Tesla Urged Chinese Government To Censor Critics In China

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Outside of the company's unwavering fanboys, it's fairly clear to most folks that the honeymoon phase of the planet's relationship with Tesla is coming to a close. Whether it's regulatory scrutiny of the company's premature and often inaccurate self-driving claims, the loss of significant emissions credits in the US and Europe, frustration at the often stupid shit that comes out of Elon Musks' mouth, legal issues related to the SolarCity acquisition, or major quality headaches related to the company's solar installations and cars alike, the bloom has, as they say, fallen from the rose.

That also extends to China, where Tesla's early successes appear to have hit a bit of a roadblock. Part of that roadblock recently emerged in the form of a massive recall of nearly every Tesla sold in China due to software issues. Responding to bipartisan US aggressiveness (see: TikTok), the Chinese government has also banned all Teslas from being used by government agencies, citing potential privacy natsec concerns. After initially rolling out the red carpet, Chinese officials have sharply shifted their tone over the better part of the last year.

As Bloomberg notes, genuine concerns about Tesla safety, government anger over Tesla hubris, and a souring US/China relationship appear to have fused into one big headache for the company:

"Tesla’s experience is “a warning shot that they need to stay between the lines, and not be so flamboyant in their success,” said Bill Russo, a former Chrysler executive who’s now chief executive officer of Automobility Ltd., a Shanghai-based consultancy. “You can’t be so far up front that you become arrogant in the way you conduct yourself.”...

Signals of a tougher stance toward Tesla came as early as February, when agencies including the State Administration for Market Regulation, China’s most important market watchdog, summoned executives to discuss what they said were quality and safety issues in Tesla vehicles, including reports of abnormal acceleration and battery fires. After the meeting, Tesla issued a statement so apologetic it verged on groveling, declaring it had “sincerely accepted the guidance of government departments” and “deeply reflected on shortcomings."

To counter the shift, Tesla has engaged in a massive new PR push on social platforms, and some newfound groveling at the feet of Chinese authorities. But Bloomberg buries a troubling part of said groveling in a throwaway sentence halfway into the story. Namely the fact that Tesla went so far as to ask the Chinese government to use its immense censorship apparatus to censor company critics online:

Previously focused on state-run media, Tesla is now trying to build relationships with auto-industry publications and influencers on platforms such as Weibo and WeChat, for example by inviting them on factory tours, and conducting group “discussion sessions” with policymakers, consumers, and media outlets. According to people familiar with the matter, it’s also complained to the government over what it sees as unwarranted attacks on social media, and asked Beijing to use its censorship powers to block some of the posts."

Asking the government to censor online criticism of your products isn't likely going to do much to shift public sentiment back in Tesla's favor. Again, Tesla's now facing what's probably a combination of legitimate anger over the company's documented hubris, exaggerated promises, and potential safety issues, fused with China's over-arching policy goal of empowering its own electric car makers (Nio, Xpeng) and countering growing US animosity. Combined, they've resulted in a 50% drop in new Tesla orders in China over just the last few weeks.

I get the sense in the coming year that Tesla (and its unwavering devotees) will focus entirely on the latter (the government is unfairly targeting us for being American!) and less on the obvious need, both overseas and here in the States, for a dramatic fix for the company's product quality issues, ridiculous hype, and less than flattering executive character flaws.

Filed Under: censorship, china, critics, elon musk, great firewall
Companies: tesla

Tim Wu Joins The Ban TikTok Parade, Doesn't Clarify What The Ban Actually Accomplishes

from the fluff-and-nonsense dept

I've mentioned a few times that I don't think the TikTok ban is coherent policy.

One, the majority of the politicians pearl clutching over the teen dancing app have been utterly absent from other privacy and security debates (say like U.S. network security flaws or the abuse of location data). In fact, many of them have actively undermined efforts to shore up U.S. privacy and security, whether we're talking about the outright refusal to fund election security improvements, or repeated opposition to even the most basic of privacy laws for the modern era. Let's be clear: a huge swath of these folks are simply engaged in performative, xenophobic politics and couldn't care less about U.S. privacy and security.

Two, banning TikTok doesn't actually accomplish much of anything. It doesn't really really thwart Chinese intelligence, which could just as easily buy this data from an absolute ocean of barely regulated international adtech middlemen, obtain it from any one of a million hacked datasets available on the dark net, or steal it from the, you know, millions upon millions of "smart" and IOT devices we attach to our home and business networks with no security and reckless abandon. In full context of the U.S., where privacy and security standards are hot garbage, the idea that banning a Chinese teen dancing app does all that much is just silly.

