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The World's Largest Phone Network China Mobile Censors Content -- Even in the United States (washingtonpost.com)
Isaac Stone Fish, reporting for The Washington Post: On Monday, the U.S. Department of Commerce recommended the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deny a license to China Mobile, the state-run company that is the world's largest phone network by subscribers. (It reaches more people than Verizon and AT&T combined.) The Commerce Department suggested the move because of the national security risk China Mobile poses. Indeed, because China Mobile is an arm of the Chinese state, there are legitimate concerns that Beijing could use it to gather data on American citizens. There is, however, a previously unreported concern with China Mobile that adds to worries about the company's suitability in the United States.
According to several interviews with frequent Chinese travelers to the United States, those with China Mobile as their carrier are often unable to access American websites and apps that are banned in China. A Chinese journalist who regularly travels to the United States for work, and who asked to speak anonymously, said she couldn't access Facebook or the New York Times in the United States with her China Mobile number. Even Google Maps is banned, leading to some frustrating travel experiences. When she was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, the Chinese journalist said, "it took me a long time to find her place because my VPN failed me and I couldn't use Google Maps." She was referring to a Virtual Private Network, a method that some Chinese use to circumvent the Chinese censorship apparatus.
According to several interviews with frequent Chinese travelers to the United States, those with China Mobile as their carrier are often unable to access American websites and apps that are banned in China. A Chinese journalist who regularly travels to the United States for work, and who asked to speak anonymously, said she couldn't access Facebook or the New York Times in the United States with her China Mobile number. Even Google Maps is banned, leading to some frustrating travel experiences. When she was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, the Chinese journalist said, "it took me a long time to find her place because my VPN failed me and I couldn't use Google Maps." She was referring to a Virtual Private Network, a method that some Chinese use to circumvent the Chinese censorship apparatus.
Much bigger problem is that it isn't against the law for private corporations to censor. While we rightfully condemn China Mobile for blocking NYT, there is no law preventing, for example, AT&T from doing the same.
Who is surprised by this? This is SOP for them and exactly what is expected. In all likelihood, it is a legal requirement for Chinese telecom services.
China makes a lot of stuff, they act in some ways like a modern country, but in fact they are a communist totalitarian state - and now (with Li's "presidente for life" declaration) a dictatorship. This is what they are, and this is what they do.
We know this. Why not just ban all companies that are arms of the Chinese state? We know they're not to be trusted under any circumstances, so why allow them? Let them meet our standards or go fuck themselves full of rice.
if you have T-Mobile. Everything goes through t-mo's vpn so you have full access to all US sites that are normally blocked for Chinese. Although strangely enough, Google blocks downloadable / offline maps for China so you can only navigate as long as you have a good cell signal and don't go too fast.
convenient workaround, no censorship.
That's how mobile roaming works. Data is carried back to the mobile provider who then connects it to the Internet locally. US SIM cards block sites that are censored in the US. Film at 11.
Ah! That explains today's XKCD comic.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
... we prefer our censors and guardians of CorrectThink (tm) to be private corporations like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, not the State!
if they had started to route the traffic directly through wherever they're roaming, that would be news.
it works as if they were in china. that's how it's supposed to work. how on earth a journalist doesn't know this by now? they never travel?
this is literally not news at all since this is just how it works. their data gets routed back to china and out from there. THATS HOW IT WORKS, the ping times go to fuck of course.
also, it's usually prohibitely expensive anyways so.. eh. just look for wifi will you? or you want to pay thousands for 10 minutes of downloading updates? you wouldn't be doing that unless you had chinese government footing your mobile bill anyways.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
For avoiding national security risks, the electronic devices must have the following properties:
Backdoors free.
Cryptography free.
Lockers free.
No hidden parts.
No undocumented parts.
No mistaken specifications (100% correctly specified).
No binary parts without sources.
Etc.
National security is not only for U.S., it is also for China, Europe, etc.
All they have to do is make one quick call to the sales department over at Zuckerbook and they can buy access to the very-much-private-and-personal information of at least half of all U.S. citizens.
of the US?
Considering censorship is just what this administration wants you'd think they'd embrace this with open arms.
They are roaming. This means, the data goes from the phone, to the cellular network, and then to the Internet from the cellular network.
If you are on Verizon and roaming in China, your phone number is still your USA phone number, your IP is a USA based IP address, and your traffic goes from your phone, to Verizon, and then to facebook or google or whatever.
