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China Starts Censoring Phone Calls Mid Sentence
bhagwad writes "Several reports have emerged that China is cutting off phone calls mid-sentence when contentious words like 'protest' are used. Seems like China's draconian censorship regime is going into overdrive with even more sophisticated censoring. Of course, this comes on the heels of Google accusing them of mucking around with Gmail as well."
The New York Times publishes an article about China's great firewall, and puts it behind a firewall.
[The rest of this post is censored, to make it truly meta]
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
... dropping calls in mid-sentence is simply known as "using AT&T wireless service". Zing!
etslay tartsay ay rotestpay
but
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
90% of our stuff here in the US is from China. It's cheap. That's all that matters. Mass censorship, brutal putdowns of dissent, etc. - none of that matters. Real Konsumerism Politik, don't cha know.
There will be no riots, a la Tunisia. Well, maybe for about 5 minutes. Who cares? As long as we get our cheap stuff from China.
How hard is it to use different code words. If I were the govt listening on my people, I'd rather listen to them in full without trying to hide it. That seems easier to know who to track and beat down. If you drive the protestors underground, then it makes it harder to tell who is behind the rebellion and quash teh organizers. Lots of people talk, few can organize. Silence the organizers and you are 99% there.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Bad thing is that the next step up from having the conversation ended is having a knock on the door with the special black van pull up, with the next of kin being notified they owe the Chinese government the cash for the lethal injection chemicals before they get the body back (sans usable organs for transplants, of course.)
As a side note, I'd hate to live under this regime, but I'd have a blast playing with this system if I had access to it. What Sesame Street quotes would set off the filter, etc.
Right up until you were "detained" indefinitely (at what I'm sure would be a first-class Chinese prison) for "suspicious activity".
Our modern western cellphones are way ahead of this. They're able to drop communication mid sentence WITHOUT the need for a certain keyword.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Chinese grad student sitting next to me: "That happened 5 years ago, this is not news, this is the job my friend has, writing this software, that is what the supercomputer is for"
Stopping that sort of thing was likely the purpose of the censorship. As usual:
Technocratic, autocratic, systematic, hydromatic, grease lightning government - 1.
The people - 0.
The relationship between China and America is like a horse and carriage. The regular Americans are riding in the carriage, unable to see much of what's actually going on outside. The regular Chinese people are the horses. The guy holding the reins is in the CCP.
I like the Socratic form of irony, which may be familiar to many Internet trolls: feigning ignorance to provoke an opponent. I also like the Blackadder definition: "It's like goldy or bronzy, only with iron."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Tunisia - population 10M, size 67K square miles
China - population 1.3B, size 3.7M square miles
It's a lot harder to get a revolution started in a country that size - especially with the communications infrastructure so tightly controlled (far more than Tunisia, Libya, and Eqypt were).
In China, they speak Pig Mongolian, not Pig Latin.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm not so sure about the reports of people's phones cutting out. There's definitely been a radical increase in filtering and censorship here over the past month, but I'm pretty sure I've said "protest" multiple times in both English and Chinese on my (Beijing Mobile) phone without having anything happen. Speech recognition just isn't that good, unless the technology has gotten a lot better in secret -- particularly for dealing with a language like Mandarin, which is much richer in homophones than English is, and also has plenty of regional accents that would be even harder for computers to deal with.
That's not to say it's impossible -- I have no reason to believe the NYT is lying, though their China journalism is not always good -- but if it's happening, my guess is that it's limited to a small number of people whose phones are being monitored by human beings.
Taking bets, when to see the first riots "A la Tunisia" starting?
The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly.
- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/irony
$DO || ! $DO ; try(); > try: command not found
Yes it isn't! That's exactly not what I wrote. God bless America!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The Great Firewall of China is not that much of an issue for most Chinese internet users because (a) they're not, mostly, looking for sensitive political material online; (b) most people don't speak English, so overseas sites are automatically less attractive, and (c) there are native Chinese equivalents -- okay, clones -- of blocked foreign sites. Facebook is blocked, but there's still Renren and Xiaonei. Twitter is blocked, but there's Sina Weibo - which is in many respects a better product. Youtube is blocked, but there's Youku. Google is around, but Baidu has better results for Chinese bulletin boards. And so on.
People are aware of the censorship, but they tend to identify it with site administrators (who are ultimately the ones responsible for deciding what does or doesn't get posted in discussion forums), hence a habit of sneering at "guanliyuan" ("mods"), but generally not at the government. It's not that people are stupid or unsubtle; it's that there's not much point in getting angry at the government.
China's Most Favored Trading Partner or as it's known now Permanent normal trade relations was in effect from the mid 1800s until 1951, renewed in 1980, dropped in 1989 and renewed in 2000. It wasn't an "award" its simply a status to allow bilateral trade.
Only two countries don't have NTR with the United States, the DPRK and Cuba.
http://www.xkcd.com/525/
bah.
A little anecdotal rumouring, a news story does not make. It might as well be talking about werewolves and fairies for all the evidence it provides. I'm not saying it's not true, but if your phone is cut off every time you say the word 'protest' then it's not exactly going to be difficult to reproduce and actually prove.