That said, I remain surprised by the big names in tech policy who continue to believe the Trump administration's sloppy and bizarre TikTok ban accomplishes much of anything. Case in point: Columbia law professor Tim Wu, whose pioneering work on net neutrality and open platforms I greatly admire, penned a new piece for the New York Times arguing that a "ban on Tiktok is overdue." Effectively, Wu argues that because China routinely bans U.S. services via its great firewall, turnabout is fair play:

"For many years, laboring under the vain expectation that China, succumbing to inexorable world-historical forces, would become more like us, Western democracies have allowed China to exploit this situation. We have accepted, with only muted complaints, Chinese censorship and blocking of content from abroad while allowing Chinese companies to explore and exploit whatever markets it likes. Few foreign companies are allowed to reach Chinese citizens with ideas or services, but the world is fully open to China’s online companies."

Wu proceeds to insist that refusing to behave like China and ban their products in retaliation is somehow a sucker's bet:

"Some think that it is a tragic mistake for the United States to violate the principles of internet openness that were pioneered in this country. But there is also such a thing as being a sucker. If China refuses to follow the rules of the open internet, why continue to give it access to internet markets around the world?"

This being 2020, I suppose I'm not surprised to see the guy who invented the idea of net neutrality advocate that the United States begin behaving more like one of the most repressive countries on the planet in regards to technological openness. The piece doesn't spend much time (read: none whatsoever) pondering what becomes of the millions of young U.S. content creators who'll suddenly lose their platform or be shoveled off to Facebook's dull TikTok clone.

I don't agree, but at least understand why retaliation is the default instinct for so many folks on this subject given China's longstanding behavior. My problem, again, is that Wu's piece lacks any mention of what this singular ban of a teen dancing app actually accomplishes. So we ban TikTok, then what? Do we ban every single Chinese-made "smart" television in the country (TCL has a 16.5% market share)? Every single IOT device? Every crappy Chinese-made router? All global adtech? They're all technically the same type of threat, and if you're freaking about one of them, shouldn't you be advocating for a ban of all of them?

Many TikTok hyperventilators would immediately say, "yes!" We're to ignore that American governance can't even currently tie its own shoes, much less help its citizens obtain food, shelter, and aid during an avoidable health crisis. A ban on all domestic Chinese hardware, software, adtech, apps, and services (something you'd need to do to truly follow this retaliatory logic to its ultimate conclusion) is likely impossible. Context matters. And in full context, American security and privacy standards are a dumpster fire, TikTok is among the very least of our worries, and a much broader view of our security and privacy problems is necessary.

If we genuinely wanted to protect U.S. consumer data from bad actors, we'd be funding a major expansion in election security reform. We'd stop kneecapping and under-funding our privacy regulators. We'd pass a basic privacy law for the internet era. We'd hold adtech, telecom, and "big tech" companies genuinely accountable for violating consumer trust. We'd shore up the integrity of our communications networks. We'd help develop and implement security standards for IOT devices. We'd build a coherent framework of policy that protects consumers and businesses from all threats, not just Chinese apps.

To be abundantly clear we aren't doing this. We're not even anywhere close to doing this. Instead, we've spent the last month freaking out over a teen dancing app (when we weren't busy trying to ruin encryption). Despite the growing list of big policy names that somehow think this proposal makes sense, I still don't see the point.

Filed Under: apps, bans, china, data, great firewall, tim wu
Companies: bytedance, tiktok

NY Times Uncritically Says Fake News Debate Supports Chinese Style Censorship

from the did-we-not-warn-of-this? dept

It used to be a laughable claim: that the US should emulate the Great Firewall of China and support much greater internet censorship. Sure, you'd have people like the MPAA's Chris Dodd or U2 frontman Bono cheer on Chinese censorship as a good example of how to censor the internet (in their cases, to block infringing content), but most people still remained rightly horrified by the idea that the answer to "bad" content online is a massive censorship regime. But, apparently, that may be changing.

Last year, right after the election, we directly warned that everyone freaking out about "fake news" on Facebook would eventually lead to calls to censor the internet a la China. And, now the NY Times has taken a big step in that direction, by posting a ridiculous article talking about how China has been "vindicated" by its approach to censoring the internet:

For years, the United States and others saw this sort of heavy-handed censorship as a sign of political vulnerability and a barrier to China’s economic development. But as countries in the West discuss potential internet restrictions and wring their hands over fake news, hacking and foreign meddling, some in China see a powerful affirmation of the country’s vision for the internet.

