Net Censors Arrested In China For Taking Bribes To Delete Unflattering Posts As Well As The 'Harmful' Ones

from the gaming-the-system dept

Techdirt has run a number of stories about China's increasingly pervasive Net censorship, which operates both domestically and further afield. According to this story in Index on Censorship, China seems to think its system still needs bolstering:

The Chinese government has revealed it is expanding their censorship of the internet with a new training programme for the estimated two million "opinion monitors" Beijing organised last year.

...

Once trained, monitors will "supervise" the posting of social media messages, deleting those that are deemed harmful. Beijing claims to have deployed "advanced filtering technology" to identify problematic posts, and will need to "rapidly filter out false, harmful, incorrect, or even reactionary information," according to Xinhua.

Internet monitoring in China is an intensive process. Censored search terms are often placed on the list and then removed as a situation develops.

That fluid situation and the huge numbers of people involved mean that it's hard to monitor the monitors -- generally a problem with censorship. So it was probably inevitable that some Net censors would start taking advantage of their power to earn a little extra money:

Beijing police have detained at least 10 people, including employees at Baidu, the leading Chinese-language Internet search provider, over allegations of abusing their positions to delete online posts in return for money, the Beijing News reports.

The idea was simple, as the China News post quoted above explains:

staff searched for unfavorable posts about enterprises and government departments, then charged hundreds of yuan to delete the posts.

...

The posts covered a wide range of issues, including forced demolitions, pollution problems, extramarital affairs and bribery by officials, as well as product quality and companies in financial crises

Combined with the millions who will be censoring a changing list of forbidden topics, this will make it even harder for Chinese citizens to find out what's going on from the mainstream Internet sites. That might encourage users to explore less well-known services in an effort to avoid such massive censorship, causing the Chinese authorities to recruit even more "opinion monitors."

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Filed Under: bribes, censorship, china, corruption, free speech, great firewall

Google Cryptically Alerts The World That It Will Nudge Chinese Searchers Away From Censorship

from the losing-access dept

It's no secret that Google has a troubled relationship with China: at one point leaving the market entirely, and later going back but with significant limitations, though where Google tried to be as transparent as possible about when information was being censored on behalf of the Chinese government. Last week, Google took another step, which was explained, somewhat cryptically, in a blog post about better search in mainland China. The company never comes out and says it, but it's basically hinting strongly at the fact that the Chinese government is censoring certain searches... and doing so in a way that basically blocks access to Google for a certain amount of time, if they catch you doing a "questionable" search. The way Google explains it:

Over the past couple years, we’ve had a lot of feedback that Google Search from mainland China can be inconsistent and unreliable. It depends on the search query and browser, but users are regularly getting error messages like “This webpage is not available” or “The connection was reset.” And when that happens, people typically cannot use Google again for a minute or more....

We’ve taken a long, hard look at our systems and have not found any problems. However, after digging into user reports, we’ve noticed that these interruptions are closely correlated with searches for a particular subset of queries.

Of course, they never say what that "subset of queries" might be, but you can take a guess.

The "solution" is that, similar (though slightly different) to Google's "autocomplete," Google, when accessed by Chinese mainlanders, will make suggestions on alternative searches that won't cause the user to be blocked from accessing Google: It's a smart move by Google, but it does make you wonder if even having that trigger will now lead to being cut off. It's going to be a back and forth, cat and mouse game for a long, long time...

Filed Under: autocomplete, censorship, china, great firewall
Companies: google

If You Meet A Censor, Ask Why They Haven't Become Moral Degenerates Themselves

from the simple-questions dept

Last year, we wrote about one of China's chief censors, the creator of the Great Firewall of China, who did an interview where he talked about how important censorship was to protect people -- while also noting that he, himself, had five VPN accounts to get around the Great Firewall... for research purpose only (he promised). I'm reminded of this while reading an interview with a Kuwaiti censor who seems quite proud of her role in keeping horrible content from being consumed by people in Kuwait -- while also talking about how much she gets to learn in reading all this content.

