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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.
Maybe we'll get lucky and these systems will find people who are using the internet cafe's to spam the hell out of the world.
I hope that particular "unhealthy internet" usage results in the standard "cranial ventilation" punishment...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
... innovation.
It seems that a lot of people around the globe have worked hard to design proxies that get around existing systems which governments use to restrict their citizens' access to information on the internet.
IMHO, this new piece of software will just lead to a new breed of web proxy, and until China either cuts off net use entirely or has a massive change in government policy, it's going to be a continuation of the government vs. infolibertarian game of "build the better mousetrap". Just now, instead of bypassing and improving filters, it'll be about tracking and masking data...
"It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." -- Zork
I think at Kinko's (office services chain), you can just pay cash and get online. Some libraries are like that as well. An option (even if it's pay) for totally anonymous internet is important if one values privacy.
-I am an elective eunuch.
What do you expect from a totalitarian government?
I am surprised that they haven't done that before...
what I also don't understand is why 'democratic' world has such a great trade relations with totalitarian China?...
then again two party system is only one step to totalitarism
somewhat irrelevant but interesting quote from today NYTimes editorial: "we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." That's from George Orwell's 1946 essay "In Front of Your Nose."
Just because I don't care, it doesn't mean I don't understand. Homer J. Simpson
Are camaras going to be involved? Sure, log user info and then log the pages they visit. Have some government agency sit there and randomly check sites visited. Develop two lists "acceptable" to shorten the list of sites checked and "unacceptable" to automatically flag users visiting known unacceptable sites. Is this what they are talking about?
Don't get me wrong, the idea scares the heck out of me, I'm just curious exactly how they plan on implementing the system.
~~Guildencranz
Penguin Trivia #46: Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
This obviously can seem as a nice attempt to provide more security to the inet, but is it in reality one more proof china shows clear signs of communist fascism?
Remind all the censoring china did and does.
Because business dictates foreign policy.
Consider that China has far worse human rights violations than Cuba yet Cuba suffers through US embargos while diplomats fly to China to kiss ass for trade favours.
Trolling is a art,
Isn't it ironic that China's Ministry of Culture has the purpose of restricting culture? Like Orwell's Ministry of Truth, which had the sole purpose of changing history.
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Several proxy networks exist already to provide uncensored Internet access to Chinese people. Of course at the same time, some organizations outside China have started to block traffic originating from chinese IP blocks, because of all the spam they receive that transits through China.
As for the will to deregulate trade with China despite the violation human rights : the Chinese market means access to over a billion consumers, and to access that market, capitalistic and "free" countries are willing to close their eyes on those political "details".
My first reaction to this was pure disgust. Then I thought of all the censorship software that China has employed in the past and the net nanny software installed in American libraries. People have always found a way around it.
I'm sure that some clever individuals will find a way to get around this Orwellian nonsense in no time.
Also, with the millions and millions of people using the Internet in China, that's a lot of data being generated on what people are doing. How would they parse data of this magnitude? Look for the names of "naughty" websites? Doesn't the Great Firewall already block those?
Maybe they are not really monitoring people very much, but just trying to inspire fear and obedience with the "Big Brother is watching" bit.
Information tends to be easily spread, and tends to leak from even the most secure of places. This might slow down the spread of undesirable information, but won't stop it.
A friend went to China about 2 years ago to teach English as a seond language to Chinese students. It was a nice little gig, he had to pay for airfare and food, but got free accomodations. It was also a program designed for people that don't speak Chinese. The idea was to teach kids who already knew a bulk of english how to use pronunciation.
Anyway, he kept in touch with me and other people through the use of internet cafes, so we talked fairly often. Then a few days went by where he wasn't logging on. It turns out government monitors had flagged his usage because he had been visitng a lot of American web sites. He told me he woke up one moring with AK-47's pointed at his face and was taken to a local precinct.
A rep from the agency he was working for had explained the sitation to the police, but from there on he was forced to fill out paperwork outlining his planned usage activities on the terminals.
And for a funny tidbit, he didn't realize the massage parlors in the city he worked were of the "full release" variety.
It's funny how us westerners get all uptight about China choice to sensor information from their population. Would you be shocked to discover that in the UK, you could get in big trouble trying to import comic books due to their laws on graphic violence. It is really so shocking that China considers some content on the net to be unacceptable?
While I'm not for censorship, is it really that shocking that a country with over 2 billion people is taking it upon it selfs to censor incomming information in the same way other countries have done with physical media for years?
Recently one of our finacial analysts went to China to report on an upcoming Chinese company that our company was looking to institutionally invest in.
Our super-prima-donna-annoying-user employee put in about thrity help desk requests due to not being able to email, surf the web, or VPN from her hotel room in China. We had to explain to her about the Communist's "Great Firewall of China" and how they block/inspect/proxy damn near everything.
So believe it or not this story is more of a suprise that this type of "surveillance" is NOT already in place.
I don't think policy makers in China actually believe they can fully contain the spread of information. But what they can do is limit how quickly news and ideas get around as a way of putting the brakes on potentially disruptive issues. And so you're right in one sense--they can't contain it absolutely. You've got a billion people with radios and TVs and internet and the ability to fly in and out of the country, so strictly speaking it's impossible to limit what specific individuals can and can't know. But in terms of bogging down the spread of information and keeping a handle on the party line, it seems like they've actually been pretty successful. I think their grip on the primary media is pretty firm and insitutionally grounded, and I'm not sure how far grassroots activism or technical wizardry can go to circumvent that.
