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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!
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.
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"
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.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/irony
$DO || ! $DO ; try(); > try: command not found
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.....
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...
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.
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.