Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
"Move along. Nothing for you to see here."
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
Note to Chinese government...censorship of the Internet is a lost cause, give it up. If you want to be the next economic superpower, you are going to have to deal with dissenting ideas found on the Internet. You'd do better to work out an ongoing public discussion forum on incorporating the best ideas into the public and private sectors instead of trying to censor access.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Teh D3cl4r4ti0n 0f 1nd3p3nd4nc3?
This article helps reinforce my constant philosophy that information is now freed of regulation and censorship, and that no law can trump humanity's moral law that makes only offensive crimes truly wrong, legally or morally.
I feel bad for the Chinese, but thankfully the ways around censorship are growing in number. We have to note these gains internationally as we watch our speech get restrained even in the U.S.
No law will prevent the average person from doing what they feel is right, which to me is proof of the inherent rights we're all born with. Every person in this world has the God-given (or inherent) right to speak. It is only government that attempts to restrain it.
Take note, your freedom to speak is declining as we support persons we vote for to further degrade our rights. As the Chinese save up to 40% of their income, they also find ways to save their rights. As we U.S. citizens look to the federal government to educate us, rebuild our mistakes and provide our retirements, we save nothing (1%) and lose rights.
The question is, which scares the Chinese government more? Democracy or porn?
And which will be more difficult to filter out?
Cogito Ergo Sum
I hope they are using something like TOR(http://tor.eff.org/) so that they can effectively browse how and when they want.
Internet censors you.... wait a sec....
This article was submitted by:
;)
Carl Bialik from the WSJ
AKA
wsjarticles@wsj.com
and the story is at:
http://online.wsj.com/public/...
I'm sure it's just a coincidence
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Even more, when the young hackers and spammers in China realise that they are being opressed, they will try to get out, and I'm sure they'll open up a lot. It's impossible to regulate so many people on something as free as the internet.
The Chinese Communist governement is fighting a battle that they will eventually lose because they have lost the hearts and minds of their people. The internet today provides the average Chinese citizen with enough information about alternative forms of government that communist propaganda is just one source of information among many. The Chinese communist government cannot finger every hole in the dike forever. They're already knee deep in the leaks. I'm proud to be part of the wider information technology community that is taking communism down.
Also noteworthy is that major portals seem to be cooperating with authorities' restrictions
Thats noteworthy? That the big companies in China are complying with Chinese law? I'm speechless.
Kudos for the citizens for finding clever ways to communicate. Its not as if they can just PGP their messages or do anything really suspicious. Just the fact that you're not doing "normal" surfing would probably be enough to raise someones eyebrow.
Also noteworthy is that major portals seem to be cooperating with authorities' restrictions.
Happy 7th Birthday, Google.
Pardon my ignorance but wouldn't the availability of free occidental VPN servers and CGI proxys overwhelm the authorities?
I mean they can block a few IP adresses by handpicking them but they cannot go ahead and block the whole internet, can they?
Some small app ala Google WIFI with rolling IPs (in an encrypted list of course) connecting to dynamic hostnames would be too much of a task for the authorities to bear with.
Any other ideas?
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
Maybe then your post is worthy of a +4.
finger every hole in the dike forever
ROFL
Please tell me the pun was intended.
There's an interesting fantasy book by Gene Wolfe where an empire has declared that one may only speak using sentences from the holy books. This was supposed to prevent anyone from communicating anything improper.
So a captive from this empire would tell a story by selecting passages from this holy book that matched what he wanted to say, it was not as efficient and required the listener to interpret more. But still it did not prevent him from telling a story unrelated to the holy books.
Banning words will only make the communication channel less efficient, and somewhat more ambigious, but people will still be able to say what they want.
- These characters were randomly selected.
You are right, but most empires do not like to quietly go down in flames. On the other hand...
./ is not supposed to be going anywhere, and that it's purpose is just informing nerds (TWICE) about stuff that matters, but having freedom of speech does not solve many problems.
I do not think that freedom of speech is necessary for economic growth. Sometimes it might work the other way around. Having a strong leadership with no space for dissent guarantees that if the leader knows the way no time will be lost discussing. Look at Slashdot, many times the discussion is so out of focus that no usable conclusion is ever reached. A group is trying to troll, another to be funny, etc. I know that the
Please, don't jump to the conclusion that I want oppressive governments or dictators. All I'm saying is that China can be (IS) the next economic superpower without the civil liberties or political models of the West. Most people don't know what real freedom is, nor do they care if they have enough 'freedom' to have fun and live a 'no worries' life.
