China Calls Out US On Internet Freedom

rsmiller510 writes "In an interesting case of the pot calling the kettle black, the Chinese government released a report criticizing the US government of being hypocrites where Internet freedom was concerned — criticizing others for cracking down, yet circling the wagons when it involves US internal security (WikiLeaks anyone?). And the Chinese might have a point."

Comments

I think both sides should call each other out.

[ron_ivi]

Some keep saying:
  "China should look at their own track record before criticizing the US on freedom an human rights"
  and others keep saying:
  "The US should look at their own track record before criticizing the China on freedom an human rights",

IMHO it's good any time *either* country points out abuses in the other and they should each aggressively push each other to improve.

Re:Hah!

[Wyatt Earp]

Wikileaks is being handled the way it is, not because its an internet security or censorship issue, but because it's a military security issue with diplomatic security tacked on.

What do you think the PLA would do to a Chinese Bradley Manning who copied hundreds of thousands of documents?

Really think he'd be in pre-trial confinement still?

China is doing with the Soviets did

[Wyatt Earp]

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union pointed to the civil rights issues, the freedom rides, the riots, excess of authority to argue that the US had no place in criticizing the Soviet Union for invading Hungary, Czechoslovakia or pushing the crack down on Poland.

Because racial tensions are equal to invading other countries.

China is just pointing at the US to justify it's own censorship.

Re:Hah!

[thisnamestoolong]

China has never claimed to be anything but repressive, though. The U.S. has always claimed to fully support freedom of speech, yet is repressing speech. So, U.S. = hypocrites, China != hypocrites. This is not to say, however, that the U.S. suppression of speech is anywhere even close to the suppression in China.

Read the whole report.

[Animats]

The entire report, "Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2010", is worth reading. Most of the items on the list are well known, and have even come up on Slashdot.

• "The United States reports the world's highest incidence of violent crimes ...
• "According to figures released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in September 2010, more than 6,600 travelers had been subject to electronic device searches between October 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010, nearly half of them American citizens. A report on The Wall Street Journal on September 7, 2010, said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was sued over its policies that allegedly authorize the search and seizure of laptops, cellphones and other electronic devices without a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The policies were claimed to leave no limit on how long the DHS can keep a traveler' s devices or on the scope of private information that can be searched, copied or detained. There is no provision for judicial approval or supervision."
• "According to a report on Chicago Tribune on May 12, 2010, Chicago Police was charged with arresting people without warrants, shackling them to the wall or metal benches, feeding them infrequently and holding them without bathroom breaks and giving them no bedding, which were deemed consistent with tactics of "soft torture" used to extract involuntary confessions."
• "The United States has always called itself "land of freedom," but the number of inmates in the country is the world' s largest. "
• "The U.S. regards itself as "the beacon of democracy." However, its democracy is largely based on money. According to a report from The Washington Post on October 26, 2010, U.S. House and Senate candidates shattered fundraising records for a midterm election, taking in more than 1.5 billion U.S. dollars as of October 24. The midterm election, held in November 2010, finally cost 3.98 billion U.S. dollars, the most expensive in the U.S. history. "
• "While advocating Internet freedom, the U.S. in fact imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace. On June 24, 2010, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which will give the federal government "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency. Handing government the power to control the Internet will only be the first step towards a greatly restricted Internet system, whereby individual IDs and government permission would be required to operate a website. "
• "Unemployment rate in the United States has been stubbornly high. From December 2007 to October 2010, a total of 7.5 million jobs were lost in the country " ... "The share of residents in poverty climbed to 14.3 percent in 2009, the highest level recorded since 1994 " ... . "A report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in November 2010 showed that 14.7 percent of U.S. households were food insecure in 2009 (www.ers.usda.gov), an increase of almost 30 percent since 2006" ... "According to a report by USA Today on June 16, 2010, the number of families in homeless shelters increased 7 percent to 170,129 from fiscal year 2008 through fiscal year 2009."
• "The number of American people without health insurance increased progressively every year. "
• "The New York Times reported on May 13, 2010, that in 2009, African Americans and Latinos were 9 times more likely to be stopped by the police to receive stop-and-frisk searches than white people. "
• "So far, a total of 193 countries have joined the Convention on the Rights of the Child as states parties, but the United States is among the very few countries that have not ratified it."

These are problems the US has that aren't being fixed.

Re:Read the whole report.

[mdielmann]

Some of them have a point, others not so much.

"The United States reports the world's highest incidence of violent crimes"

- More than Mexico where thousands are dying in drug gang violence? Besides, US has a large population, if you use violent crimes per capita as a measure, you should find US quite low in the table, although not as good as most other developed countries.

Out of the 64 countries listed in this list, the first I bothered to look at when I searched "violent crime per capita", the US is #24, and the highest 'first-world' country. The violent crime rate is 3 times higher than in Canada and the UK, and 4 times higher than Germany. But you may stop worrying, Mexico is 3 times higher than the US. And maybe that's why the rest of the world thinks of the US the way the US thinks of Mexico, when it comes to violent crime.

"The U.S. regards itself as "the beacon of democracy. However, its democracy is largely based on money. "

- Not that I like the big spending on elections, but is fund raising not part of the democracy? I highly doubt if fund raising for a political party is allowed in China.

And here I thought democracy was founded on an educated public, not a marketing exercise. Maybe being required to spend less would get things away from rhetoric and vitriol, and on to reasoned debate on the relative merits of the various positions. More money certainly hasn't achieved that...

"While advocating Internet freedom, the U.S. in fact imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace. On June 24, 2010, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which will give the federal government "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency. Handing government the power to control the Internet will only be the first step towards a greatly restricted Internet system, whereby individual IDs and government permission would be required to operate a website."

