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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.
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.
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.
The one child policy is a much bigger deal than a bone.
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.
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.
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.