Quote of the day
“construct a green, healthy and harmonious internet environment, and prevent harmful information on the internet from influencing and poisoning young people”
- a notice from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, issued to personal computer-makers instructing them that every machine sold from July 1st must be preloaded with software aimed at restricting online pornography but which could also be used to censor politically sensitive websites. The new software, which has been developed with the Chinese military, comes in addition to the current block on overseas sites the government disapprove of, such as those relating to Tibetan independence, using a mesh of filters and keyword restrictions – widely known as the ‘Great Firewall’. Control over domestic servers is applied through instructions to content providers and search engines, which must self-censor to stay in business. The new software updates a list of forbidden sites from an online database and it will also collect private user data. Last week, Chinese authorities blocked Twitter, Facebook and Hotmail in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Witanagemot Blogs
Wow, could’ve been spoken by Australia. Or, with a nod to ‘hard-working families’, here in the UK…
Now if only they could make it illegal to blank a PC’s HD and install another OS!
A little chilling, isn’t it. All done in the name of making the world a better place, but is actually a cover for a Labour-style assault on civil liberties.
The saddest thing?
I thought it was a quote from a Labour minister until I reached the third line. I think it was the word “green” that did it.
All too familiar – but the scary thing about China is that they actually seem to have the competence to pull totalitarianism off. Nobody (sensible) is accusing Labour of being competent at anything at all…
Yes and no Stu.
A mate of mine works in China but has Vauxhall Cross business cards, if you get my drift, and he drew my attention to China’s ‘internet Police Force’ which is over 64000 strong. They are monitoring websites, email and other connected communications, on top of the automated meta-tools Google gave them as part of their .cn buy-in. ‘Do no evil’ became ‘Ask no questions – help supress information’ when the money came good.
The human factor is both a strength a weakness in the system as each one of those rozzers will need monitoring in case they go bent and the paranoia escalates and becomes very expensive.