Big Trouble in Cyber China
June 25, 2009 @ 7:21 am by NobleNot to be outdone by the United States Pentagon, who recently brought their new Cyber Command online, the nation of China has been on an Internet offensive lately, taking measures to increase their online control over their citizenry. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (and Paul) have been writing about, China has mandated all computers to come installed with government censorware titled Green Dam Youth Escort, which has security backdoors big enough to march the Chinese National Revolutionary Army through.
In a brand new salvo, it appears that China may have banned their citizens from Google, over concern about the amount of pornography. Google in the past has taken a lot of flack for supporting the Chinese government’s censorship demands, but it appears they haven’t done enough to win the nation’s favor.
Microsoft is eager to fill the gap. Their new search property Bing plays very nice with China’s censorship rules (see here, and here).
China is not only cracking down online. Very recently, Liu Xiaobo, leading Tiananmen Square protestor, was arrested for spreading subversive, anti-government rumors and information.
UPDATE: China’s ministry of health is announcing they are explicitly blocking sites related to sexual health. Censorware is notoriously bad for blocking health information regarding parts of the body we’re prudish about (like breast cancer), but that’s usually inadvertent due to bad filtering techniques.
“It is prohibited to spread pornographic content in the name of sex-related scientific research,” the ironically named Ministry said. “The health sections of web portals are not allowed to conduct sex-related research services.”
The word they’re looking for isn’t “ironic,” it’s “Orwellian.”
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Tags: Censorship, Tech
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