“This kind of thing would not happen here,” Mr. Zhao said of the controversy over Russia’s influence in the American presidential election last year.

Of course, as Ben Thompson pointed out, the reason it won't happen in China is because there are no Presidential elections in China:

While the NY Times does attempt to present some "balance" in the form of "concerns" from human rights activists, it also celebrates some of the internet's censors in China, and says that the success of Chinese internet companies is proof that censorship doesn't appear to harm innovation. The article closes on a chilling example of a "volunteer" spying on fellow internet users, and handing them happily over to the police -- and suggesting that this is a good way to stop bad people online:

In a restaurant called Europa, Mr. Zhao — who declined to disclose details of where and how he works — described China’s system not as “Big Brother” so much as a younger brother, which he is, protecting children, like those of his sister, from harmful material.

“Even though the internet is virtual, it is still part of society,” he added. “So in any space I feel no one should create pornographic, illegal or violent posts.”

In his new capacity, he scours Weibo in search of the lurid and illicit. Some posts, he explained, are thinly veiled solicitations for pornography or prostitution, including one message he reported to the police the other day for using what he said was a euphemism for selling sex.

When he reports abuse, it is the police who follow up. He excitedly displayed his smartphone to show the latest of his more than 3,000 followers on Weibo: the division of the Beijing police that monitors the internet.

“Normally, if you don’t do bad things, you don’t get followed by the police,” he said. “I think this — for someone who has been online for so many years — is really special.”

Those paragraphs should be chilling for those who believe in free speech or who have even the slightest knowledge of the history of authoritarianism and how governments -- including China's -- stamp out alternative and reformist viewpoints with an iron fist. It should be antithetical to how we operate here, and to have the NY Times post a pretty glowing profile of the Great Firewall of China is downright frightening.

Filed Under: china, fake news, free speech, great firewall

The Great Firewall Of China Grows Stronger As China Forces App Stores To Remove VPNs

from the total-information-control dept

Like clockwork, governments eager to censor the internet inevitably shift their gaze toward tools like VPNs used to get around restrictions. We've documented rising efforts to ban the tools use in countries like Russia, where VPN providers are being forced out of business for refusing to aid internet censorship. Whether it's to protect VoIP revenue for state-run telecom monopolies, or to prevent users from tap-dancing around state-mandated filters or other restrictions, VPNs have become the bogeyman du jour for oppressive governments looking to crack down on pesky free speech and open communication.

China's great firewall is a sterling example of draconian censorship, and since 2012 or so China has been trying to curtail both encryption and VPN use. Earlier this year China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology declared that all VPN providers now needed prior government approval to operate, a move generally seen as the opening salvo of an outright ban. These new restrictions will last until July 2021, impose fines up to $2000 on companies offering unsanctioned VPNs (read: all of them), and feature government warnings sent to users consistently caught using the tools.

But in some areas, the pretense has washed away and VPN usage has been simply banned entirely. And as of July, VPN services began disappearing from both the Android and iOS app stores, with popular VPN providers like Green informing their customers the government has forced them to shut down completely:

"Dear respected Green customers,

We have received notice from the higher authorities. We regret to inform you that Green will cease our service on July 1st, 2017. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

We will start processing our users’ refund request after service stopped (the amount will be calculated based on the remaining days in your plan). If you need a refund, please make sure to submit your refund request by August 31, 2017. We won’t be able to process any refund request submitted after that date. Since the workload of processing the requests, information verification and money transfer would be huge, we won’t be able to set an exact date for the refund. We plan to process the refund soon after August 31, please wait patiently.

Originally, statements made by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology seemed to suggest the country's VPN ban wouldn't be fully implemented until March 2018. But these recent reports indicate that the Chinese government has grown tired of the pretense and has expedited its VPN crackdown dramatically. Since around 1-3% of China's 731 million internet users use tools like VPNs to tap dance around internet filters, even with this crackdown this will be a long, difficult, expensive game of Whack-a-Mole for the Chinese government all the same.

While VPNs are not a panacea for our endlessly eroded privacy rights, they remain an incredibly useful tool for those living under repressive regimes. Most legislative VPN bans are of the "death by a thousand cuts" variety, where lawmakers go out of their way to pretend they're not trying to kill VPNs, even if the end goal always remains the same: the elimination of any tool that might let citizens peek through the curtain of draconian efforts at information control.