- Power to shut down the internet is just granting legal power for government to stop a serious cyber war. It's hard to see the US government getting away with shutting down the internet for stopping protests like the dictators do in Middle East. The last sentence is merely China assuming US will follow its footsteps. It has not happened and will not happen in near future.

The first steps toward tyranny are always reasonably painless. Many tyrants gained power by having popular ideas. If you can't see the risk in reducing freedom, or the value in taking the risks that freedom entails, just stop using the phrase "land of the free, home of the brave".

"Unemployment rate in the United States has been stubbornly high. From December 2007 to October 2010, a total of 7.5 million jobs were lost in the country " ...

- What does a severe financial meltdown has to do with human rights? Oh right, in China human rights mean having rice to eat.

One of the last steps towards governmental collapse is when the average person can't afford to eat. People will put up with a lot of crap, but going hungry starts riots. Fast. So yes, the ability to support one's self is an indicator of the health of a country.

And finally, if your standard for your country being good is that it's better than some of the worst countries out there, I think it's time to give those standards a close examination.

Re:Hah!

[betterunixthanunix]

nothing compares to China's outright abuse of its people

Ironically, the United States currently imprisons more people than China, and most of those prisoners are not violent offenders. Yes, the Chinese have a record of abuses, but that does not exonerate the United States.

Re:Their word is less than nothing on this.

[Ironchew]

I can still access wikileaks anytime I want to.

Can you?
213.251.145.96 is taking too long to respond on my end. (Qwest)
The fact that no publicly accessible DNS server resolves it further weakens your case.

Completely missed the point.

[beldraen]

You have missed the point completely, like a typical American politician. Before you spout off, learn what the word hypocrite means: a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.

The point: China doesn't act like they don't filter. China has quite clearly stated that they believe that press should be limited. China has quite clearly stated that the group has more importance than the individual. China has quite clearly stated that they want to do what's best for their economy only.

The problem is the U.S. THEY say they are for freedom of the people, and install dictators in countries. THEY say the are for freedom of the press, and limit war reporting, harass reporters, and go after people who expose government abuses. THEY are for capitalism, and then bail out the companies that should have been allowed to fail.

Re:Hah!

[ElectricTurtle]

Protecting citizens from dangerous ideas like democratic reform. It's a fairly simple dichotomy, the US censors to retain economic power, while China censors to retain political power. In the end it's always about power.

Re:Hah!

[darjen]

They would have simply just killed Manning instead of torturing him indefinitely alone in a small cage 24/7. I guess China is more humane after all!

The appropriate response

[Atmchicago]

And the appropriate response to the Soviet Union would be "You're right, we have civil rights issues. Racism is terrible, and we'll try to fix these issues." And to our credit, we have come a long way. In addition, we should respond "Hey guys, quit invading other countries!" (never mind the fact that the US continues to invade countries to this day...)

In this case, again, we should take a good look at the criticisms and not ignore them because of the messenger. Maybe we are doing a bad job of preserving internet freedoms, and should work to fix them. Maybe China is also doing a bad job.

Re:Is this really a pot/kettle thing?

[gstoddart]

Guess which country I'm talking about.

Is this the same country which has "designated free speech zones" so they can keep dissenting opinions in fenced off areas away from everyone else?

Or the one that allows your laptop to be arbitrarily seized at the border?

Or how about keeping prisoners without trial or recourese in a foreign country using a ginned up judicial system so they can get around their own laws and procedures?

How about one whose Attorney General posited that things like Habeus Corpus don't apply to people who aren't citizens?

Sadly, over the last bunch of years, there have been a fair few instances of America having a "do as I say, not as I do" attitude.

Re:Hah!

[tnk1]

Exactly. Bradley Manning did something that would be illegal, no matter what his justification, if it happened how it is supposed to have gone down. He didn't have the right to release any of that material. If he did that in China, he'd be in pre-execution detention right now, if they even wait that long.

I don't know what people expect the military to do if someone just goes off and decides to release material, slap them on the wrist? He knew what he was doing, it's not like it was some sort of accidental release. Even if he did it out of conscience and perhaps rates a pardon or something, he still has to go through the process and no one with a clearance does not know what the process and penalties are.

I can buy that some people might consider his actions heroic. I don't, but that's mostly because I think how he went about it was reckless. Sure, people may not have died because of the release, but he did absolutely nothing to make sure that wasn't the case first. Without care being taken with actions like these, even the best of intentions can backfire into something that no one could ever dream of. I think his point could have easily been made with less material, more carefully selected.

It's not going to be up to me what happens to him, but I don't see any reason he shouldn't be in Ft. Leavenworth for a few years, unless the trial brings up information that I am not already aware of.

More to the point, his treatment does not even come close to making the US anything like China. I can buy that the US might be held more to account because it holds higher standards, but you have to disclose the fact that you really are using two different standards. Otherwise, you are perpetuating an inaccuracy. When you compare China the to US, you are comparing apples to oranges and you can't just make blanket statements that equate them.

Re:Hah!

[fudoniten]

No, actually, the US imprisons a lot of people, relative to any other non-totalitarian country. That includes China.

Relative to their population, China does not execute anywhere close to that many people. That'd be a significant percent of their population.

Re:Hah!

[SuricouRaven]

China wouldn't go to war, it's bad for the economy - and they don't really care that much what the rest of the world thinks of them. No, they'd just make sure the documents were never spoken of domestically except in hushed whispers - first by making sure their equivilent of Manning was tried and executed (It's no good disappearing him, the people have to know about it), and then by making it clear that any reporter or even blogger who so much as mentions the contents of the documents faces many years in jail. It should go without saying that any forign site that published them or discussion of them would go on the blacklist, and I imagine they'd put key phrases from the documents on the filter too to ensure any new copies are swiftly detected and blocked likewise.