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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.
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!
That's like saying we shouldn't have had a Civil Rights movement because at least we weren't killing our minorities like Germany did; we were just oppressing them.
"Y is worse than X" does not mean that X is not also bad.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Yeah, it's not wise to stop holding our government to account. I'd rather the US set an example for the worse countries by reining in its bribe-happy CIA, bringing the troops home from profit wars, closing GTMO, and stopping espionage that is not required to stop a known and imminent threat to lives.
Or I guess we can adopt the motto "Still more tolerant and less bloody than Genghis Khan!" but it doesn't quite radiate that exceptional aura.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
We're perfectly capable of hating both of them, thanks.
Technoli
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.
That's like saying we shouldn't have had a Civil Rights movement because at least we weren't killing our minorities like Germany did; we were just oppressing them.
"Y is worse than X" does not mean that X is not also bad.
Very true. "We're not winning the race to the bottom" is no cause for celebration.
Wake up, everyone: a lot of other countries are a lot worse and deserve your vitriol more.
Are they? Or are they just further along in their plans? Everything that other countries are doing, your govt wants to do, and would if they thought they could get away with it. No govt is better than others, just some leashes are shorter than others.
I don't think that's what he's saying; rather, he's mocking those who do make that kind of argument.
I've seen it happen on slashdot where an article about chinese censorship brings posts (that even get high moderation) that talk about how the US government is supposedly worse.
Doesn't happen a lot these days, but during the Bush years it was obligatory as part of any post about foreign government censorship on slashdot.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Don't you worry, I sprinkle it liberally all over the countries that deserve it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is China. Communist China. You kinda expect it to be oppressive, backwards, anti-liberty and stuff. Or so my propaganda minister told me.
But in the shiny beacon of freedom, liberty and happiness for everyone that the US is, it is very shocking to read anything like that.
And yes, we really need a sarcasm tag.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, but China is way further away than the US, and its policies have a lot less impact on me than the ones in the US. Not only because the US is a more important economy partner of my country, but also because our politicians here are mostly "monkey see, monkey do" when it comes to the US. Even aside of "treaties" (aka adhesion contracts) where they're pretty much forced to do their bidding, they tend to mimic what they see across the pond with some faithfulness that is rather terrifying.
So if China sticks a government surveillance cam up everyone's ass it will by no margin affect me as much as if the US started to ponder thinking about putting one on every porch.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But then who would make all the stuff we buy, but refuse to pay American workers a decent living wage to produce so we export it to reduce production costs while maximizing the companies profits and then bitch cause there are no more jobs for Americans.
Argghhh it's so confusing.
Seriously China is not the monster it once was. I'd say them relaxing their economic controls as well as the restrictions on the number of children is a huge step forward. Not to mention the economic growth the countries had due to all the manufacturing that got imported there.
Also keep in mind the last few times bat shit crazy North Korea said "we're gonna bomb" China has distanced itself from a country that was once their ally.
I see them as having come a long way from where they were during the Tienanmen days.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
At least with Khan he never stayed in everyone's back pocket all the time.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
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.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The key part of the parent comment was:
--->Wake up, everyone: a lot of other countries are a lot worse and deserve your vitriol more.
Yes but, George Bush, republicans, NSA. USA... evil. We must not forget about this.
The key part of the parent comment was:
--->Wake up, everyone: a lot of other countries are a lot worse and deserve your vitriol more.
Vitriol is wasted on countries where you do not live. Why should the Chinese government care about the opinion of a random American? Effort should be focused where it is most likely to make a difference.
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.
And TIbet has been part of China for 800 years. Another little fact dumb westerners prefer to ignore.
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.
Speaking on behalf of U.S. citizens, other countries are not our responsibility.
Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"