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Study Shows China Tightens Internet Filtering
Torrey Clark writes "China is the world's leading censor of the Internet, filtering web sites, blogs, e-mail, and online forums for sensitive political content, according to a study released Thursday. The OpenNet Initiative said that China employs thousands officials and private citizens to build a 'pervasive, sophisticated, and effective' system of Internet censorship. 'ONI sought to determine the degree to which China filters sites on topics that the Chinese government finds sensitive, and found that the state does so extensively,' said the study. 'Chinese citizens seeking access to Web sites containing content related to Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen Square incident, opposition political parties, or a variety of anti-Communist movements will frequently find themselves blocked,' the report said."
Its a means to control the people without polarizing them and without causing a revolt.
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
As sad as it is, with everything that China has done, the world would significantly rather have China playing a global leadership role than America (their top pick, however, was France). That's how far things have degenerated...
Margaret Thatcher died the other day. It was a sad day, but I like to think that she's looking up at us right now."
There is a philosophical question under all this. Do people have an inherent right to have any and all information free? I don't think anyone wants ALL information floating around free. What most would consider freedom advocates will still want all spam shut down. Somwhere a little to the right of that, some will want websites teaching how to make bombs shut down. A little more to the right, some will want porn shut down.
So the question arises, should countries, with their own values, be able to determine what content their people are exposed to? For example, can China declare communism is best, and ban all websites promoting capitalism? Can Iran declare western film evil, and ban all websites with western film content?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I guess that just goes to show that the world is dumb, or perhaps greedy.
A small, efficient, uncorrupt, open minded country like the Netherlands or something seems like a much better bet.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I know that not all the content the Chinese censors need to filter is in Chinese, but this report made me wonder... how would applying filters to a logographic language such as Chinese differ from filtering content in Western language systems?
It seems like it would be a lot easier to block an idea if it were represented by a unique character than by a set of phonemes that could easily be 0bfu5cat3d without losing meaning. Does a language like Chinese generally lend itself better to computerized manipulation?
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
US companies Cisco and Goggle were both named in a Washington Post article as being duplicious in aiding the Chinese governments efforts to censor the internet. Although it states the study does not mention either company and both companies have denied aiding the Chinese government it still begs the question whether US companies, especially, Goggle, would put profit ahead of freedom of speech. It harks back to the business done between companies from both sides during WWII.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Due to the vast number of Falun Gong practitioners in the world (over 100 million) I think that the largest reason for this censorship is because the number of these people (who attempt to align themselves with truthfulness, compassion, and forebearance) grew so fast in China that they outnumbered the members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and since Falun Gong practitioners are not interested in politics, the CCP considered this a threat.
This censorship by China has taken it's most cruel form in the sense that (and this is a FACT) there is currently PERSECUTION going on in China, and it is extending outside of China. The CCP is even trying to make moves on pracitioners here in the U.S. but OUR government won't allow them to.
How long must we be a victim of fate and circumstance?
As long as it takes to change our minds.
Is Gmail POP access blocked in China? I know someone that's having trouble accessing Gmail through the POP server, and I'm wondering if it's just him, or if it's blocked there.
"China employs thousands officials and private citizens"
Is there such a thing as a "private citizen" in the People's Republic?
...as long as they pick the right targets
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