If you are from China, on China Mobile, the same fucking thing applies. You are roaming. You maintain your phone number from China. Your network traffic goes from your phone, over to China Mobile's network, and exits that network. From there, you can go to Facebook or whatever - unless it's blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
This is how fucking roaming works. WTF, people?!
How the fuck is this even an issue or discussion?!?!
When roaming, all data goes to your country of origin and breaks out from that point of origin.
For China Mobile, the users will be restricted by the great firewall because its as if they are in China.
China mobile just needs to add FAKE NEWS sites to the banned list. Perhaps they could use Trump's twitter history to compile such a list. That would probably help their application for a license.
Indeed, because China Mobile is an arm of the Chinese state, there are legitimate concerns that Beijing could use it to gather data on American citizens.
That's the NSA's job.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
To scream that it is racist to deny a Chinese company access to American markets, even though China denies access by Western companies.
This means that a big fat payment to the Lord of the US is in order. Pay the price, and all will be well
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
... we prefer our censors and guardians of CorrectThink (tm) to be private corporations like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, not the State!
All of which works brilliantly for a plutocracy. While they have us fighting each other over abortion rights and gun control, they quietly laugh all the way to the bank and censor anything that might really shake up the status quo. Or at least did, until a foreign power used a corrupt set of politicians, a malignantly narcissistic real estate con man, and an extreme right-wing coalition of neo-Nazis, Christians, white-supremacists, and Libertarians to completely upset the apple-cart. Now that they own the executive branch, and the FCC will allow right-wing corporate takeovers and buyouts of an increasing share of our media, we've moved from a plutocracy (bad) to corporate fascism (far worse), all without a single shot being fired. It seems unlikely we'll get our freedom back in such a stealthy way, alas.
"China Mobile is an arm of the Chinese state"
Snowden showed that US tech companies are also an arm of the state. It may be less willing, but it's no less intrusive.
ending net neutrality would allow companies to innovate, ie, build out capacity to LET you stream 720p and better!
Oh, right- he's a massive liar and corporate tool.
Overthrow the Chinese government, toss them out on their ears. Oh wait! It's a COMMUNIST dicatorship...that means the people have NO WAY to overthrow that kind of government. Oh well, so sorry.
See subject: Your MASSIVE FAIL in this life is you're nothing more than a chattering little do-nothing "ne'er-do-well" online & you know it...
* Is that the best your "phantasyland FAKE NAME" (for your fake lie of a so-called 'life') can manage?
When a FAKE NAME do nothing like YOU does better than I have? Then talk (you're all talk & no action)...
You can't help you're an immature little BUTTHURT no-mind, lol! I blew you away in TONS OF PLACES and easily dust your no-mind bullshit blatherings.
APK
P.S.=> The TRUE PRICE of your UNIDENTIFIABLE FAKE NAME do-nothing selves like you that I can ALWAYS CASH IN ON (lol) is that I can use FACT/TRUTH on them to SHATTER their all TOO fragile delusional egos that they actually know A DAMN THING in computing, lol... apk
Again, this is a totalitarian state. State-owned or not, they exist to serve the ends of the government. They are not independent entities in any way.
All the communist states figure out that state-owned/planned operations are inefficient and donot work, usually pretty quickly. To first approximation, they wouldn't care, but if the business is not working, there are a lot less profits to steal for themselves. So they quickly adopt *fascist* models, where the businesses are ostensibly free to operate independently and efficiently, but only in service to the state with massive payoff to the big-shots running the show. Of course this is what Marx and his buddies called "social parasites" and is the opposite of what the claim to believe, but the communist approach does nicely keep everyone else from wanting or expecting more. If they do, Tianamen Square time.
This sequence was repeated over and over. Vlad Putin (and his predecessors back to Stalin, and Mao) didn't get fabulously rich by following the Communist philosophy to the letter, they got it by running a classic kleptocracy. China is by far the best at it so far. So it matters not one whit who supposedly owns something, or whether they are traded on exchanges, they will do the state's bidding, ultimately.
US collects taxes from the income US citizen have abroad. It seems that US thinks that pay taxes is the most important obligation citizen have to state. (all other contries typically don't do so, and let country where person made money tax him),
China apparenly thinks that right order of thoughts is the most important obligation to state. So it censors its citizens even abroad.
Data sessions are routed back to the core network of the network issuing your SIM; you'll find that you can access region-locked content whilst internationally roaming if using mobile data. Only on a few outdated networks are you actually using that network's gateway whilst roaming.