Filed Under: app stores, china, encryption, great firewall, mobile, privacy, security, surveillance, vpns

China's Latest Target For Online Crackdown: Live-Streaming Foreigners

from the I-saw-what-you-did-there dept

As we've noted before, China's grip on the domestic Internet seems so complete that it's hard to think how the authorities there might tighten control yet further. But the Chinese government is nothing if not resourceful, and has managed to come up with a new group to target, as this report on the Sixth Tone site explains:

Multiple foreign users have received suspension notices from major live-streaming apps, including Blued, China's most popular gay social networking app, and Yizhibo, which is backed by microblog platform Weibo.

This seems to be as a result of the new regulations governing the Internet in China, brought in at the end of last year. Among the measures there is one that requires online broadcasts to be "beneficial to the promotion of socialist core values", while another stipulates that platforms should not allow hosts from outside mainland China to create channels without first asking permission from the country's Ministry of Culture. That's where the difficulty arises:

According to an employee of one of the biggest streaming companies, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record, the problem with the new regulations is that there are no details on how to apply. Live-broadcasting platforms have dealt with the uncertainty in a variety of ways. At the employee's company, old users are allowed to continue broadcasting, but new foreign users cannot sign up for the time being.

However, other services have decided to play it safe by taking all non-Chinese users offline until the new rules have been clarified. A Yizhibo employee told Sixth Tone that a key issue was a requirement for real-name verification -- something that Techdirt has discussed before. Apparently, it's not a straightforward process when it comes to foreigners.

The crackdown on live-streaming services is not the only recent move by the authorities that targets foreigners. Last week, China made another announcement, much more far-reaching in its effect than the live-streaming ban:

China is to begin taking fingerprints of all foreign visitors as it steps up security on its borders, the Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday.

Perhaps the Chinese government feels that it has the domestic population sufficiently under control now that it can move on to tightening up the rules for foreign visitors.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

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

Russia Draws On Chinese Expertise And Technology To Clamp Down On Internet Users Even More

from the this-could-be-the-start-of-something-big-but-not-so-beautiful dept

There seems to be some kind of unspoken competition between Russia and China to see who can clamp down on the Internet the most. Techdirt readers might like to offer their own views in the comments as to who is winning that unlovely race. But the days of repressive rivalry are drawing to a close; according to this article in the Guardian, Russia has decided that it would be much simpler to borrow some of China's ideas:

Russia has been working on incorporating elements of China's Great Firewall into the "Red Web", the country's system of internet filtering and control, after unprecedented cyber collaboration between the countries.

Just as important as the ideas is the actual technology:

The Russians apparently see no other option than to invite Chinese heavyweights into the heart of its IT strategy. "China remains our only serious 'ally', including in the IT sector," said a source in the Russian information technology industry, adding that despite hopes that Russian manufacturers would fill the void created by sanctions "we are in fact actively switching to Chinese".

That Russian source is clearly trying to suggest that this new partnership is all the fault of the West for imposing those silly economic sanctions, and that this could have been avoided if everybody had stayed friends. But the coziness between Russia and China has been coming for a while, as their geopolitical ambitions align increasingly, so the collaboration over surveillance and censorship technologies would probably have happened anyway. The interesting question is how the new alliance might blossom if the future Trump administration starts to reduce its engagement with the international scene to concentrate on domestic matters. The new Sino-Russian digital partnership could be just the start of something much bigger, but probably not more beautiful.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: censorship, china, great firewall, internet, russia

UK's GCHQ Takes A Page From China, Plans To Build A Great British Firewall

from the well,-that's-just-dandy dept

Generally speaking, taking cues from China on things like best ways to censor the internet... probably isn't the best idea. Yet, it appears that's exactly what the UK's big surveillance agency, GCHQ is doing. The "Director-General of Cyber" (that's a thing? yikes!) at GCHQ, Ciaran Martin, gave a speech at a cybersecurity summit in DC recently and announced exciting plans to censor the UK internet at a DNS level. No, really.

Finally, we're exploring a flagship project on scaling up DNS filtering: what better way of providing automated defences at scale than by the major private providers effectively blocking their customers from coming into contact with known malware and bad addresses? Now it's crucial that all of these economy-wide initiatives are private sector led. The Government does not own or operate the Internet. Consumers must have a choice. Any DNS filtering would have to be opt out based. So addressing privacy concerns and citizen choice is hardwired into our programme.

Of course, while the reasoning and sentiment may sound good, we've pointed out time and time again how DNS filtering, in particular is a really bad idea that actually does more harm than good for internet security. The internet works under the expectation that when you put in an address, the DNS system returns with info from the proper server.

