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If You're a Foreigner Using GPS In China, You Could Be a Spy
tedlistens writes "China has accused Coca Cola of espionage for its 'illegal mapping,' allegedly with the use of GPS 'devices with ultra high sensitivity.' On its face the case looks like yet another example of China's aggressive sensitivity about its maps, no doubt heightened by its ongoing fracas with the U.S. over cyberwar. Li Pengde, deputy director of the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation, said during a radio interview on Tuesday that the Coca Cola case was only one of 21 similar cases involving companies using GPS devices in Yunnan to 'illegally obtain classified information.' According to Chinese authorities, geographical data can be used by guided missiles to strike key military facilities — a concern that one GPS expert says is overblown at a time when the U.S. government already has high-precision satellite maps of China. Nevertheless, Chinese law dictates that foreigners, be they companies or individuals, are prohibited from using highly-sensitive GPS equipment in China."
Maybe they shouldn't have Coca-Cola deliver refreshments to their secret military installations? ;)
We should charge China with spying using all those GPS units they send here, not counting the cell phones that also have a GPS chip. Embargo all of them.
China makes almost everything you utilize on your daily life, directly or indirectly.
This is not by your choice but by the companies you buy utilities and electronics.
China also owns most of US foreign debt.
This is also by design since china has been buying it from the free markets.
Deal with it.
If the rationale provided by China for banning "highly-sensitive" GPS is genuine (and that's one wobbly "if" right there) then Allah-or-whomever praise the US; all such regimes should live in perpetual fear.
Thankfully, after more than four wasted years of temporary insanity we are resuming our GMD deployment, so fuck North Korea and their ballistic pipe-bombs too.
Coke got sensitive classified military information that their delivery vehicle that was three hours late was sitting in the parking lot of a local bar all that time.
(The corollary is that the driver they fired was a son of a local party official. Bad idea.)
There was a time when the US stood for individual freedom...
When?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So, you're saying that ACs aren't all underpaid bored guys wearing military uniforms that troll slashdot from an office on the outskirts of Shanghai?
so people from the outside of china can't take there cell phone with GPS to china??
Before 1913.
not as long as the bill of rights is in place
When?
When you could simply move west and remove yourself from the boundries of civilization. Of course, as time went on, you had to go further and further west.
With California, Oregon, Washington and even Alaska firmly under the heel of the Federal boot, there's nowhere left to go. At least not until we start off-planet colonization, which may or may not happen in the next few hundred years or so.
It's a rather sad state of affairs, because society - modern or otherwise - is no place for the self-reliant.
If you do a lot of travelling, you will find that GPS laws are different everywhere. Many countries won't even allow you to bring one across the border. Defense against enemies obtaining high quality maps is usually the reasoning. Sometimes, you can bribe a customs guy to let you bring it in. But you shouldn't be flaunting GPS when you're visiting a place like that. I think China should be more free, but I can't get too upset when they enforce their existing laws against visitors who break them, even when the laws are out of date or seem silly.
so the "fuck China" gets a 3 and "fuck USA" gets a -1? ./ for it turns it is just another China bashing web site.
Cybercrime: Styxnet most likely created by USA and Israel
civic unrest: for the last 3 days in Brooklyn blacks are rioting because yet another 16 black kid was shot to death by the Police
Human rights violations: Guantanamo.
Fuck
...I've got Apple Maps. Even if I geotagged one of your military sites, I'm just as likely to inadvertently order a missile strike on the Superdome.
the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
These days you can get busted for a Pop Tart that is vaguely shaped somewhat like a gun.
A claim like that requires a citation.
Obviously, if one group is doing something, then they can't blame the other for doing something. That is just how it works. People not actively doing horrible things in their group have no right to say those things are horrible in another group. They can only talk about horrible things that their group is doing exclusively.
This makes me think of the classic 1953 Billy Wilder comedy involving a Coca-Cola executive going to East Berlin to open up the iron curtain for Coke products.
Hilarious in a dated sort of way. Tremendous pacing, starring James Cagney.
A great way to pick up mid-century American culture.
