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Chinese Internet Censorship Proves Difficult
An anonymous reader writes "BBC reports that despite incredible efforts by the Chinese government, online dissent and distribution of censored information continues and even influences government policies."
It is true, to a certain extent, but the use of strategic "choke points" on the network infrastructure can put a serious dent in the ideal...
It's only really true when you have high connectivity across all nodes - even in the US/Europe this is rarely significantly true...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Just post the censored sites as links in Slashdot stories.
Censorship via the slashdot effect.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
"Filters are used to screen out items containing certain pornographic or politically sensitive terms"
See, if they had stopped at stifling free expression and political opinion exchange they would have been allright. They went after porn, and in technology, porn ALWAYS win. An army of horny men will find a way through their defenses like a knife through hot butter.Reminds me of back when most of my friends in highscool had two floppy disks with them at all times. One to disable netnanny, one to put it back. Oh the good ol' days.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
Yes indeed the censorship in china is quite ineffective, they dont run any filtering of content at all just various well known webaddress like cnn.com, bbc.co.uk, wenjiancity etc however this can be easily bypassed by using an oversease proxy or bouncing the web pages through akamai. I was shocked to find thay they dont even block taiwanese news sites! I guess all they can do is go after a few unlucky people and try to make examples of them.
Maybe they should start working on propaganda - China rules and the rest of the world sucks. Non-Chinese news sources are fallacious and biased against China, that sort of thing. I've been kicking around the idea of fascism in our post-industrial world, but as yet I've not come up with an idea that would truly work. A closed media system is impossible to achieve, esp. in a country as large as China.
This is all, of course, for fun; the intellectual exercise is more interesting to me than applying my ideas to reality.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Does anybody know how much involvement the Chinese Government has with Red Flag? It seems to me that the principles of open source software sit uneasily with censorship.
well the best thing you could do is to not buy items made in china... of course thats just a good idea anyways
Yeah, don't buy their products, deny them benefits of global trade, nothing like condemning a nation to poverty and sustaining a disceptive self-sustaining government (rather than rewarding the transition China is in).
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FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
Well, I suppose one of the things you could do is let companies like IBM know you aren't happy doing business with someone providing censorship technologies to China.
At least it's a start.
Then maybe put up a Freenet node.
KFG
Lots of people in the US subscribe to these guys for Internet censorship: N2H2
I know it's not quite the same as "Communist Country" censorship, but the US isn't without Government-influenced information suppression. Just google for CIPA. You filter, you get funding. You don't filter, you find funding elsewhere.
"False-positives" anyone?
We can help each other. We host the political dissent websites and they host the mp3s.
Rank Presidents by th
The Hacktivismo group has been writing software to help the Chinese and others that are being censored. I was very interested when I heard about the "Six/Four" protocal that they were writing for anonymous browsing. Has anyone heard any news on the development of this or any other projects like it. (I'm aware of freenet) Anyway, here is their project page. They're an interesting group that seems to be pushing for free distribution of information.
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If you want to get an idea on just how bad it is over there in terms of filtering, check out this article about a 2002 study by the Hardvard Law. There are about 19,000 sites listed there. Pretty much anything that has to do with the US and other western governments, "smut", anything even remotely related to Taiwan and so on.
I think it would be interesting to employ some form moderation system that is currently in use on /.
The citizens could vote on which sites are offensive and the appropriate sites would be blocked.
Although a conflict of opinion would surely surface as it seems to be already
But this would essentially take control of the internet out of the hands of the government and put it in the hands of the citizens which is an oxymoron for communism.
Those who trade in their freedom for security, deserve neither.
I lived in China for six months last year teaching English at a University. What I found particularly amazing, was that the culture has taught people not to question things. Even my PhD students largely accepted whatever was told to them. So even though there may have been forums online for them to learn about political dissent, most wouldn't particularly have been interested (a few seemed more aware than most, but only a very few).
Add to this the location of these forums. Online. China does have internet cafes in the larger areas, but the bulk of the country is too poor to even go into them, let alone find their way to some hidden forum.
I'm all for more individual freedoms in China, but I think most westerners really don't have a clue about how our cultural upbringing has affected us, and how their culture has affected them.
If it becomes increasingly hard to block "objectionable" messages, (which by the way the Cubans have effectively done - Cuban Government Toughens Internet Restrictions) would it come to a stage the Authoritarian Governments try to drown the messages.
The Govt could itself start sending out so much propoganda messages that they will drown the "rebel" messages, and most people will be unable to develop personalized filters to get to the "rebel" information. (A conspi-racist may think that the real purpose of the CAN-SPAM legilation was to pre-emptively acquire these capabilities.)