I found out about this interview from Adam Thierer, who has a simple question he thinks every censor should be asked:

But here’s where the reporter missed a golden opportunity to ask Dalal the one question that you must always ask a censor if you get to meet one: If the content you are censoring is so destructive to the human soul or psyche, how then is it that you are such a well-adjusted person? And Dalal certainly seems like a well-adjusted person. Although the reporter doesn’t tell us much about her personal life or circumstances, Dalal volunteers this much about herself and her fellow censors: “Many people consider the censor to be a fanatic and uneducated person, but this isn’t true. We are the most literate people as we have read much, almost every day. We receive a lot of information from different fields. We read books for children, religious books, political, philosophical, scientific ones and many others.” Well of course you do... because you are lucky enough to have access to all that content! But you are also taking steps to make sure the rest of your society doesn’t consume it on the theory that it would harm them or harm public morals in some fashion. But, again, how is it that you have not been utterly corrupted by it all, Ms. Dalal? After all, you get to consume all that impure, sacrilegious, and salacious stuff! Shouldn’t you be some kind of monster by now?

Thierer goes on to posit that the "Third-Person Effect Hypothesis" explains the issue. It says that "people will tend to overestimate the influence that mass communications have on the attitudes and behavior of others," while assuming, however, that they are somewhat immune to those effects. It's an interesting post, and that question should be used whenever anyone has the pleasure of meeting (or better yet, interviewing) an official government censor.

Filed Under: censorship, china, great firewall, kuwait, vpn

OpenDNS Tells Congress Not To Create The Great Firewall Of America

from the speak-up dept

When I went to Washington DC a few weeks ago with other entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, one of those whom I had the pleasure of meeting and walking the halls of Congress with was David Ulevitch, the CEO of OpenDNS, the world's largest DNS and internet security service. His service protects over 30 million people every day, and is currently used to protect people in approximately one-third of every public K-12 school. Hearing his story and his concerns about PROTECT IP and SOPA was really eye-opening. He's someone who clearly understands DNS and DNS/IP blocking better than probably anyone. And he told me that if SOPA were in place when he was first creating OpenDNS, he wouldn't have bothered. The liability would be just too great.

David has now penned an open letter to Congress, which we've embedded below, asking Congress to reject SOPA and PROTECT IP as being extremely bad bills that will have massive unintended consequences, hurting jobs and internet security at the same time. Here are just a few excerpts:

It’s likely that if SOPA and PIPA existed when I started my company, we would have incorporated outside of the United States and all of the jobs and investment that I have put into the economy would have been taken elsewhere. I expect many businesses will make the decision to incorporate elsewhere should this legislation pass and it’s possible that existing corporations will relocate to more entrepreneur-friendly countries.

My company invented many of the specific techniques that SOPA and PIPA would require all domestic Internet Service Providers and companies like mine to employ. Needless to say, we understand the censorship technology being proposed in this legislation and we are deeply concerned. While the aims of protecting IP and reducing piracy are noble, there are many reasons why SOPA and PIPA are dangerous as currently written. Here are the three that impact my business most:

1. It will, by definition, be overbroad, as there is no way to censor only illegal content without harming legitimate uses on sites as well. This is particularly true in light of the broad notion of “sites dedicated to infringing activity.”
2. Through their requirements to block websites, these bills will create a domestic Internet firewall designed to censor websites equivalent to the “Great Firewall of China” that is used to suppress information. If we implemented such a solution we would be setting a terrible example for the rest of the world, including countries we criticize for the same behavior like Iran, Syria, and China.
3. They will burden companies with an onerous level of liability for all user-generated content. What the bills propose would be akin to requiring the phone company to be responsible for the legality of every phone call that takes place. With that kind of regulation, companies will spend more on lawyers and litigation than they will on hiring and innovating. Existing laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act already provide a satisfactory legal framework to remove copyright infringement and enforce intellectual property rights.

It's difficult to argue that Ulevitch doesn't know what he talks about. He runs the largest DNS provider in the world. How much longer will Congress continue to ignore the people who actually understand the technology they're trying to regulate?