A live Linux CDs, like Knoppix, will become popular in China. Opps the computer rebooted.
But the difference is decreasing. Politicians everywhere want power over ordinary people. That's why they became politicians.
This story is no big deal. It's up to the Chinese to fight for their own freedom. We've proved in the last few years that we can't even preserve our own freedoms. We should fight for those before pointing the finger at China.
Somebody Elses Problem, frankly.
.... well, that's a different story.
I've been to China many times, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and HongKong (before and after it was given back)
I must say that for the most part they do things just like we do.
I mean, you can get a bottle of Corona at the bars in Beijing (except they put lemon it in rather that lime) you get can a big mac, kentucky fried chicking and starbucks.
One poster mentioned that people are conditioned to believe what they are told, I think this is a valid observation. I once was driven around by a girl from the office in Beijing, she took me to a bunch of government owned jade shops, in government owned taxi cabs. When I asked about the private owned cabs and jade shops, she told me bluntly that since they are not owned by the government they were lower quality.
This raised my eyebrows, as you can just can't equate a quality product with government.
The hotels mostly have internet access, high speed. There is a little note next to the hook up that warns you to be careful surfing the web and to stay away from material considered harmful by the goverment.
How would I fix it ?
I'm not sure anything is wrong. Actually, here in the US our websites are routinely blocked by agencies that are not even govermental (see Google, search pages removed due to DMCA requests).
I'm more worried that as a China Citizen you cannot leave the country (or go near the borders) without special permission. Everywhere you look there are little government officials in uniform asking questions. For the most part I ignore them, they generally leave foriengners well alone, but my buddies at the local office treat them as a layer of red tape.
One guy wanted to photocopy my passport, no way Jose ! And if you think that rustly ol' 38 scares me, let me tell you that this is not the first time someone pointed a gun at me. I was in india once and
Actually, part of the neo-con philosphy is a hardline stance against dictators, especially China. However, this is probably the only part of the hard line neo-con philosophy that Bush has not adopted. And he has actually received criticism from other neo-cons about it. One of the reasons why he hasn't had a hard line stance is because a large part of our budget deficit(which was brought on by tax cuts and expensive wars) is funded by China. Also a reason why the US has only recently brought up it's first suit against China in the WTO.
Now that I am done with the factual part of my post, I'll do a little rant: I really don't think building up such a massive debt to China is good for the US in the long run. After they have bought enough bonds they can always threaten the US with a massive selloff which would push interest rates through the roof, severly hurting the US(and global) economy. Doesn't anyone else thing this is a bad idea?!
Providing your National ID card number and name has been required in mainland China internet cafes since at least 1998.
That you can buy a new ID card for about RMB 100 (about US$ 12) means that many Chinese have no qualms about handing over their ID numbers!
A dream is good. A plan is better.
I'm not sure cultural factors are primary here. Yes, there is a long heritage of collective responsibility, deference to elders and clan leaders, the paternalist state, etc. But do recall that the current regime has engaged in widespread, politically-motivated murder and torture.
The Party regards a form of collective spiritual and physical exercise as a political threat and have imprisoned and tortured its followers. It is within the living memory of most Chinese that the universities were emptied and intellectuals, professors and students forced to undergo *political re-education* on collective farms and forced-labor camps. Millions of Chinese have died for their political views (even the mere potential for dissenting views) in the last sixty years.
Which is why the current appropriation of the slogan *Let a thousand flowers bloom* sticks in my craw so. Besides being a mis-translation, this slogan of the early days of the cultural revolution was not an invitation to voice new ideas or question established norms, but bait to lure dissenting elements into the open. It is like saying *arbeit macht frei.* It may or may not be so, but to use the phrase in any but a historical context would be deeply offensive to many, even today. That such a reaction is not invited by the Chinese phrase is a testament to Western cultural astigmatism.
illegitimii non ingravare
What if they used anonymous surfing software like Primedius, or Anonymizer, could they still be tracked?
This is interesting in a horrible way. Will freedom win out or will technology allow the ultimate in repressive dictatorship? The existence of earlier communication tech like copiers was a big part of the russian people winning the cold war on behalf of all of us. Martin Luthor could challange a very powerfull church largely because of the printing press. Computer networks are fundamentally different in that they allow the possibility of central monitering and control. If those russian copiers also printed out a copy in some kremlin basement with the name of the person pressing copy they would have been a lot less usefull in transmitting 'samizdat'. I read some science fiction a while ago ( vernor vinge?) where automated dictatorships were one of the standard causes for civilization failing. This seemed quite plausible to me. We are very close to a point where continous monitering and A.I. filtering of that data could give a goverment incredible powers for good and evil. With terrorism and other crime the opportunity to move previously free, but now frightened and cowardly (i.e. patriot act), societys to this sort of control certainly exists. How well the dicatorship in china does in using technology to control its people will tell us a great deal about the future of our own freedom.
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Some interesting points to ponder:
If you treat the oil-producing countries of the world as US satellite states (which is reasonable considering that the majority of them reinvest the majority of their oil profits in US assets), we're not running that much of a deficit. There are ~75M bls/day of oil consumed in the world, of which ~25M bls/day is US consumption. That means the rest of the world needs to cough up ~$1.5B dollars a day in cold hard US currency (since all oil is priced in dollars). Surprise surprise, that's almost exactly the level of foreign investment PER DAY in US assets.
Another thing that should give you pause is that China herself is running a trade deficit. It seems like it's the fashionable thing to do...