And, of course, once you start mucking with the DNS system for filtering out stuff that you consider to be "malware" or "bad addresses" you open it up to much worse. You also end up validating China's Great Firewall, since China just responds that their use of DNS filtering is also used to block "bad addresses." It's just that they have a different interpretation of what's "bad."

Filed Under: ciaran martin, dns, filter, firewall, gchq, great british firewall, great firewall, uk

Baidu Pushes Back On Chinese Gov't Investigation By Freeing Up Images Related To Tiananmen Square

from the power-play dept

So we've talked a lot about the Great Firewall of China and how it works. Contrary to what many believe, it's not just a giant government bureaucracy blacklisting content, but a huge ecosystem that partially relies on unpredictability and the lack of intermediary liability protections online. That is, rather than directly say "this and that are blocked," the Chinese government will often just let companies know when they've failed to properly block content and threaten them with serious consequences. Because of this, you get a culture of overblocking, to avoid running afoul of the demands. This is one of the reasons why we believe that strong intermediary liability protections are so important. Without them, you're basically begging for widespread censorship to avoid legal consequences.

And, in many ways, it works quite well in China. Yes, sophisticated users know how to use VPNs and proxies and to get around the blocks, but many people do not. But something interesting is happening in China right now, as one of the largest and most successful internet companies there appears to be challenging the censorship regime. First, it's important to recognize that in China, one subject that is absolutely, without question, censored, is anything relating to the Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown of 1989. On the internet in China, it's as if the event never happened. People have tried workarounds, using euphemisms and wordplay, but eventually those get disappeared down the memory hole too. There was even that time the censors banned the term "big yellow duck," after people replaced the famous tanks in the "tank man" photo with giant rubber ducks: But something odd happened yesterday. Suddenly, on Baidu (which is like the Google of China), searches related to the tank man and other symbols of the Tiananmen Square protests were showing up on Baidu. Clay Shirky, who has been living in China recently, posted details on his Twitter feed, which is well worth reading:

China's https://t.co/G1q2OYdfSV unblocks search results for 虫堂臂挡车 (known to us as tank man, from Tiananmen massacre) pic.twitter.com/DU2X3RZnWv

— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) May 6, 2016

It appears that this is something of a reaction to the Chinese government announcing that it will be investigating Baidu's advertising practices, following the death of a young man from cancer, who had kicked up quite a lot of attention after he had tried an "experimental" cancer treatment he discovered via an ad on Baidu. When it didn't work, he blamed Baidu for allowing the ad, and when he passed away there was a public outcry. In response, the government announced plans to investigate Baidu's ad practices. It appears that Baidu loosening the padlocks on Tiananmen Square might be a response to that, which lots of people seem to think is playing with a fire in a manner that will almost certainly leave the company burned.

This is a direct & blatant refusal to play by the rules. Baidu has a lot of power behind the scenes, but even then, this looks like treason.

— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) May 6, 2016

This will probably end soon - hearing from friends in Beijing that some searches are censored again - but it will cause months of trouble.

— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) May 6, 2016

Young, educated Chinese are so used to cat and mouse censorship that when they see something like this, they screenshot immediately.

— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) May 6, 2016

At a conservative guess, there've been a billion screenshots taken of various banned images, jokes, and memes during the last day.

— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) May 6, 2016

Shirky has a lot more to say, including some further speculation that perhaps there was growing tension from last year, after the Chinese government basically made use of Baidu to fire a denial of service at GitHub. The fact that the packets came via Baidu was, as Shirky notes, a PR blackeye for Baidu at a time when the company wants to expand beyond China. Shirky also deleted a tweet that originally said "this has to backfire," noting how central media and internet censorship is to the current regime.

The brief dropping of the censorship appears to be (again, Shirky notes no one knows for sure -- but many people seem to believe) Baidu trying to let the Chinese government know that it has become powerful enough to make trouble for the government, so it's not just a one way street in terms of who holds the power. Of course, that seems like an incredibly risky move to make if you really don't have enough power to stand up to the government.

We may never know all the details of what's going on, but it's a brief, if fascinating, view into some of what's going on in China today with the Great Firewall, and the increasing power of some of its most successful companies. But it's also a reminder of why we should be so thankful for strong intermediary liability protections in the US, and how not having such protections is a sure path to censorship.

Filed Under: ads, censorship, china, clay shirky, great firewall, intermediary liability, investigations, power, search, tank man
Companies: baidu