After all, if this is supposed to be the attention economy, all the govt has to do to prevent mischief is to keep your attention - almost like in Clockwork Orange. Does it really matter if the attention is directed to something worthwhile, or towards just delusion and deception - I mean from the Governments point-of-view.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Does anyone know if Slashdot is blocked or at all censored in China? A huge variety of news goes through here, as well as new technology (some of which could even prove helpful in evading the various filters...)
Depends. Is your name Andrew Gilligan?
Interesting read on the Chinese Revolution, The Soong Dynasty, but Sterling Seagrave. Paints a pretty hideous picture of Chiang kai-Shek. I'm half-way through it, but I'm getting an understanding of why China closed itself off from the world, screwed even by Stalin, and cautiously invites in the international community 50 years later. The PRC seems oppressive, but China has always been repressed. Doesn't make censorship right, but it's worth understanding how far back the memory goes to the great humiliations. A bit insightful the writings of Ching-ling Soong (Madam Sun yat-Sen) on revolution and how it's inevitable. Seems the current regime is trying to hold back another revolution, which is futile.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When I worked at GTE the company got the contract to lay the fiber optic cable around the border of China and put in the network centers that setup a ring around China. Total control of all the traffic in and out of the country, or so they hoped. A career limiting move came when I wrote Chuck Lee, CEO of GTE, and said we were helping the same Communist government that gave us Tianamen Square and would continue to repress the Chinese people using this technology. But Bean Counters only care about profit and damn the people that get get screwed over in the process.
As a side note, I knew a lad working near me from China who had been at Tianamen Square the day before and then the day after the massacre happened. When he saw what the army had done to their own people he went home, packed and left for Hong Kong and then to the US.
Censorship is only one way the Communists will use to stay in power and shooting another bunch of college kids can happen again.
Too lazy to create a sig...
Nothing in particular is communist about China. It's Confucianism dressed up in Marxist clothing. China is always Chinese and always has been, even when conquered. The "conquerers" always end up "going native."
However, Confucianism is based on a concept of society as being more important than the individual. An essentially commun-al idea. Kind of a fuedalism with an innate sense of ethics and true noblesse oblige.
If you really want to understand China today and have a lot of fun doing it read some of the Judge Dee mystery novels of Robert van Gulik. Set in the Tang dynasty (the golden age of ancient Chinese culture) the society it depicts is still very much relevant.
Then read the Little Red Book.
Overlay Mao's peculiarly Chinese "Marxism" with the tradtitional Chinese culture and there you are. Modern China.
It has more factories than the old China, but that's really the biggest difference.
KFG
No, you are supporting a country in transition (remember censorship doesn't have to be 'paid' for). If you don't buy Chinese, will the country change (compare the present leadership to the Shanghai Brigage 10 years ago or that of the Great Leap Forward when China was under sanction, if you think they are the same you are believing a fallacy)?
Likewise if you think a government will change into a lets-hug-each-other one from a totalitarian one over night (or even in 20 years) you are seriously deluded. Change takes time to feed through, or else there is volatile coup after volatile coup and everyone gets screwed (or nuked).
Not that I say you should buy Chinese specially, but denying buying Chinese for some up-in-the-clouds-political-fairyland ideology is madness. Global trade is great for sharing wealth and generating more wealth (read wealth as standard of living) amongst nations, and in terms of the trickle-down effect China is doing damn well compared to any other country's development (eg Agricultural Land Rights, mobility of labour and class, etc).
But if you would prefer to condemn the worker to starve as a serf on a farm rather than work in a factory getting a better standard of living for themselves and their family that is up to you.
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FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
Agreed. I mean, what kind of "government of the people" would make it illegal to distribute information on, for instance, how to watch a movie?
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
They're a Fascist Dictatorship with Communist Rhetoric. Communism makes for great posters and propaganda when you're nearly starving and working 16 hrs/day. But given that people at large in China seem to have very little say in how "their" resources are spent (if they did, would they allow sweat shops to exist?), I don't see how you can call them Communist.
That said, I don't think Communism is a viable system. You can never get past that whole "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" thing. China didn't, Russia didn't and neither did Cuba. I'm a Socialist myself. Violent or at least forceful revolutions like Communism is usually associated with almost always end with a brutal, Fascist government. I better solution is for the poor and disenfranchised to control their population so that the value of their labor increases (kinda like what happened with the Black Plague but minus the Plague). As funny as it sounds, I think birth control is the best hope for mankind. Now if we can only get those pesky religious and cultural factors to go away so the poor will use it...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Here is an article about how the Chinese have been blocking content from their citizens. What's interesting is how some American companies, like Yahoo, are cooperating to do business with them.
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No, wait...
And the brethren went away edified.
In one sense you're right, but the definition of child porn varies wildly, even within a single legal structure.
