Slashdot Mirror
New Chinese Regulations Require Real Name On Internet
mpicpp sends word that starting March 1st, China will ban internet accounts that impersonate people or organizations, and will require that people use real names when registering accounts online. "As part of an effort to increase control over the Internet, China's government this week revealed new regulations that require Web users to register their real names. According to The Wall Street Journal, the rules apply to users of blogs, microblogs, instant messaging services, online discussion forums, news comment sections, and other related services. Beginning March 1, China will also ban Web accounts that impersonate people or organizations, Reuters said. That includes groups posing as government entities—the People's Daily state newspaper—and impersonations of foreign leaders, like President Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin."
That would be nice, considering that Google has abandoned that policy entirely.
Facebook, on the other hand, seems to be stepping up the enforcement of their real name policy.
They are only terrorists until they win. Then they retroactively become freedom fighters.
85 percent of the billion plus people populace uses one of a hundred surnames, and for common given names there's a couple dozen popular ones for male and for female........LOTS of people have the same name. "Hi I'm Tang Li!" "how about that, we've ten other ones in the class this year!"
Yep, I was just about to say, that as much as we in the US bash China for lack of privacy and personal rights (including the right 'not to be seen')....there are a lot in the US government (fed and state) just salivating over ending anonymous access to the internet just as much as the Chinese.
Have you not been paying attention? The 'real names' thing was invented here. Except it was started by the private sector, not government.
Before you claim there's any difference between the two, I will direct you to The Dangers of Surveillance, a paper that first appeared in the Harvard Law Review, and is required reading for anyone who's interested in the legal principles at play here. I too used to think, 'Yeah, but you can walk away from a business, but you can't walk away from government.' The paper makes an excellent point that real name policies, no matter where they originate, are detrimental to human liberty:
[W]e must recognize that surveillance transcends the public-private divide. Even if we are ultimately more concerned with government surveillance, any solution must grapple with the complex relationships between government and corporate watchers.
In a nutshell, if a corporation has your data, then by hook or by crook, the government can get it too, often voluntarily, often in circumvention of the law.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Oh, and which country is currently assassinating foreigners in foreign countries outside of declared war zones? And imprisoning people indefinitely without charge or trial? And torturing people? And has the highest number of people in prolonged solitary confinement, where “Psychological effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis.”?