You can still get there in Alaska.
Posted from China, Texas.
Citation Needed.
If it really is GPS then it's simply the local time, broadcast in the clear. How is that classified?
go home to your damn USA and fix your problems
And yet, one of the USA's biggest problems is China spying on US corporations. Though, unlike China's propaganda division, I admit that the Tu Quoque fallacy is not a defense for USA's (or China's) actions.
Just get out of China.
But keep sending your food.
And keep sending us your industry.
Oh, your tech too. Keep sending that.
Otherwise, just stay the hell out, round-eye.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Wrong - us citizens own most of the debt.
We've mapped every inch of your country with satellites already. Get over it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Heh.
Actually seems like it could be a semi-legitimate complaint to me. Realistically what applications are there for a high-precision GPS outside of geological/territorial surveys and military intelligence? Sure we've got the satellite maps, but one of the nice things about those maps is the ability for someone with a GPS on the ground to make "X is here" annotations for important locations. For military purposes the ability to know within a few feet/yards where a strategic "soft spot" is could prove very valuable in terms of, say, disrupting infrastructure with a minimum of the sort of civilian collateral damage which could be used to sway international opinion against you.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I sort of agree with you. I often wonder what the point of these "anti-china" posts are all about.
On one hand you have the USA, and its rules and gvt. On the other you have China, with a different set of rules and different gvt.
I think Its fairly rare to see China tell the US what to do, but frequently the US tells China what to do. If you don't like China and its laws don't go there. No one "forced" Coke to go to china, they did it because they saw a huge market to sell their products to.
I am fairly sure the US expects visitors to follow US laws when in the US but i don't understand why they feel they can use US laws when not in the US? Maybe in the US you have a right to take detailed GPS maps of wherever you want, but Coke wasn't doing that in the US. They did it in a more restrictive country which specifically doesn't want you doing this. The law may be totally stupid for many reasons, but don't violate them then complain.
Lastly, as many others have posted I'd like a pro-american-freedom type to go photograph a US nuclear plant or gvt building with a GPS and see how that works out for you. Hopefully the plant you choose is not within the 200 mile border zone where your "rights" are suspended and you are end up being labelled a "terrorist".
As an amateur photographer i have been hassled more then once for taking pictures of US buildings while on PUBLIC PROPERTY (sidewalks). Doesn't seem very "free" to me.
Lastly, for what its worth I am a Canadian who has lived in both the US and China.
one of the USA's biggest problems is China spying on US corporations
Is it?
Of course, nobody would use Google satellite maps or anything.
Authorities have interviewed at least 13 people since 2005 with ties to Iran's government [taking pictures of airports, etc.]
You said:
taking photos of bridges??? You can be arrested for that.
IF I were an agent of the Iranian government, and I was on a watch list causing the government to be interested in what I was doing, and I wax taking pictures of airports, I could be interviewed. Good or bad, decide for yourself, but it's good to be clear on what is actually going on.
Not unless you want the Chinese government to use it to track you wherever you go and aren't worried about them taking all of your private information and your passwords into corporate accounts and putting malware on it that will open a back door when you hook it back into your network when you get home.
These days, tech companies send their employees to China with scrubbed laptops and burn phones for this reason. Then they scrub them again as soon as they get home.
China also owns most of US foreign debt.
Actually, China owns about 8% of our national debt.
Even if you only consider debt own by foreign countries, China owns only 26% of that, about the same as Japan.
Before 1913.
In 1913 we had a president who openly advocated white supremacist policies and praised the KKK. Women were denied not only the vote, but many inheritance rights, right to serve on juries, and were openly discriminated against in education, financial services, and employment. The police regularly colluded in violently suppressing organized labor.
If you were a rich white guy, 1913 may have been the golden age. For everyone else, it wasn't so good.
My highly sensitive GPS receiver is made in China and I got it from a street vendor in Shenzhen. Sooo confusing!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
That is what they are doing to the west. They do not want the same thing to happen to them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
From what I've heard in the industry, it is. This BBC article is a little dated but is a good outline of some of the key points. Popular Mechanics did a good piece on the issue a few years back, if you're up for a longer read.
