Slashdot Mirror
China Slams Clinton's Call For Internet Freedom
CWmike writes "China on Friday slammed remarks made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promoting Internet freedom worldwide, saying her words harmed US-China relations. Clinton's speech and China's response both come after Google last week said it planned to reverse its long-standing position in China by ending censorship of its Chinese search engine. Google cited increasingly tough censorship and recent cyberattacks on the Gmail accounts of human rights activists for its decision, which it said might force it to close its offices in China altogether. On Thursday in Washington, DC, Clinton unveiled US initiatives to help people living under repressive governments access the Internet for purposes such as reporting corruption. The US will support circumvention tools for dissidents whose Internet connections are blocked, she said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu called for the US 'to respect the facts and stop using the issue of so-called Internet freedom to unreasonably criticize China.' China's laws forbid hacking attacks and violations of citizens' privacy, the statement said, apparently referring to the issues raised by Google."
Maybe, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on it.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
If Google, because etics, is willing to lose such market as China, could get a huge credibility and respect increase (kudos, Google). Unfortunately, I'm skeptical about it.
Google is not the only organization that is sick and tired of China's hacking and industrial espionage. After seeing in my logs hundreds of hacking attempts a day that originate in China, it really sucks that we cannot just cut them off the Internet. If they attached anywhere near the interest in stopping the hacking that they did in prosecuting the people who dealt in porn, the problem would stop overnight. They supposedly have the most sophisticated government firewall in the world, but they cannot spot and stop these continual hacking attempts? Obviously the Chinese government is behind this hacking activity.
Talk about a non-responsive response: "Our rules don't allow for hacking and violations of citizen's privacy".
Considering the state of privacy there, they certainly aren't lying.
I have a friend in Shanghai, and it sucks because when I send him video links on Youtube, he can't view them because they're firewalled from Youtube.
Kudos for giving countries like this access to freedom of information.
It's like being only allowed to watch State-sponsored TV and government approved books in libraries, and then suddenly being allowed to experience the wealth of the world.
4chan and the dark underbelly of the internet aside, I hope this gives people a taste of culture/information other than what's force-fed down their throats and see what they're missing out on.
http://www.object404.com
But since its america, no one complains because "god bless america". If china had this kind of propaganda there wouldnt be as big of a problem.
Does Australia get no Google? And the UK, we are getting pretty poor at this freedom thing.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
I really love what Hillary Clinton said in the article:
:)
"Ultimately, this issue isn't just about information freedom -- it is about what kind of world we want and what kind of world we will inhabit," she said.
"It's about whether we live on a planet with one Internet, one global community and a common body of knowledge that benefits and unites us all, or a fragmented planet in which access to information and opportunity is dependent on where you live and the whims of censors."
Really lovely and Charles Stross-ian, brings a tear to my eye
http://www.object404.com
or we might use our tectonic weapon on them :O
That is an amazing bit of conspiriakii.
There is not references other that some buzz words gleanable from US procurement contracts. No phone numbers, no names, no websites and yet you manage to get a +2 insightful.
I am impressed.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
At least your censor don't act like an idiot.
Hell, the Great Firewall even blocked the "Down for everyone or just me"; last night Amazon's images have all disappeared.
And recently some imbeciles have configured the firewall block CDNs... The results are, bizarre.
I am actually currently in China. Sites which are carte-blance blocked include: Facebook, youtube, wikipedia, blogger.com (as a side note: Wikipedia really is useful--reminded of that now that it is not available).
The reason for blocking Facebook and company is because they are starting to work for serious political change: see today's 'No Prorouge' rallies occurring today in Canada [and at worldwide Canadian embassies] after the Canadian prime minister leader cancelled the democratically-elected parliament for weeks--these rallies are a result of over 200,000 strong grassroots Facebook group support. Concurrent to that is an evaporation of that prime ministers lead in the polls versus the opposition party.
-----
Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
So what "stuff" did you find and what websites were you looking at that were mysteriously blocked?
You must be a very important person!
This is very strong language. Google is getting full backing and all other US companies are being actively encouraged to follow their lead.