So wildly that "child porn" has no real meaning. Hell, just "child" is a major issue of debate. And to the extent that it is universally illegal is due mostly to an American promotion, with the usual strong arm tactics, to create a universal condemnation, not due to any cultural aversion in and of itself.
Governments tend to do things for purely politica reasons, and right now, in the world scheme of things, it's politically advantageous to adopt certain tenets of American Puritanism.
Note that Japan has a long history of prostitution as not only a cultural norm, but in some respects a respected profession. Now it is illegal.
But not because the Japanese themselves really see anything innately wrong with it. It's politics.
KFG
communism was a big flop.
Have you visited a monastary or a state sponsored public school lately?
Communism is alive and well and living amongst us.
You'll find very little Marxism though, as Marxism is an industrial theory, not a social one.
KFG
Try controlling radio frequencies never mind speficially laying pipe for conventional net access.
Jonathanjk.com
I don't think they have changed that much from the "bad ol' days"
They haven't changed at all, and it's best not to forget that. There's really no way to resolve the issue. If you really want to be proactive about it the only thing you can do is take what they give away for free and use it for your benefit while not actually providing them with direct profit; and letting them know you're doing it.
Not, I'll note, in the sense of a boycott. Just out of a real sense of personal ethics. Then even if it has no ultimate effect you still "win."
Ghandi repeatedly tried to point out that nonviolence wasn't a political technique. It was a personal way of life.
KFG
screw up some people's lives by taking nude pictures of themselves with a webcam in the privacy of their own bedroom, and then emailing said pictures to people they don't like and reporting the recipients to the police. Pretty f'ing scary scenerio if you ask me.
You don't need to go that far. Baseless allegations, if properly worded, can cause a serious detriment to a person's life and leave the accusing party completely off the hook. All you have to do is send a nice letter to the FBI saying such and such person MAY have been viewing and/or sharing child pornography or they said something that LEADS YOU TO BELIEVE that they MAY be involved with it in some way.
No evidence necessary, and 9 times out of 10 a search warrant will be issued due entirely to the nature of the allegations, no matter how baseless they are. Then, the cops'll come down on you even harder for your "suspicious" activity of demanding they show some justification for searching / siezing property.
Got an axe to grind? I'm almost willing to guarantee that scenario would work well for you. If you're REALLY careful, a few covert "leaks" about the bogus investigation to friends, family, and co-workers could leave a totally innocent person premanently labeled without a shred of evidence.
Welcome to the American Justice system, where hearsay and public opinion court more power than most people would ever dare dream. We hope you have a nice stay.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
If rulers take too much grain,
people rapidly starve.
If rulers take too much freedom,
people easily rebel.
If rulers take too much happiness,
people gladly die.
By not interfering the sage improves the people's lives.
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
I'd love to read about how censorship is failing in China but I can't access BBC from Beijing.
No evidence necessary, and 9 times out of 10 a search warrant will be issued due entirely to the nature of the allegations, no matter how baseless they are.
Do you even know how a search warrant is generated? Judging by the idiotic post, I doubt it. Let me explain:
I gather information. I get specific facts from my witnesses, facts which show not just what the witness knows but exactly how he knows them. Statements like "I personally saw X get into the car." Hearsay is typically of no value. It can be used only in very rare circumstances at trial (such as where the original speaker is dead or where necessary to catch the original speaker in a lie) and not at all in a warrant affidavit.
I then have my witness/complainant/informant put these facts in writing and sign it, after explaining to him the law and jail time associated with filing false police reports.
I then complete an affidavit with these facts and submit it to a judge.
If the judge agrees that the facts constitute probable cause to support the warrant, he issues one. If not, he tells me to get lost.
And before you post your next moronic spew, confidential (names withheld, but known to police and possibly the judge) informants are worth very, very little, and anonymous informants(names not even known by police) are utterly worthless.
The Pope may be infallible, but even he can't claim to have probable cause unless he can show personal knowledge.
Yes, it likely would have helped the US free slaves faster. In fact, a simple embargo of US farm products from the South would have very likely removed the economic incentive for slavery, and as it was primarily an economic institution, it would no longer have made sense for it to exist.
As to the question of economic strength today, I don't know. But the economy would likely not have been one of slavery for nearly as long as it was.
Not to be too harsh since your heart seems to be in the right place but.....
I think here GTE has helped free speech in China more than you have. A fiber system in and out of China which the government tries to censor is *far* better than no system at all. One reason that China is finding much harder to censor the internet than Cuba or North Korea is that there is so much traffic going back and forth that its impossible to monitor it all. Putting in fiber helps increase internet usage and makes it much harder for the government to censor it.
Something to keep in mind is that on the same weekend that Tiananmen happened, the Burmese government also shot a whole bunch of students. No one remembers or even knows about it, because there weren't a million television cameras in Burma that weekend.