It's the price they pay to deflate their currency.
The planet was here before people were, If an area is to be classified, prevent unauthorized people from gaining access to the area. Does the use of recconasence satellites violate international treaties?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
I am sure that it is a NORMAL GPS and every company uses these to determine where their assets are.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As someone who works for a company that does significant mapping business in China, I'm getting a kick out of these replies. It's funny how sensitive they are to GIS information and maps. The Chinese government has these silly rules about all maps having to show China's borders the way they imagine them to be, and you have to show certain islands and other sensitive areas as exaggerated in size. As long as you comply with their fairy tale, there's no problem. The GPS stuff is probably related. Anything that has the potential to show reality rather than the make-believe world is verboten.
Did you miss the part where he said "most of US foreign debt"?
1.2 trillion out of 4.5 trillion is not 'most of'.
and I live outside of America because my business is outside of the United States
And you know what ?
For the past decades I've been contacted by "someone" asking me for my "cooperation" so that they can use my company as a cover up to spy on the countries that my business has located branches and local contacts
When I told them that I do not want my company to be involved in some espionage activities "they" remind me of my "duty" to my country, that I should be "patriotic", that I should aid them in "defeating the enemies"
Of course, I can't tell you where my business branches are located - or they will know who I am
Just want you guys to know what is going on in the real world
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You may be arrested for that by police who don't know what the law is, but in the US you will have the ACLU rushing to your defense, and you will ultimately not be convicted of a crime.
In China, there is nothing like the ACLU, since the Chinese government sees lawyers who try to actually hold the government to its own laws as threats to be addressed.
I've used GPS receivers many times in China, and even has friendly discussions with airport security about some of them. Never had any problem.
That said, I've also been followed during many (most?) of my trips to China, and for some reason they are always doing air duct work just before I get into my hotel rooms...
These days, tech companies send their employees to China with scrubbed laptops and burn phones for this reason. Then they scrub them again as soon as they get home.
The sad part is how long that took to become the norm.
I was recommending this long ago, and only in the last year or two has it become commonplace. Of course, I do the same thing when I travel to the US - except then I don't even bother copying my legally purchased mp3's as I know there is a good chance I'll get harassed about them.
I used to be a security officer and that's simply not true. At most, you might be questioned about it, and even that's relatively unlikely unless you're already under surveillance. But, if they're going any further than that, you've likely done something else that raised suspicion.
Slashdot is a US website. Most users here reside in the US... There might be a slight bias, even though /. tries to be neutral.
When China is finally freed from communist dictatorship, you and your bosses will be hanged in front of Tiananman Square, I'm waiting for that day to come to piss on your corpse
Not the Chinese communist dictatorship government, the worker and people of China wants to fuck their government too.
You're saying it wrong; it's: " Cops are so stupid!" All they're good for are guarding jails and enforcing court orders; it's been a universal problem that's been a bane to humanity since time immemorial.
The various factions in the Middle East are fighting each other to be the ones in control; those in Germany at one time thought it was all about them and had a master plan that was best for everyone when they controlled everything--the authenticated authorities in China aren't any different. Yet, especially when they lack any checks and balances, this experience of being "security" seems to mean to them everyone else are stupid, less than human and only they can do everything in the best way for everyone else.
Pretty all the time I can think of. Just because it has flaws doesn't mean it can't be a model for the rest of the worlds, since the rest is much worse.
They stand for everything that is wrong with this world, they need to be stopped before it's too late.
I guess you're ok when they follow their rules to kill people? The US tried isolationism back in the beginning of last century, it doesn't work, like it or not the world is interconnected, what China does doesn't just affect Chinese, it affects the whole world. The only thing Chinese government fears is foreigners (at least for now, once China got 10 aircraft carriers, you may not feel that easy in China), that's why you don't understand how evil Chinese government is, and why they need to be stopped.
Look at how Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, and other critics of the US live and prosper in the US. Now, look at how their Chinese equivalents are dead, rotting away in jail, under house arrest, or in exile.
That's all you need know to understand that the statements "Fuck China" and "Fuck USA" are weighed differently.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Not quite. Lots of freaks go there under that impression, but the did eventually get Robert Hale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hale_(Alaska) who essentially moved to Alaska so nobody would find out he beat and raped his daughters. So many fugitives get caught there, even in Alaska, it's hard to live off the grid. It's rugged, but not as far out of touch as many hope.
Learn to love Alaska
If this "comparative economic utility mitigates the degree of censure" rationale which you have proposed holds true, then it would mean the US, being the world's major exporter of heavy equipment (planes, construction, agricultural, etc) and the source of much of the world's media and software, should also be immune from "bashing" and criticism. Yet, it is not.
If we continue to follow your rationale, the USA's position as a major creditor to the Eurozone would also preclude it from criticism from European Slashdotters. Yet, it is not.
That neither of these ring true for the Slashdot community, and that non-American people here are free to "bash" the US as they please each and every day, means that you are wrong in both of your claims.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
He must of meant the United States of America, not the United States of Mexico. America stood for individual freedom at its founding. It stood even more strongly for it once it got rid of slavery.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Your post strikes me as strange and inconsistent.
If, as a Canadian who has been hassled for taking photos of US buildings, your response is to be reflective of the silliness of these laws which govern photo taking in the US, the so too should you be reflective of the silliness of these laws which govern GPS usage in China. It would make more sense for you to have a heightened awareness for such shenanigans due to your previous experience and to be doubly outraged, rather than excusing one while pointing out the other.
You say that "If you don't like China and its laws don't go there" yet you don't seem to apply the same kind of hand-waving to your experience in the US.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
I am, by no means, a fan of the United States as it stands today but to compare the two is idiotic. I'll start with: In the United States you'll at least get a trial, probably, if they did any more than question you. You're not going to GITMO (or to the firing squad) for taking pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and you're not going to jail either assuming all one was doing was taking pictures. Let's at least start with reality and work our way down.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Look at how Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, and other critics of the US are marginalised into complete irrelevancy by the corporate-controlled mass media...
TFTFY.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I'm a dual national and you can kiss my ass.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Can you quit biting the wax tadpole and just come out and TELL US how the fuck YOU FEEL ABOUT CHINA already?! Geez.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Hmm... Since I am a reasonably rich white guy, perhaps I should move to 1913... :)
where in the name of national security your mineral water gets taken away from you at the airport which is making about the same sense.
Remember when the US generals officially threatend to "shoot down" the EU's Galileo satellites if the system was made to work on US soil without giving the US government the ability to render it unusable? Now that was a perplexing statement, since I remember that a GPS expert explained here on slashdot that "shooting down" a GPS satellite isn't even feasible with current technology.
Is Google Earth crippled, while your "mapping" or displaying China?
OK, so you'd have to use GE -outside- China...
Satellite images may tell you there is a building, but a man on the street with a GPS can tell you exactly what the building is for, and who is going in and out of it.
I'll take "complete irrelevancy" over prison any day.
Also, you seem to be aware of these people just fine (control of mass media isn't *that* effective).
To be fair, Michael Moore's shenanigans are juvenile and transparent.
Noam Chomsky- let's just say there's a reason his fan base is perpetually 23 years old.
I'm not familiar with the work of Goodman and Greenwald.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I can only see one issue with high accuracy mapping of roads, it could be used as "ground control" for aerial photography. When you're flying aerial photography it is often highly desirable to have a number of "aerial visible" locations (often large white painted arrows) with high accuracy GPS coordinates distributed through the capture area. That way the images can be rubber sheeted using some pretty fancy algorithms to these points so you take an image with OK accuracy and turn it into one with high accuracy. But with modern tech this is probably not an issue at least from a military perspective, I don't know about satellites but at least with aircraft captures they can usually achieve 3' accuracy for 90% of surveyed points with no ground control. Even assuming for the sake of argument that satellite captures are less accurate (lets say 10') I highly doubt that is going to matter when your sending a several hundred lb warhead to a target, or guiding troops to a facility. Mostly this level of accuracy only comes into play when you're trying to locate underground pipelines/wiring, or mapping property lines in urban or suburban areas.
