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How Chinese Evade Government's Web Controls
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "China is moving to 'centralize all China-based Web news and opinion under a state regulator,' the Wall Street Journal reports, but determined citizens have found a way out of previous restrictions in what has become a cat-and-mouse game: 'Many Chinese Internet users, dismissing what they call government scare tactics, find ways around censorship. The government requires users of cybercafs to register with their state-issued ID cards on each visit, but some users avoid cybercaf registration by paying off owners. In response, the government has installed video cameras in some cafs and shut others. ... While certain words such as "democracy" are banned in online chat rooms, China's Web users sometimes transmit sensitive information as images, or simply speak in code, inserting special characters such as underscoring into typing.' Also noteworthy is that major portals seem to be cooperating with authorities' restrictions: 'Insiders who work for the big portal sites say they are already in regular contact with authorities about forbidden topics, such as the outlawed Falun Gong religious group, which their teams of Web editors pull off bulletin boards.'"
I hope they are using something like TOR(http://tor.eff.org/) so that they can effectively browse how and when they want.
Not only is this not funny, it's wrong. The Chinese have no problem pronouncing the letter 'L'. LAO Tze, Bruce LI, etc.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
One philosphical thought I had that may not have been covered in the 19th century western thinking (because its an Eastern concept) is the fact that in a competitive market, what helps the perceived interest of one entity will often harm the perceived interest of another. Help and harm here being entirely subjective, unless you apply the crude metric of next quarter's short-term profits.
If we accept the fact that any action or communication with potency will help some and harm others, then forbid harmful communication, we have to forbid all communication that has any potency or effect of any kind.
What are you talking about?
Reference on unemployment.
We may not be the best, but were pretty well off. And of those impoverished people in New Orleans, how many of them didn't have a cell phone? How many didn't have a TV? I will agree that they may not have had the financial resources to flee the area, but that doesn't mean they lived in a box. We are not discussing the same thing. Get off the scemantics. Illiteracy and innumeracy are problems, but lots of people who are afflicted with those issues still have freaking cell phones. It's a matter of priorities.
Yeah...Sheehan found that out today.
No permit, asked to move 3 times. Publicity stunt. Notice the within reason part? Across the street would have been completely acceptable.
No...to many of you believe FOX and your president.
You're an idiot, you just disagreed with someone who agrees with you. Quit with the knee jerk reaction and think. We are too busy stuffing our faces. Check it out.
I just haven't heard of anyone's rights being limited. I still see war protests happening. I still see people speaking freely about whatever political views they have. ... I still see people getting due process
... the ignored pleas of a woman whose handcuffs were on way too tight. You could see that it was cutting off her circulation but the pleasant cops didn't let that detract them from their job.
I think I got all of those covered right here:
http://www.2600.com/rnc2004/
Read the whole thing, and you'll see:
The march was then diverted onto 16th Street.....
At the intersection of 16th and Irving Place, I saw what the police had done. They had cleverly parked all of their Vespas across the street so that nobody could get by. Of course, a rampaging mob would have had no trouble at all tossing those little Italian scooters to the ground and continuing on their way. But this was a slow moving, orderly procession. They simply turned around and started to head back towards the park. That's when the realization of what had just happened hit. The road had been blocked on both ends. Everyone was now trapped.
I think trapping people and not letting them go is a Violation of their Right to Peacably Assemble.
I heard a cop nearby saying that press could leave. I decided to go for it. "Back in," he growled before I could even show him any press ID. "You're not press," he said conclusively. I wondered what gave it away - the recorder, the video camera, maybe the hair? I had all kinds of witty retorts in mind but I chose instead to go to someone who seemed a little less pissed off with the world. I said I was with the press and he asked who I worked for. I told him: WBAI and Indymedia, both of which I had identification from. "Do you have an NYPD press card?" he asked. "No," I said, incredulously. NYPD press cards are only given to corporate media types, full time reporters who have beats and retirement plans. You also have to have a proven need to get behind police lines, which I didn't have any interest in doing. And what I was covering here wasn't even behind a police line. It was in the middle of a police circle. "Sorry," he said. I was apparently out of luck because I wasn't a full time, paid reporter at a big media outlet. Since I was a part time volunteer with a non commercial station who could never qualify for that magic NYPD card, I was now going to be treated as a criminal.
Denying the Freedom of the Press.
As my tape ran out in the remaining half hour or so of sitting on the street, I was able to capture
Cruel and Unusual Punishment?
As for "Due Process", check out the part where the cops hold them for over 33 hours before releasing them, a clear violation of the law, which says they can only hold you for 24 hours.
I'll leave off with a quote from the article:
I'm not one of these people who believe we live in a fascist regime. I think that's an insult to the many millions who have suffered under true oppression and horrors that we can only imagine. That said, the technology and mindset that I was witnessing being implemented all around us would be such an asset to any society where freedom was the enemy.