Filed Under: congress, david ulevitch, dns, great firewall, protect ip, sopa
Companies: opendns

White House Petition Against E-PARASITE/SOPA

from the speak-up dept

Last week, as part of our trip of startup entrepreneurs, innovators, artists and venture captialists, we were able to meet with senior White House staff about our concerns over the E-PARASITE/SOPA bill that would fundamentally change the regulatory and policy framework of the internet, seriously hindering the ability to create new startups, new jobs and new platforms to help everyone. The White House has not officially taken a position on the bill, but one thing was made clear from the very start of the meeting: the legacy players in Hollywood and at the US Chamber of Commerce were putting a ton of pressure on the White House to support E-PARASITE, despite the fact that the State Department itself is quite worried about the bill, as it would almost entirely undermine all of its efforts to promote internet freedom around the globe.

I'm usually not one to believe in the power of various "online petitions," but since the White House has set up its own petition system, in which 25,000 signatures will guarantee a response, this actually seems like a case where just such a petition would work well. So it's great to see that someone has created just such a petition against E-PARASITE. Of course, technically it should be against SOPA, since the framers of the bill recognized just how silly E-PARASITE sounds, and removed that from the bill after everyone started making fun of them. Still, it's important to push this point home and let the White House know, in no uncertain terms, that the public is against this bill.

And it should be clear, by the way, that it's not just the public. Many people within the federal government are equally worried about this bill, which appears to serve no other purpose than to keep a few legacy players in Hollywood fat and happy, and keep them from having to actually innovate for a short while longer.

The real question, however, is whether or not the Obama White House wants to directly contradict Hillary Clinton and the State Department. Remember, Clinton has become a staunch defender of internet freedom against attempts to censor the internet worldwide. In her speech earlier this year, she noted:

So this is a critical moment. The choices we make today will determine what the Internet looks like in the future.... For the United States, the choice is clear. On the spectrum of Internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness. We recognize that an open Internet comes with challenges. It calls for ground-rules to protect against wrongdoing and harm. And Internet freedom raises tensions, like all freedoms do. But its benefits are worth it.

And that's exactly the opposite of the approach being taken by Congress, which aims to put forth a top-down policy of censorship. A top down policy that nearly perfectly mimics the functional nature of the Great Firewall of China. Should the Obama administration go against its own State Department, it will serve to undermine Clinton's long term efforts in pushing internet freedom around the globe. That would be quite a legacy to leave: to contradict one's own Secretary of State who is pushing for greater internet freedom, and impose a system of censorship on the US. Please tell the White House not to take such a drastic measure.

Filed Under: e-parasite, great firewall, internet freedom, petition, sopa, state department, white house

China: Great Firewall Isn't Censorship, It's Safeguarding The Public

from the it's-never-censorship-when-you're-doing-it dept

As we've discussed in reference to PROTECT IP, those who are in favor of censorship always have some sort of convoluted rationale for why it's not really censorship. They'll always argue that it's something different. In the case of PROTECT IP, obviously, they claim it's to stop infringement -- ignoring that it's still censorship. So it's little surprise to see the Chinese sounding just like PROTECT IP supporters in defending the Great Firewall of China by claiming that it's not about censorship at all. A government spokeswoman defending China from a US diplomat's complaint about the Great Firewall insists that it supports freedom of speech... but it has to filter and block websites online to "safeguard the public." And it claims it does so "in line with internationally accepted practices." Indeed, and PROTECT IP is just about "safeguarding some companies." There's always an excuse, but it never changes the simple fact that censorship is censorship.

Filed Under: censorship, china, free speech, great firewall, protecting the public

China Centralizes The Great Firewall Into Single Censorship Body

from the well-how-about-that dept

There have been numerous articles about how the Great Firewall of China functions, and it's generally been done via a series of bureaucracies, combined with tens of thousands of government employees along with a bunch of "volunteers." The process also involves somewhat vague messages to ISPs about what sort of content is concerning to the government, leading those ISPs to block broadly to avoid liability. However, this structure is apparently a bit too chaotic, and Vic alerts us to the news that China is now centralizing its internet censorship apparatus. Apparently, part of the reason for this was that two of the separate agencies who helped manage the censorship campaign got into a disagreement over who had the right to regulate World of Warcraft. So, the Chinese response: build one big bureaucracy, called the State Internet Information Office, which will have broad powers to "direct, coordinate and supervise online content management and handle administrative approval of businesses related to online news reporting."

