SMS, the internet, etc.
3. Authorities use the information gathered to suppress communications so that future outbreaks can spread quietly and unchecked.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Hmm, the US was bombing Cuba? You got any links to any sites that might support that theory at all?
I was in Hong Kong in January and February when SARS was just starting. At the time the government was covering it up and the news reported it as a bird flu outbreak in Guangdong province. The really scary thing is that our entire time there no one knew the real threat this disease posed. I was allowed to enter the US and Canada no questions asked. Thankfully no one on the trip got sick, but this case shows that supression of information can have far reaching consequences. Had someone on our trip contracted the illness they could have possibly infected an entire college campus, with little information on what the disease was the result would have been a disaster. I hope this experience teaches the chinese gov't that information needs to be shared not hidden. Had they been honest SARS would have never spread as it did.
The same Noam Chomsky that once said Osama Bin Laden could be taken at his word? Sure thing, real criticism, right...
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.
Considering how susceptible Chinese computers have been in the past to e-mail worms, I bet I know what sort of messages the next big worm will send out....
How many of your "crises" have cost hundreds of lives around the world?
"cozied up to China" is MUCH different than taking our rights away and making the US government ACT like the Chinese government, all in the name of "homeland security".
Having good trade relations with the most populous nation in the world is a good thing. Eroding rights through USA actions like the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act - and Son of P.A.T.R.I.O.T. acts - is scary.
"My civil liberties died in the 'War on Terrorism.'"
* 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.
As a matter of fact, yes, it is.
Authoritarian regimes are strong, but brittle. In an environment characterized by slow technological change, they can last indefinitely, because the tools used to control the proles change slowly enough that leaders can keep up with them.
Rapid technological change upsets that balance. Such change is typically driven by technology - witness the printing press, the rise of the "freethinkers", and the eventual topplings of the monarchies of Europe and Russia. (And the despots that took their place - Robespierre in France, Lenin in Russia, and so on.)
Authoritarian regimes typically rely on controlling the means of communication in order to maintain power. Technologically-driven change in the area of communications is one of the most threatening things an authoritarian regime.
If the Communist Party lies about SARS, then maybe... *gasp*, they lied about the day the dam broke in my village. I've gotta call my brother who was 1000 miles away with the army when it happened and ask him if the Party told him his village's dam was the only one that broke that night. And my cousin who works in Hong Kong now, I remember him laughing when I first told him it was only our dam, maybe now I know why he laughed. And my grandfather back in my old village who remembers the times before the Party.
When nobody believes the Party ("Pravda and Izvestia - There is no truth in Pravda, and there is no news in Izvestia"), the regime shatters.
> Seems like if a goverment wants to gain trust and credibility, they should flat-out tell the truth sometimes.
Any government's first duty is to perpetuate itself; "building trust and credibility" is a useful goal (from the government's point of view) only insofar as it enables the government to perpetuate itself and/or increase its power over its subjects.
Telling the truth through the various Party news outlets doesn't serve the goal of keeping the Party in power, because the forms of media that can be controlled aren't set up to deliver truth.
And the forms of media that can't be controlled... well, one day you're talking about SARS, and the next day you're talking about what life was like without the Party.
And that, if you're a Party official, is a fate far worse than the deaths of a few million of your subjects.
When you read stories about how we currently live.
We could have it a *lot* better.