Though you might want to get used to the sound of knocking on your door if you carry out extensive trials.....
The differences between China and Tunisia/Egypt/Yemen/even-Libya are pretty dramatic. If those governments are dominoes toppling each other, China's is a brick.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Chinese history is full of them though. From the overthrow of the Shang for the Zhou all the way to the establishment of the great Ming (even the Ming/Qing transition could be considered a revolution as much as an occupation considering how weak and ineffective the Ming were at that time and the significant complicity of Hans with the Qing especially in the North) there were many dynastic 'revolutions' and then of course the establishment of the RoC and the PRC that supplanted it.
Revolution in China is fairly common historically, it's just bloody as hell. Over 3 million died in the Chinese Civil War.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
From what I've read, the Chinese people generally support their country's censorship, and honestly believe in the importance of the state protecting them from "immoral" things and so on. You would be amazed what people will rationalize when they've grown up with it. For instance, I have a friend who I met in high school who lived in the UAE for most of her life, where the Internet is censored, the government enforces harsh religious law, and the law gives special preference to natives in many areas. She was pretty much like a normal teenager in every respect, mostly liberal, but her reaction to things like Internet censorship by the government was pretty much "meh." She was once casually explaining to me how native Emirati were, for instance, allowed to tint their car windows darker than immigrants, and sincerely didn't care at all about such rules, even though they worked against her (she's Egyptian).
When an injustice is introduced to you as child, it doesn't seem to you like an injustice, it just seems like business as usual. After all, it's not like there aren't significant injustices right here in the US that most of us just ignore while going about our lives...
Okay, so it was right after Christmas 2009. My girlfriend was in Germany visiting her family, and I was stuck here in the states. It was too expensive to call her directly, so I bought a calling card and we'd use that to talk.
Anyway, it was right after the underwear bomber thing, and she was telling me about how much crap she had to go through at the airport because she took too much shampoo.
I said, "The whole liquid thing is stupid because there's an easy, way to get around it, all you have to do is ..."
Right then, I heard a woman with a thick accent firmly exclaim, "Nein!" - and the phone went click and we were disconnected.
I kinda freaked, but I called her right back and told her what happened, which totally freaked her out. She hadn't heard the woman say "Nein!" and was worried that I was going to be getting a visit. I wanted to test fate and try telling her again, but I figured not to push my luck.
No one showed up at my house, and I've flown all over the place since then without any problems.
Anyway ... so now I assume that people (or machines) are ALWAYS listening
"Are they made from real Girl Scouts?" ~Wednesday Addams
You're conflating collectivism with autocracy. Dynastic China (which, CCP brainwashing regardless, is still the foundation of Chinese culture) was rarely collectivistic. Wang Mang tried that and was killed for it. China has always been autocratic, which is why its flirtation with democracy in the first half of the 20th century was doomed to failure (even Chinese of the period could see it coming, like Dr. Lin Yutang).
Even after the ROC was consolidated after the warlord years and more-or-less stabilized after the evacuation to Taiwan, it was as democratic as any single party 3rd world country could be for another few decades, which is to say practically not at all. The ROC demonstrates that in order for the Chinese to ever actually achieve democracy, they'll first have to pretend to be democratic for several generations. (A perspective which I think is borne out by analogues in Hong Kong and Singapore.)
People don't understand how at a very, very deep level the whole of Chinese society is used to this as normal. From the burning books and burying scholars of the Qin dynasty and the destruction of the hundred schools of thought through to the literary purges of the Qing, censorship by no less than immediate death was completely normal in dynastic China. Qianlong was held in high regard by many as a model Confucian emperor even though he killed many in literary purges. Even in the republic, both before and after the Chinese Civil war there was brutal quashing of dissent by the KMT including many executions, and I don't even need to talk about the PRC's heinous history.
It's hard to explain to Westerner who have not studied Chinese history that to the average Chinese adult, public dissenters are perceived not as underdog heroes but as people who are abnormal bordering on insane. There is a reason why the CCP is always going on about 'harmony'. It is a direct appeal to Confucian ideals of social harmony and balance between the people and state which is achieved essentially without resorting to dissent but rather through long suffering.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
From what I've read, the Chinese people generally support their country's censorship
Yes, effective censorship assures that what you read from the people subject to it is consistent with the viewpoint the censoring entity wishes to hace expressed, while contrary messages are suppressed.That's the whole point of censorship.
If they remove the organs first, what's the point of the lethal injection? The subject isn't going to survive too long sans heart, eyes, liver...
http://ihatehate.wordpress.com
I was talking to my mother from Beijing over Skype and mentioned that I went to the Mao mausoleum, and said to her that the Communist party likes to keep Mao around to bolster their image.
It seems like those keywords must have triggered something because right after that, the call became inaudible. I tried calling her back, but it was the same.
I then called her cell phone (a different number) which was fine until we restarted that topic. Then the same thing happened.
Finally I had to call my dad and asked him to tell her I couldn't call back.