I sometimes think that 'freedom' is way over rated by people like us, who believe in some World way beyond the Rainbow where all software is GNU-like and MS does not exist.
Disclosure: I'm stupid
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
I'm not sure I agreed with everything he said but it certainly made an interesting discussion.
In China, what is forbidden is anything that might threaten the obvious power structure of governmnet. In the United States, forbidden information is anything that hurts the profits of a large corporation. Even honest commentary that names the company responsible is effectively impossible here, unless you can afford to fight the charges of slander or trademark infringement in court. The DMCA is another example that's been covered exhaustively elsewhere.
I've heard it said by someone else, and someone please tell me who if you know, that in America we have free speech only as long as it doesn't make any difference to anyone. As soon as what we say has an impact on someone's life or a company's bottom line, then we can't say it anymore. Is that really freedom?
Don't forget the Neocons in charge require communication restriction. No pictures of dead bodies floating in the water of New Orleans, no pictures of the coffins of our servicemen who paid the ultimate price in Iraq and Afghanistan. They put people in jail without communication, without access to lawyers, strip them of their citizenship. They treat prisoners of war in defiance of the principles of the Geneva convention. This is America. How did we become like the Chinese communists? How long has the hunger strike in Guantanamo been going on now? It's easy to be an armchair supporter of freedom of speech. It's very frightening when you exercise it in a country that is heading down a dark path.
"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Phooie! Lets get real here. Who's "blindly accepting"? We are under painful threat of personal terrorism if we DON'T accept their dictates. Americans know we are getting screwed,you would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't think this, the deal is, the government will and does use force-at any level-to get their way, up to the point of the barrel of a gun. It is not 'we the people" anymore, it is "us versus them".
.Look at what they did with hurricane katrina, went WAY out of their way to keep private help and citizens out,walmart trucks with water told to go back, citizen convoys with rescue boats, ordered to go back, civilian communication lines CUT by agents of the feds, on and on, until it had dissolved into chaos, THEN they decide to show up to 'restore order". THIS IS A CLUE. That isn't an "intelligence failure" like that additional 9-11 bigfat lie, it was done on purpose.
Want to go exercise political "free speech" at a rally? If they have decided that speech is ok here but not over there across the street, their armed agents WILL use any amount of force necessary to make you comply. How about "random courtesy roadblocks"? What BS is this, when I was a kid this was taught to us as only something some tyrannical regime pulled, the third reich or stalins soviet union or some place like that, we were shown how utterly bogus that was, because it's true, it IS bogus. Now? What are you supposed to do, NOT STOP? Guess what happens to you if you don't stop, they'll run you off the road or shoot you in the head. How about taxes going through the roof, what do you do about it, taxes and out of control government spending? Vote for the two cooperating political gangs who have hijacked government and make it near impossible for any other party to actually function and get a toe hold in? they have killed off any effective third party action, this is pretty obvious since the reform party actually made a showing. Even took them off the national debates, the League of Women Voters was so disgusted with that blatant power grab that they stopped sponsoring the national debates. A CLUE. How much of "black box" electronic vote hijacking, gerrymandering and skewing the nomination and ballot process has to occur before the government guys doing it arrest themselves, which is what it would take? that just ain't gonna happen, and everyone knows it, and you as joe citizen can't just go and "detain" some governmental crook. They would kill you dead.
We can all see corporate/governmental industry collusion, no bid contracts, blood profits pushed over everything else, yet what are you supposed to actually do about it? You can't stop it physically, you can't vote it away, and any crimes committed by the government are aided and abetted by their armed agents in various colored uniforms. I've been in this gig for decades, for every one little retreat back to the constitution we've seen, we get several large steps forward into despotism.
No the problem is, the government has way too many "just following orders" types who will follow any order given to them, even if they know it is pretty dodgy. And that means both overseas and domestically. Wars based on utter lies and fabrications-still being waged "just following orders".
Face reality, we have been under a violent armed coup for several years now, just no one really wants to say that out loud too much. check the "hate crimes" bill about to pass, this will affect online and printed and broadcast speech, yet the mass media is mostly ignoring it-wonder why? could it be they are in on it at the top, it's the same technofeudalists who run things, the same elite?
From my perspective, the coup started in earnest when they got clean away with whacking JFK and it has gone downhill from there. A nice slow semi stealth dictatorial take over, every day, establish more command and control and surveillance.
We aren't too many years away from being more like China
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
In case you don't know about the Falun Gong group mentioned in the summary, I've read about them. This group is categorized as a destructive cult by various organizations and cult experts, including Rick Ross (famous anti-scientology deprogrammer). Apparently its teachings include conspiracies, alien invaders and interdimensional travel (WTF? O.o)
Here's more info on Falun Gong, and a testimony of a former member (which doesn't say much unfortunately).
