China Plans Surveillance System for Internet Cafes

nasty writes "According to Interfax China, China will install a special surveillance system in order to prevent 'unhealthy information and websites'. All internet cafes in China will have installed the new system by the end of 2004. This according to China's Ministry of Culture (MOC). The system requires the customers personal information, such as name, age, and their national citizen identification number, before they are allowed to log onto the Internet." Reader Dr.Hair submits another blurb about the system.

Comments

Eventual failure

[rbanzai]

No matter what they try to do they will eventually fail to contain the information they are frightened of.

Re:Eventual failure

[ninti]

I set up an encrypted proxy for my father who is working in U.A.E., so he could get around their national firewall. After he used it once, they found it and banned my IP in less than a day. The belief that no censorship can work on the Internet is a common one here, but basically a wrong one.

Re:Eventual failure

[YankeeInExile]

I am somewhat amazed to see how little /. readers can full comprehend the world outside of first world, mostly-free countries

This should be a wake-up call to the "chilling effect" of government intervention. It is not necessary to have a 100% effective technological solution against the dissemination of "unhealthy" information.

As long as they can keep on top of the "troublemakers" when they are few and far between, and make them "disappear", the deterrent effect will be strong enough to keep others from even trying to evade their control.

The Chinese government is not the RIAA. They don't mail you a friendly summons to a lawsuit. They drag you out in the dead of night for "re-education" or a date with a firing squad.

Human Rights / Trade Agreements

[normal_guy]

I'm stumped as to why we're so eager to deregulate trade with China when such basic human rights as "Freedom to Worship" and "Freedom of Speech" are suppressed.

Perhaps an anonymous proxy could be set up and funded by the US, as it has in Iran.

Impersonation

[mariox19]

Name, age, and national ID number?! Unless they have some kind of picture ID with a magnetic strip on the back which has to be inserted into a computer, after the photo has been checked by an official, how are they going to keep people who have somehow gotten hold of someone else's name, age, and ID number, from using that information when they log on?

Pity the poor bastard who has to explain to the chinese authorities that it wasn't he who was reading Slashdot at the local cafe, but an impostor.

Re:Having lived there.

[aussersterne]

My Chinese father has lived in the west for decades; this hasn't changed his opinions about authority and respect. I can attest to the fact that Chinese culture is a patriarchal culture of not questioning.

There are clear lines of authority in Chinese culture, and to attempt to question these is to dishonor not your family (perhaps by extension), not your nation, but yourself.

There is nothing more shameful in Chinese culture than questioning the wisdom of elders. Elders are not only generational (i.e. grandfather -> father -> son) but also hierarchical (national government -> local government -> individual). To question authority is to show that you have no regard for your family, your citizenship, your fellow man... it is to show, in some sense, that you are a kind of sociopath.

Even in the west, even disagreeing with government policies in democratic nations, my father feels that it is embarrassing and dishonorable to complain too loudly about what government does, because government is, after all, government--the embodiment of the collective. Activism, for him, is certainly sociopathic behavior of the most base kind, disrespectful to fellow citizens.