Among its listed duties? "To investigate and punish websites violating laws and regulations." Yeah, the Great Firewall is dead... long live the Great Firewall. It will be interesting to see if this leads to any noticeable changes, but some are already warning that with a centralized organization running this, there may be greater crackdowns and fewer loopholes going forward. Either way, it'll be worth watching to see how this new organization handles its online censorship duties.

Filed Under: censorship, china, free speech, great firewall

China's President Wants Greater Internet Censorship; Worried About Middle East Uprisings

from the fear-the-internet dept

While some curmudgeons continue to insist that the internet has had nothing (nothing!) whatsoever to do with popular uprisings throughout the middle east, it certainly seems that various governments don't feel the same way. In nearly every case so far, the governments have sought to either crack down on the internet or figure out ways to use it to their advantage. And it appears that China is watching closely. We had already mentioned how the country blocked any mention of Egypt from various microblogging services, in the wake of the uprising there, and now President Hu Jintao is saying that China needs to clamp down on the internet even more. It's believed these new calls for tightening up the Great Firewall are in response to fears that folks in China may take note of the uprisings throughout the Middle East, and seek to copy them in China. 2011 is shaping up to be a very interesting year in terms of people's responses to tyranny.

Filed Under: china, free speech, great firewall, uprisings

Father Of The Great Firewall Defends Chinese Internet Censorship By Noting The US Does The Same Thing

from the not-quite...-but... dept

The LA Times points us to a fascinating (English-language) interview with the guy in China credited with creating that country's Great Firewall censorship system, named Fang Binxing. The interview has a bunch of interesting nuggets -- including the fact that he has 5 VPN accounts to get around his own Great Firewall. Though, to be fair, he insists that those VPNs are for research only, to make sure the Great Firewall is doing what it's supposed to do.

The report also notes that Fang appears to be widely hated throughout China. When he recently joined a Twitter-like Chinese "microblogging" clone, he was immediately attacked by angry citizens who hate the Great Firewall. I actually find this admission quite fascinating, because the Chinese government, for many years, has tried to spin things to the rest of the world by claiming that most Chinese appreciated the censorship, because it kept them focused/less distracted/less subjected to dumb TV. However, Fang's admission suggests a lot of people are not at all happy about the Great Firewall.

But, the most interesting point of all is how he defends the Great Firewall by claiming that pretty much every other country -- including the US -- does something similar:

Such a firewall is a "common phenomenon around the world," he argues, and nor is China alone in monitoring and controlling the Internet.

"As far as I know, about 180 countries including South Korea and the US monitor the Internet as well."

Of course, "monitoring" the internet, and totally censoring it are two very different things. Still, this does highlight a point we've made a few times around here. Every time the US does something that appears to weaken freedom of speech or set up some sort of censorship system like COICA, we have less and less credibility or leverage when it comes to other countries and trying to convince them not to censor online services.

Filed Under: china, fang binxing, great firewall

Is The Great Firewall Of China A Trade Barrier? And If So, Does China Care?

from the probably-not dept

Neelie Kroes, currently VP of the European Commission (and previously EU Commissioner of competition), is apparently claiming that China's Great Firewall of internet censorship is really a trade issue, that should be reviewed by the WTO for trade violations. This isn't the first time this has been suggested, but previous discussions never went anywhere. Now, restricting access to web information and websites can certainly be a trade issue. The fact that many of the websites blocked by China are foreign-run businesses, you can make an argument that China is protecting local companies. But, China has a pretty big trump card: it doesn't care. The WTO could rule however it wants, and China will just say that it's not a trade issue, but rather a way of protecting citizens from content it deems dangerous -- and will then point to Australia's attempted internet censorship along with things like ACTA, to point out that lots of countries seek to put limitations on internet content they deem "bad." So call it what you want, it doesn't seem likely that any WTO action will convince China to change.

Filed Under: china, great firewall, trade barrier, wto