Anyway, it's sad that the reason this cult was censored, is not because they abuse their followers physically and emotionally, but because they threaten the chinese national security.
Let's not forget how far China has come since Richard Nixon's visit back in the Seventies. Compare 1970's China with modern China and you will see. I am not against gradual change as long as it's constant.
Confucius said something like, 'it doesn't matter how slow you go as long as you don't stop.'
Darmok and Jilad at Tenagra!
May be the paradigm has changed lately...I thought "If you control mail, you control information". But chinese government has taken it to the next level, "If you control internet, you control everything (information, dissent, negative views and freedom)".
societies are like compressed springs. The more government tries to compress that spring, the greater the chance of it bouncing back and giving a nasty surprise. History has ample examples on this.
My-oh-my how we whine about the "bad" chinese govt for not allowing their citizens access to crap news sites like CNN. Yet we all shop at Walmart, or Target, who imports so much of their retail items from China.
My-oh-my how we wiggle the accusing finger while wearing the "Made in China" t-shirts. Frankly, the truth is that we really dont care what they do in China, so long as the products remain cheap. I dont care - I have enough problems right here to deal with - Corporate News Censorship is greater than any US govt censorship.
Having been to China, I can tell you that most ppl there dont care either about what sites they can or cant access. A kilometer out of the cities is rural poverty that shocked me even in the light of India or Nepal. These chinese ppl would much rather have clean water, and a sewage system. Maybe hope for rural electricity!
In a perverse way, economic exploitation isnt so bad. The drive to sell more products to the west begrudgingly forces infrastrucure improvements. It draws more ppl to the cities where clean water and sewage exist. I'm not calling for "greed is good" posters, but, doing no business with china would have the tangible effect of setting back the population of worker lifestyle.
So, whats so bad about greed and their own censorship?
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
A few quick comments in my still very Chinese mind massive cencorship is sure a lost course for Chinese government. Almost everybody in China, including officials, believes democracy is the goal and will come one day, although almost nobody believes they should come imminently. Government is doing it to deter "unwashed masses", as gvc pointed out, and doing it as long as they can. Also noteworthy how much government has changed from N.Korean-type 30 years ago: every year they use less and less punishment, even when they use more preventitive method. This is why you see so many creative ways to evade cencorship. democracy and good administration are two separate things. we've seen way too many failed democratic developing countries, so most Chinese buy in the government words about China is not ready for democracy yet. Also democracy is different from free speech. Even after China turns democracy, I expect online porn still largely banned... at that time, we'll see cat-and mouse game for online sex :)
FaLun Gong is notorious among both Chinese in China and Chinese oversea. As Spy der Mann said: it's sad that the reason this cult was censored, is not because they abuse their followers physically and emotionally, but because they threaten the chinese national security. And it's MORE sad because of their aftermath, many other good groups are banned.
A few real codes (abbrevs) for people interested:
democracy--MZ, government--ZF, communist party--GCD, FaLun Gong--FLG, leaders' name are also abbreved, or call "old xxx",... these are just most common ways.
Your argument is detestable. There is no comparison between the two countries. Your attempt at doing so shows a great amount of ignorance and trivializes the suffering of the Chinese people.
In China the true side effect of getting in the way of the state or a business, which by the way most businesses are the state, is imprisonment or death.
Go look at Amnesty International's 2004 page on China, now tell me how you can truly compare what they do to the US? Freedom of speech? I can go shout at Bush and any member of Congress while in Washington, I can post to a blog, or even buy an ad. I can run anti-corporate web pages here as well as those of accusing the US of atrocity after atrocity without fear of losing my life, having my family disappear, or being imprisoned forever hoping some international group my find me.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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.
Essentially, it ammounts to doing whatever you want to without harming other people.
Except for all the chemicals the government has rather arbitrarily decided you aren't allowed to put into your own body. And you can't break encryption to watch media you bought on other platforms. And you can't download stuff that's no longer available to purchase. And you can't drive without wearing your seatbelt. And... you get the point. And the current religious right in power is moving towards placing even more restrictions on what consenting adults can and cannot do.
I read this article in Shanghai, China, without a proxy. This is also true for the WSJ article.
221.239.214.3
Leave the old continent in charge of these matters; after all France invented the universal declaration of human rights didn't they?
Sure. They did such a good job with the Barbary pirates. The French also invented the guillotine. Of course, we Americans invented the atomic bomb.