Yes, and it only took 40 years of martial law and 140,000 political prisoners in Taiwan alone. Don't get me wrong, the ROC has achieved a lot since the Chinese Civil War, but development in the first few decades was achieved at a terrible cost. When the DPP and the Pan-Greens finally achieved real democracy, they pissed it away with petty corruption and cronyism right out of the gate with Chen Shui Bian's administration. This was doubly disappointing because it has tainted the intent of the whole pro-independence movement.
ROC could end up handing itself over considering all the secret negotiations that 'one China' KMT party members keep having with PRC representatives. And as relatively successful as the SAR system has been in HK, I don't know if PRC can apply it to Taiwan without significant losses for Taiwan's society. It's such a different scale, and unless the US plays the same sort of part for Taiwan that the UK did with HK, there simply won't be enough leverage for KMT to make any good arrangement.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Man, speaking of tantrums - you really fly off the handle when your beloved communism is insulted, don't you? But do I get the core of your argument? "No True Communism would ever oppress its people"?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
oWlPoRk or whatever the poster's name is, is a known troll, continually posting inflammatory shit, and I have no respect for them. You, on the other hand, are kind of a dick, but not so much that I will automatically insult you any time you post.
My argument is so simple, even oWlPoRk should be able to understand it.
First, calling something by a certain name does not make it that thing. Is it a "No True Scotsman" fallacy to say that the DPRK is not really a Republic, or a Democracy, despite it's name?
Second, even if the DPRK really is a democratic republic, you can not tar and feather all democracies and republics by the actions of that one example. Look at socialist Europe, perhaps that is a better model of what socialism can be than China.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I can't remember the paragraph in "The Communist Manifesto" where Marx discusses the correct method of suppressing dissidents - could you cite it for me?
Or is it in "Capital"?
Or is it simply that you're confused about a few things?
Well, China has stopped being communist a few dozen years ago - now it's more capitalist than the US. Of course, under Maoist rule it wasn't any better in terms of civil liberties.
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From what I've read, the Chinese people generally support their country's censorship, and honestly believe in the importance of the state protecting them from "immoral" things and so on.
You know what you've read is censored, right?
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
If you've actually read any of the various Chinese historical accounts (which I doubt), you'll see the writers excoriating the emperors that executed scholars and tried to influence the writing of the histories.
The scholarly class negatively perceived maltreatment of the scholarly class? Holy shit! That's a revelation. Sarcasm aside, if all the great academics were summarily executed and all the great books burned in America, the people would rise up against that authority which perpetrated it. That did not happen in Qin society, so how can you say it was as great or greater an outrage? Either the Chinese people were/are thus more deficient in character, or their social values and priorities are different. I suggest it is the latter, and you simply don't understand Chinese society. When the purge of scholars happened it was not, albeit, a Confucian movement (that was a Han Dynasty reaction to the legacy of the aforementioned events which perpetuated itself through successive frameworks), but a Legalist one. Have you ever asked yourself why the Chinese submitted to Qin Shi Huang? To legalism? Do you have any frame of reference for what life was like before the Legalist reforms in the various states of the Zhongguo? Legalism was at its heart an anti-feudal, anti-corruption philosophy. It removed hereditary power from all but the king/hegemon (later emperor) and created a reliable framework for justice and the smooth operation of the state and its society. When Qin was overthrown it was combined with the fulfillment of the strongest of the remaining schools, Confucianism and Taoism, to form the bedrock of Chinese society and perspective. Anyway, Legalism was not tossed into Chinese society overnight, there was a century of reform throughout the Zhongguo whereupon many states adopted Legalism to varying degrees. When Qin finally conquered all the states much of the foundation was already laid. Although Legalism eliminated the outright political power of the remnants of the Zhou aristocracy, it was naturally rigid and did not include the somewhat bilateral moral obligations that would later characterize Confucian social order. The king/emperor then had absolute authority and no moral obligations about how to use it. When Qin Shi Huang killed the scholars, there was no immediate, significant response. People knew better than to stand up in a Legalist state.
The recent events in the middle east kind of show how wrong you are when you claim a people are incapable of democracy.
You're quite the idealist. In case you weren't paying attention, Egypt and Tunisia were both already 'democracies' before their recent revolutions. I wouldn't be too quick to judge their latest democratic reforms successful until they demonstrate they have rid themselves of the precedent of democracy in name only. I have a feeling that as soon as the next election is over, whichever political group has the new majority will be back in the business of suppressing minority political groups and speech immediately, and it will be status quo ante.
The KMT could have easily won the Chinese Civil War.
So? Did you miss the part about how the KMT was as much an authoritarian party as the CCP? Do you know anything about the White Terror in Taiwan?
The Chinese people have always formed resistance groups to autocracies when the abuses grew out of hand.
Where was this theoretical resistance during the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution? Pfff.
Contrawise, they tend to accept autocracies when they benefit the people.
They have, literally, always accepted autocracy. Even Chinese revolts were led by strongmen and warlords, always to the effect of installing a new hierarchical, top-down, autocratic system (which even the KMT created, names notwithstanding).
That's why the Communist party in China right now is actually quite popular with the
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit