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Chinese Gov't To Tighten Internet Controls Even Further
jfruh writes "The new Chinese leadership released a document outlining its vision for the country Friday, and most of the attention was paid to reforms, like plans to loosen state control of the economy and end the one-child policy. But when it comes to the Internet, the Chinese Communist government is doubling down on its restrictive policies. The document notes that social networking and instant messaging tools can rapidly disseminate information and mobilize society; the government doesn't think those are good things, and plans to bolster its regulatory systems and increase the scope of their legal authority."
Posting to undo accidental mod.
Cue all the OMG SNOWDEN responses about how this isn't so bad because the US incidentally collects US persons information while trying to stop terror plots. Wake up, everyone: a lot of other countries are a lot worse and deserve your vitriol more.
More economic freedom, social freedom is mixed, and continuing or tighter political control.
It will be interesting to see if they continue the trend of relatively more economic freedom into the future since the new leadership is harkening back to the old ways. "Where are the true communists?"
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
tfs:
The document notes that social networking and instant messaging tools can rapidly disseminate information and mobilize society; the government doesn't think those are good things
This is what I love about China. They're completely up front about who they are. In the US everything needs to be carefully cloaked in terms of protection from terrorists.
Call me a cynic, but it seems like more than coincidence that China would tighten the reins on Internet use at the same time as they publicly announce relaxing the one child policy.
Sounds like a government becoming even more authoritarian, but throwing the people a bone to distract from the serious issues..
Congrats, China, you're learning how to be repressive, American style!
/sarcasm mode, cowardly said
The summary, and the few paragraphs constituting the "article" itself, are almost pure interpretation with virtually no specific facts.
Sheesh. Those new leaders sound as bad as the folks at Sony. Or Apple. Or ...
Seriously? Since when has mobilization been a bad thing? And dissemination can be a good thing, under a certain light.
A flashmob in Tiananmen Square just for 10 seconds to take a few pictures and dissolve?
That's the only thing coming to my mind.
Is that what they are afraid?
Imagine an Internet where anything that wasn't unencoded unicode or ascii where only recognizable dictionary words and standard protocols were allowed.
Imagine everybody being restricted to running iDevices where they could not install any unauthorized software on their computers.
Imagine that if it were encrypted, the government always had the private key, and the encryption was only there as a facade. The only public keys you'd have on your machine were the government's decoy keys.
Imagine if all software developers were targeted by the government with surveillance and public scrutiny to ensure that no illegal tools were being built.
It isn't that hard to foresee this future.
Sig: I stole this sig.
I picture some crazy politician in China running over to the wall and yanking the ethernet right out of socket, most likely stripping the wires in the process. This happened to me while I was investigating a compromised FTP server. IT guy walked in yanked the cable right out of the wall.
They don't want their folks to provide easy info for the NSA to sniff.
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A tin-pot dictator in a third world hell hole is renown for locking up people who merely openly mock him with jokes at his expense. BUT in a first world hell hole, the 'anger' of the sheeple is DISSIPATED by comedy shows on TV that 'roast' the most powerful leaders of the nation with the nastiest critical material.
An incompetent police state looks to create uniformed government goons that create fear in the heart of every citizen. A Blair/Obama police state, on the other hand, educates the sheeple to think THEY are the ones demanding the changes to their society.
Take the UK. The mainstream media is centrally controlled, of course, with the owners of every major media corporation being part of the establishment. The mainstream media comes in various SYNTHETIC FLAVOURS, so each type of sheeple (say 'liberal', or 'socialist', or 'conservative', or 'elitist', or 'old school working class' or whatever) can find an outlet that seems to match his/her world view.
When those that rule the UK want new laws or powers in a particular direction, they don't simply impose such changes on the sheeple- no, they spend a year or two running carefully crafted media campaigns that APPEAR to represent some genuine grassroots concern. The people of the UK rarely get an impression that higher forces are pulling the strings, or that the campaigns in their newspapers of choice represent political PR actions crafted at the highest levels.
Britain is about to get the most censored Internet of any major nation on the planet, INCLUDING China. Indeed Rupert "Fox News" Murdoch (the ultra-extremist-right-wing media baron who PARTNERED with Bill Gates to create the inBloom system that places EVERY CHILD IN THE USA under full surveillance monitoring every aspect of their lives), has just introduced the most draconian ISP level censorship to his 'Sky' internet service.
You know those ultra-extreme Internet filter programs that schools and companies can use to eliminate access to almost every non-mainstream Internet site? Every ISP in the UK must have such filters OPERATING AT THE DNS LEVEL OF THE ISP before the end of 2014. At the moment, the adult bill payer has the 'option' to disable aspects of the filter, although it is notable that even if the user chooses the "18" setting, massive censorship is still active (to get uncensored access, the user must opt to go 'beyond' the '18' setting, and disable the filter in its entirety).
Now before the vile shills step in with their "what is wrong with filters under user control", I will point out the nasty consequences.
1) Britain has had this system on pretty much ALL mobile phone access to the Internet for ages now. To disable SOME of the filtering, the phone owner has to contact his phone company directly, and go through a very nasty tedious process, usually involving lots of direct contact with employees. The ability to simply select the level of censorship via a control page online is purposely NOT provided.
2) The filter system coming (arrived) in the UK immediately implies that functional methods that bypass the filter (VPN, use of proxies, etc) need to be criminalised. The UK will run 'scare' stories in the tabloid press expressing outrage at the ease with which 'children' can use such methods to avoid the filters.
3) The UK filter system defaults to BANNING alternative sources of information, making it clear that decent people ONLY use services like the BBC. Far from targeting 'extreme' material, the filter system targets anything outside the mainstream. The implication is that "the tall poppy needs to have its head removed".
4) The UK filter system is centralised. In other words, a central authority has EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE of the current level of censorship in any online household. Even though the householder is (currently) in charge of the settings, the choices made by the household are government knowledge. This allows the coming tabloid scares about "abusive households deactivate filters even when children there have access to the Internet"
Every rig driver in America will soon be tracked by an electronic recorder. Proponents claim it will make the roads safer, but some wonder what else the data could be used for.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
which the Communist Party organized back in 1949.
China is also in the United Nations Council for Human Rights
System Fail. Please Reboot.
Sooo... you're comparing a state actor with a bunch of terrorists who flew into buildings. The Japanese had to lose a war for years to get that desperate, and even then they had vastly more resources than those (late) terrorists. In 2001 how much popular support did the terrorists have? If I remember the almost universal condemnation from the muslim world I'd say "bugger all"... those terrorists had already worn out their welcome perpetrating violence in home societies. Ten years later and their fortunes have completely reversed - they're popular, the chances of glorious martyrdom are high, and Anti-US feeling is growing even in Europe and Asia. I wonder how that happened.
In China, the power cares that you could disseminate information and mobilize society. In western countries you can disseminate information and mobilize society, but the power does not care. At all.
China has local versions of all the popular online programs like youtube facebook skype ebay etc.
It seems sensible forcing Chinese people to use home grown versions as it helps the Chinese economy. In the long run these companies will be quite valuable. Additionally why would China want to give all the juicy information to the NSA easily, when they can collect it all for themselves.