Interesting to watch my comment get modded up to a 5 insightful then modded down to a 2 with troll and overrated. I might agree with the latter. It's easy to point fingers at repressive countries. It's not so easy when your own country starts behaving like them. I must have pushed someone's button to be rated troll. I feel honored.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
The US will not abandon elections any time soon. If you know ANYTHING of the US military, you know that if Bush's term came to an end and he didn't get his ass out of the office, the military would pick his ass up and kick it out of the military for him.
People often forget how important the military is for a functional civil society. A military that respects the rule of law and seeks to protect the state is extremely important. If your military does not feel like it is commanded by the civilian state and feels that its goal is not the protection of the civilian government, you tend to get overthrown governments. Popular uprisings that are not crushed are rare, but the militaries taking over civilian governments are a dime a dozen.
In this regards, the American democracy is one of the most secure in the world. The US military would NEVER take up arms against the civilian government unless a leader in the civilian government refused to get his ass out of office when his time was up. Further, even if the military did turn on the civilian government for the purpose of dragging Bush's ass out of office once his term was up, it would end its role there and go back to letting lawyers and politicians clean up the mess.
Fear Bush for whatever reasons you like, but don't fear him because he is going to use the military on the civilian government. In fact, if you recall, the US military refused to enter New Orleans and conduct any sort of peace keeping operations within the city because it is so strictly forbidden in the US constitutions. The only thing the military was allowed to do was provide logistical support and search and rescue operations. If a city getting wiped off the map is not disaster enough for the US military to bend the rules, I would say it is safe to say nothing is going to cause them to break them.
....walking with people who just wanted to VOTE, and had their rights denied. I took the gas when we wanted open honest debate and actual facts and data over a war fought but never legally declared, a war for blood profits, partially fought with chemical weapons that were killing our own guys and still do to this day. And MOST of those guys were very poor young folks who got dragooned into it against their will, while the fatcats sons got student 2s deferrments or cushy national guard non-jobs, like a certain smirker in chief.
I watched as a group of cops picked someone who was non violent, just yelling, out of a crowd and STOMPED AND BEAT HIM TO DEATH at a rally AND IT NEVER MADE THE NEWS. they were laughing while they did it, LAUGHING. Kent state made the news, jackson state did, this incident didn't, and there have been a lot more over the years, just not reported or barely reported or excused off for some vague double speak reason. I, and several other people took that case as eyewitnesses as far as we could, to a lieutenant governor meeting, IT STILL RESULTED IN NOTHING HAPPENING. They hauled the poor guys body away and wouldn't even admit it happened.
THAT is partially from where I am coming from. Don't assume things about people you don't know. just because nation x is worse than nation y doesn't mean nation y doesn't have uber sucky aspects to it of the dictatorial goon squad nature. This is a government that has a past verifiable track record of foreign official assassinations, support for death squads, cozying up to dictators or helping install them, and utterly wasting most of the money they get from the tax payers with a shrug,a wink and a nod to "business as usual".
My goal is somehow work so that it never gets worse than what it is! And somehow this is wrong because some other place it's even worse?? Sorry, no one controls where they are born, but we all have a stake in where we live, to try and make it better and you can't do that unless you are able to actually LOOK and see where the faults are. I have done this, did it, and will continue to do so. My commentary was on the 'americans blindly accepting' part, some of us don't 'blindly accept' matters we know are just plain evil wrong, but we also are aware of the consequences of actions in todays political world. If we don't push back when it's so called 'not that bad", then GUARANTEED they will keep pushing until you and me and thee and thou are squashed flat eyes downcast shuffling slaves.
$%^&*( that, homey don't play that game
That the parent scored 5: insightful after claiming America is run by armed dictators that purposely drowned N.O. makes me wonder where slashdot's moderators come from. This is a meaningless conspiracy theory.
Maybe this is exactly what people want? Maybe we (as in the royal "you" if you think this doesn't apply to other countries, to differing extents) aren't really interested in "freedom" as much as we (as in the actual "me and you") would like to think. Bread, circuses and the ability to lead extremely safe lives without the need to think to much, these may be what most people really want. Maybe they're not being robbed of their less commonly used freedoms, maybe they're trading them away?
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.
The official U.S. unemployment number is NOT the number of people collecting unemployment benefits, it is the result of a survey called "the household survey" that involves tens of thousands of telephone interviews per month. This measures the number of people who are looking for work but who cannot find a job. Because it rigorously surveys the actual populace, it is considered an accurate measure of unemployment, and is the official measure in the U.S.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.