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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.
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.
Because: anyone outsourcing to China has to deal with a Chinese state company; and, practically everyone, especially the current President of the United States, outsources to China. Therefore, banning Chinese state companies from doing business in the United States is a non-starter.
Finding God in a Dog
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.
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.
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?!?!
There are a lot of state-own companies in China. In fact, there are too many that the Chinese government wants to get rid of, but they tried (mostly in the 1990's) but cannot privatize those companies because most of those companies are highly inefficient and privatize them would cost a lot of jobs. So I don't understand what's this fear of Chinese state-own companies is about? If state-owned companies are a thing of threats, then the Soviet Union would be ruling the world today. This is all fear mongering.
By the way, China Mobil is not totally state-owned. They are a public trade company listed in Hong Kong Stock Exchange. And the company has to carry the mandate of the Chinese government to provide mobile network services to the remotest rural areas in China at an affordable price, unlike AT&T et. al, who couldn't even provide complete service coverage in Silicon Valley, so that would already damp its competitiveness.