Well... yeah, I am, actually. But I don't bet against Google. I also don't bet against China, which makes this dispute rather interesting. A company that willingly turns its back on a market of 1 billion people risks having its CEO bludgeoned to death by angry investors. At the same time, any entity that willingly cuts itself off from google also cuts itself off from one of the most amazing information tools ever invented. If I had to call it, I'd say both sides make angry mouth noises for, oh, 3 to 6 months and then quietly settles on a compromise that allows Google to pretend that they're not evil while allowing China to continue keeping information out of the hands of its citizens.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The MafiAAs receive carte blanche from the courts to abuse their customers, Net Neutrality simmers on the legislative back burner, allowing vertically integrating ISP's to throttle traffic in cavalier and arbitrary ways, as well as allowing them to merge with content providing companies to "better serve" their customers.
But we don't have censorship, nope. But we don't give American internet users that tube of KY which'd help it all go down so much easier.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
it took some phone calls to stop the censorship.
You're either amazingly important, simply summarising a very long painful process up in a few words for the sake of keeping an internet post shortish or you're basically lying...
Wait, is that the same US that banned the internet poker? Now it wants something called "freedom"?
Says one thing does the other?
Evidence continues to surface about American and other Western firms cooperating with repressive governments in their efforts to censor and eavesdrop on their citizens. Why didn't Mrs. Clinton mention them in her speech?
We have, for instance, Cisco, Nokia/Siemens, Microsoft, and Yahoo, just to name a few.
HAH! I love how China acts like they are innocent and all. "China's laws forbid hacking attacks and violations of citizens' privacy, the statement said, apparently referring to the issues raised by Google."" Riiiight. I'm also the Queen of England! China would NEVER hack anyone. The Chinese government is one of the biggest fattest LIARS ever. They constantly say one thing while time and time again they prove that they don't care about anyone's benefit but their own. Whether it is manipulating trade markets and currancy, hacking, controlling the people of the country, human rights issues, etc. Yet whenever confronted they are all "You can't tell us what to do" or "we don't do that!" or "We will change things." but what changes? Exactly nothing. They might sweep it under the rug or shift things around but nearly every time the SAME issue comes right back up. The world needs to basically tell China to stuff it and come back when they learn their lesson. Stop manufacturing stuff in China, stop buying Chinese goods, the whole nine yards. Put the squeeze on them till they show their hand.
I do what I must because of what I must do.
Given China's bottleneck of a firewall, I am surprised it hasn't been DDoS'ed. Routing their entire country through one node is an exploit just ripe for an attack.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
Remarks by US Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton on the occasion of the massive hacker attack on US companies by an unspecified national entity. Translated for your convenience.
On Monday, a seven-year-old girl in Port-au-Prince was pulled from the rubble after they sent a text message calling for help. The spread of information networks is forming a new nervous system for our planet. And even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.
Amid this unprecedented surge in connectivity, we must also recognize that these technologies are not an unmitigated blessing. These tools are also being exploited to undermine human progress and political rights. Just as steel can be used to build hospitals or machine guns, or nuclear power can energize a city or destroy it, the same networks that help organize movements for freedom also enable al-Qaida to ruthlessly copy American songs and movies in “M-P-Three” format.
Freedom of expression is no longer defined solely by whether citizens can go into the town square and criticize their government without fear of retribution. No — they must be able to give their full name and credit card number and put them on the Internet as well. A connection to global information networks is like an on-ramp to modernity — one cell phone in a remote community can enable people previously unavailable access to Monsanto seeds.
On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress — but the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas, paid for at 99 cents — I’m sorry, $1.29 — a song. And we recognize that the world’s information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it.
Now, all societies recognize that free expression has its limits. We do not tolerate those who incite others to violence or copyright violation, such as the agents of al-Qaida who are, at this moment, downloading songs at a furious rate, and setting their sights on cracking the patriotic protection of Blu-Ray discs. Those who use the internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities.
States, terrorists, downloaders and those who would act as their proxies must know that the United States will protect our networks. Those who disrupt the free flow of paid information in our society or any other pose a threat to our economy, our government, our civil society and our economy.
Increasingly, U.S. companies are making the issue of internet and information freedom a greater consideration in their business decisions. The most recent situation involving Google has attracted a great deal of interest. And we look to the Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough review of the cyber intrusions that led Google to make its announcement. And we also look for that investigation and its results to be China signing the ACTA treaty like our campaign donors want them to.