I think I have made my feeling for the Chinese government pretty clear on this thread, if you still don't understand then I couldnt' help you.
These days, tech companies send their employees to China with scrubbed laptops and burn phones for this reason. Then they scrub them again as soon as they get home.
The sad part is how long that took to become the norm.
I was recommending this long ago, and only in the last year or two has it become commonplace. Of course, I do the same thing when I travel to the US - except then I don't even bother copying my legally purchased mp3's as I know there is a good chance I'll get harassed about them.
That might be a good idea too, but unless the stories about China are wildly overblown, the extent of US spying on travelers is a great deal less than that of China.
Popularity is NOT a measure of censorship. ONLY censorship is a measure of censorship. If they are not censored by the mass media then you have no comparison to China.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
I am in China at the moment and all of what you said strikes me as extremely uninformed opinion. Try living in China for a while and then see if all the bullshit you just said still stands.
And for the record, I'm not Chinese.
His post is consistent. He never said that he likes that Chinese law, but that even if you don't like a law when you are in either the US or China, should you just go ahead and break it?
If you are going to show that kind of respect for a country's customs and laws, both the US AND China have every right to throw your ass in jail.
We don't already have high resolution satellite based photos of most of the cities in China. We just don't know the NAMES of the streets. Besides, we don't need to know the names. We only need to know how they relate to one another and what interesting things run along side them.
If you would read GP more carefully you would notice that he said he was hassled "more than once" while in the US. This indicates that he didn't quite follow his own suggestion of respecting a country's laws after his initial encounter. One could counter-argue that US laws on public photography are murky and interpreted capriciously, but one must then accept that such argument could apply to Coke's experience of Chinese law on GPS usage.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Many countries consider the possession of GPS capable devices as a priori evidence that the possessor is a spy, and are likely to treat you as such. When I was working in the oilfields of Siberia (between the missile bases of Siberia) in the mid-2000s, this was well known. If you had a GPS, you definitely did not take it to work with you. ("Work" being a 2-3 month posting to the area, with a month off in between hitches. Free Russian language lessons!)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Is it some US government agency asking you to spy for them? Or is it the local police counter-espionage people trying to entrap you as a spy by pretending to be Americans? Both of those have happened. (And the US government does that to immigrants and other potential suckers in the US, which has led to a number of recent "Idiot convicted of terrorism for planting bomb with fake explosive he got from FBI informant" news stories.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"That direction" is more government control, more and more the government handling things "for" you, and therefore having more power. That as opposed to the individual having more control over their own life.
Are you of the opinion that the US is moving toward more individual freedom (and thus responsibility), that the government is getting SMALLER?
You have no chance to know the real China if you're a foreigner, like I said, the only thing Chinese gov fears right now is foreign powers, this gives you a privileged position, and makes your opinion useless. But don't worry, if people like you get your way, China will soon surpass US in terms of military power, and you will get to know the real evil of the communist gov of China.
And here's a quiz question for you, the so called China expert:
1. How many people died in the so called 3 years of "natural" disaster? Were there actual natural disasters in those 3 years?
2. How many people died in the Cultural Revolution? Did the party and gov prosecute the crimes committed during Cultural Revolution?
If you can answer these questions correctly, you'll know the comparison to the Nazi party is not at all bullshit, it's very accurate. What is bullshit is people like you who doesn't know the history of the communist party and tries to judge China by what you get to see in Beijing/Shanghai and the few other major cities, and even there you don't get to experience what a normal Chinese will experience.
And while you're in China, why don't you try to visit Liu Xia, wife of Nobel Peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo? This will give you a taste of what Chinese gov will do to people opposing it. And note, while Liu Xiaobo is sentenced to prison for political crime, his wife is not found guilty of any crime, but she is still under house arrest, now tell me this is more like USA or Nazi Germany.
