China Mandates Wi-Fi Hotspot Traffic Monitoring

hypnosec writes with an article on tightening censorship in China. From the article: "Officials in China warned businesses in the capital city to install web surveillance technology to monitor their traffic or they may have to face hefty fine or closure. ... It seems that the step to intensify web censorship in the country has left businesses with no other choice but to stop providing WiFi services.."

Comments

What's the difference?

[Jawnn]

China wants the hot spot operators to keep the logs, the U.S. government wants the ISP's to do the same thing. Where is the outrage?

Re:What's the difference?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that there are two factors:

1. Practical: Network surveillance enjoys enormous economies of scale. The cost, per customer, of some creepy Narus or Sandvine spook shit sitting on the line is fairly small. It is also largely invisible; buried within the more-or-less-arbitrary-and-opaque pricing structure of the ISP. Outside of a fairly small number of NOC jockies, and the feds, nobody has to see it or think about it. Joe Hotspot, on the other hand, faces a proportionally greater compliance burden, so he is likely to just turn the hotspot off. This upsets potential wifi users, and many hotspot operators are small-business types, who will talk with their customers about why there isn't wifi anymore. Incremental and largely invisible price increase vs. substantial decline in open hotspots...

2. Ideological: American Exceptionalism is a hell of a drug. By virtue of our status as the Good Guys, what we do is Good until proven evil, and often even Good after being proven evil. The sinister, repressive, communist state of the cunning chinaman, on the other hand...

Re:What's the difference?

[DNS-and-BIND]

As if Americans are the only people on the planet to think themselves special. Pfffff...gimme a break! Hint: every country thinks that they're special and different, and stand out from all others. The Chinese certainly do. Their country's name means "the center of the world" rather than the more literal "middle kingdom" translation that gets thrown around. Pick a culture, they'll tell you why they're special. And yet it's a mortal sin for any American to think so.

Re:What's the difference?

[Culture20]

Consumer interest groups like the ACLU

Citizen interest groups. I'm not a fan of every little thing the ACLU does, but at least they aren't morphing the role of citizen into the role of consumer.

As China goes, so one day will the world

[elrous0]

Right now it's easy to dismiss this as a Chinese oppression thing. But how long until this spreads to the "free" countries too. Many are already passing laws mandating logging and monitoring at the ISP level. It's only a matter of time before this filters down to hotspots too.

Four boxes

[tepples]

Drop everything you're doing and comply, because we have the guns.

The framers of the U.S. constitution recognized this and specifically protected the people's right to use four "boxes" against the government:

1. Soap box: right to freedom of speech, of the press, and of peaceable assembly
2. Ballot box: procedures to vote out the bastards who made the rules that must be complied with, plus (as amended) a right of universal adulthood suffrage
3. Jury box: right to a trial by jury who can throw out a case on reasonable doubt that what the accused did should have been a crime in the first place
4. Ammo box: right to organize into militias and bear arms

To what extent does the People's Republic of China protect the same rights?

Translated

[Registered Coward v2]

The Dongcheng Public Security Bureau did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, but according to its publicly issued circular, the measure is designed to thwart criminals who use the Internet to “conduct blackmail, traffic goods, gamble, propagate damaging information and spread computer viruses.” Such nefarious activity, the notice says, “not only hurts the interests of the country and the masses, but has also caused some businesses to suffer economic losses.”

the measure is designed to thwart citizens who use the Internet to “propagate damaging information that could piss them off and threaten our cushy party jobs and lives.” Such nefarious activity, the notice says, “not only hurts the interests of the country's ruling party party members, but has also caused some of them and their families and cabals to suffer economic losses.”

There. No need to use Babelfish

Seriously, they may keep a lid on dissent for a while, but when it starts, look out.

Re:Go, China!

[operagost]

You got me. In a real business, if you treat your employees like China treats its citizens, your best ones leave and you fail. But they can't leave.

Re:Go, China!

[Doc Ruby]

Haven't you seen the hideous state of business for the past 5-10 years? Running a business like China runs its country is just like that. Corporatism administered by a mafia government, the biggest profits (literally) greased with the worst pollution (energy) and mass murder (military/intel).

Re:Go, China!

[Doc Ruby]

Just one of the many ways in which countries are not like businesses, for better and for worse.

Re:Honest

[Culture20]

google ECHELON

You know what ECHELON is? It's a monthly list of IPs which googled ECHELON.