The internet has already been a source of tremendous progress in China, and it is fabulous. There are so many people in China now online. But countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users to be protected from being able to download any song ever released, any time, anywhere, risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century.
So let me close by asking you to remember the little girl who was pulled from the rubble on Monday in Port-au-Prince. She’s alive, she was reunited with her family, she will have the chance to grow up and pay the going rate for a licence not a sale see end user license agreement of a song in a given format on a given device. We cannot stand by while people are separated from the iTunes store by walls of censorship.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
''China's laws forbid hacking attacks and violations of citizens' privacy"
China's constitution also says all sorts of interesting things, such as freedom of religious worship, freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, association, etc. (Look up the "four bigs" and Article 35). The ability to exercise those rights is rather limited. Really, the whole thing reads like some kind of bad joke.
Let's just say that the implementation and enforcement of China's laws leaves much to be desired, and when the law is inconveniently contrary to the wishes of the dictators in charge, they change or ignore the laws more or less at will (including the constitution). So, I'll be impressed when the Chinese government actually uses the laws against "hacking and violations of citizens' privacy" to track down and bring to justice the people responsible for this episode of widespread corporate espionage. No credit for anything less. Unless met by appropriate action, these laws are just words on a page, like the "rights" that exist in the Chinese constitution.
I suppose someone will pipe up and say that isn't much different from some western countries, but at least we're allowed to openly talk about and protest the fact, and the expression of the problem isn't quite so egregious.
Harm US/China relations? We hate China... China hates us. They are stealing our jobs, subverting our government, having into our military instillation and business systems... stealing our intilectual property, subverting our monetary system by artificially manipulating their currency. They're dumping toxins into the air and water, not to mention into the toys and babyfood they sell us. They financially support North Korea, one of the countrys most likely to be involved in whatever event eventually destroys the world. How on earth could we do anything to harm relations with China? And how could access to the internet somehow make their citizens any more aware of what a bunch of asshats their government officials are?
First when you're a guest you have to play by the house rules.
What does that have to do with China hacking servers in another country?
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Just boot China out of the WTO and drop their MFN with America. Look, CHina is NOT going to give freedom's to their citizens. Their move towards capitalism was to prevent their citizens from revolting. There is ZERO intention of ever restoring their freedoms. OTH, China is in a cold war with the rest of the west, and most likely with the world. Their goal is control. Even now, they had LEGAL obligations under MFN AND WTO, to which they have not honored any of it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It was, instead, a very crude (embarrassing, for western standards) attempt at Orwellian revisionism substantiated by a direct threat. Their claim that Clinton's comments contradict their constitution just shows how worthless that piece of paper is under a dictatorship.
Many US politicians, corporations and intelligence agecnies loooove to talk about how China should allow internet freedom, while at the same time they're looking for ways to curtail our freedom online over here. Their whole wet dream is for the US internet to be like China's.
From my perspective, hacking and censorship are one and the same issue here.
Those who want to express opinions that the ruling party doesn't want people to hear are the targets of hacking. In this case, hacking is just the means of censorship.
Get rid of the mindset that censorship is OK and you get rid of the motivation behind the hacking.
I'm no expert on China, but when people start getting this touchy, it usually means they sense they're in trouble.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
I have attempted to post the reports that Google has backed down in China and re-enabled Chinese search result filtering in Google.cn despite of the lack of real actions from the Chinese government in the few two days, but /. editors keep refusing to put this relevant in the front page. This story casts a doubt on Google's stance, motive and commitment. Right, how can we be critical of our new found American hero defending the precious "freedom" and fighting the "evil" China? How can a hero backing down to the evil? Hero can't make fundamental principle error, or you are not allowed to know when it does. How could the evil have not taken any real evil action on this particular matter? It would hurt our national morale, and so we should do self-censoring and forbidding to put it in the front page of any Western media outlet.
(Even your WSJ story does not mention that google has re-enabled filtering; while every Western media reported the (now temporary) suspension after Google announcement. It is oversea Chinese media that reported it and I picked up and verified with the exact same Chinese query I tried right after their temporary suspension back then.)
It is far past time to stop free trade agreements with countries of repressive governments. They are destroying the economies of the rest of the world.