:)
BTW, Beijing's PM2.5 is well over 200 yesterday, so you'd better watch out if you're in Beijing. And if you're in Shanghai, be careful using tap water, since there were over 10 thousand deceased pigs just flowing down the river. Enjoy your stay
The opposite of 'unknown' is not 'popular'. Still, thanks for playing.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I seem to recall that the Blue Ridge is peppered liberally with Beer Cigarettes Guns stores. Maybe you should relocate.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
America stood for individual freedom at its founding. It stood even more strongly for it once it got rid of slavery.
Who says it got rid of slavery?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The American justice system certainly has a lot of problems, but there is a big difference between a poorly implemented justice system combined with worse prisons, and slavery.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
What do you mean "poorly implemented"? This is its design. It is systematically corrupt, not "poorly implemented" by any means. You're cutting them way too much slack.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It depends on who you mean by "them".
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
China also owns most of US foreign debt.
While most of your other points demonstrate how much the US depends on China, this particular point really demonstrates how much China depends on the US. China holding US debt gives them no power over the US whatsoever, but it does create the risk of losing that investment should something really bad happen to the US.
Nations being in debt isn't the same as individuals being in debt. If I owe a bank $50k then as long as I make my payments on time they really have no power over me (they can't just "call my loan" in almost any normal loan, despite what some seem to think). If I fail to make payments they're worse-off than I am to start - after all, I still have whatever I got with the $50k they loaned me and they're out my loan payments. The power the bank has is to convince the local government to step in and seize assets for them. Most first world governments will do this, since they recognize the value of having banks, and banks can't exist if bad things don't happen to those who fail to pay their debts. Even so, the bank would rather you just made the payments - they're going to take a loss if they have to foreclose (usually). However, for a secured loan they can usually get back the bulk of the principal.
Nations aren't the same as people. If a nation stops making debt payments there is nobody for other nations to appeal to. They could stop loaning money (which they can do even if the country makes its payments), and they could invade (which they can also do even if the country makes its payments). For the most part loaning money to another nation results in big losses if the other nation defaults. When you're talking about a nation the size of the US you really have no discourse if there is a default. If you try to economically punish the US you just make it that much less likely that you'll get paid, and there aren't really any military options unless the whole world wants to unite and put their national populations through a big meat grinder just to prove a point.
In any case, a total US default (that is, a total loss on all bonds - not just a delayed payment) is pretty unlikely. I doubt Congress is dumb enough to delay a payment, but if it happened US debt interest rates would skyrocket, and suddenly there would be a big revenue shortfall. The domestic consequences of that would be dramatic, but once everybody is sick of politicians sacrificing the national economy on the altar of ideology tax rates would get cranked up on the wealthy and the debt would get paid down quickly until all the economic indicators approached some kind of normality (though with US interest rates now being closer to countries like France than where they are now). I doubt debt-holders would really lose much of anything. The only way I could see those loaning the US losing out is if some kind of ultra-nationalist faction rose to power and decided to increase revenue so as to not be dependent on deficit spending, and decide to default on the debt (not because they couldn't afford to pay it, but because ideologically they refuse to do so). A government that is dependent on deficit spending has good reason to keep a good credit rating. A government that sees no need for deficit spending does not care what its credit rating is.
In any case, there isn't likely to be a war between the US and China. At this point everybody has their bread and circuses on both sides of those borders. People got tired of attending funerals over political ideology half a world away back in the 60s.
The people you vote for.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
popular != [merely] 'widely known': popular = 'widely liked'.
For example, I would not characterise a Pap smear as "popular" with women, even though every woman I know is well aware of it, and has one done every year or so.
Likewise, I would not refer to toothbrushes as "popular" despite the fact that I don't think I know a single person who doesn't own at least one of them.
In any case, my original point still stands:
The most effective and insidious form of censorship is not distinguished by mere blocking of access to facts; rather, it is accomplished by persuading people that truths considered undesirable by the rulers are actually falsehoods, or--even better--simply unimportant.
This is how the big boys do it--with misinformation. No black magic marker required!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.