China Archives - Sky's Blog

Google, Human Rights, Free Speech

12 January, 2010 by sky Leave a Comment

Google’s Chief Legal Officer has fired a “shot across the bow” aimed at the Chinese ship of state.

In a post on the Official Google Blog a couple of hours ago, David Drummond, SVP Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, says that Google and other organizations have been the targets of attacks from China, and that Google may suspend operations within China.

He characterizes the attacks as “highly sophisticated” and “targeted” — though his description doesn’t really describe the sophistication — and it seems to be much like what we’re seeing in terms of attacks against the Tibetan exile community and Tibet support groups [TSGs] in general.

He specifically says the more than twenty attacks they identified, had as a primary goal:

“…accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.”

He cites a number of reports, including the GhostNet report, which you should read if you’d like a little more detailed analysis of how some of this stuff takes place.

And here’s the punchline:

“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Whoa! He used the word censoring here! I don’t recall that Google described their actions as censorship when they first started filtering results at Google.cn…

This is a welcome step forward, assuming they follow through, and I applaud their willingness to listen to others who have been criticizing Google’s decision (to provide censored search results in China) from the beginning, as well as (now) to respond to the censorship and repression of free speech that we see spreading now.

See my related posts (below) for more on the issue of free speech and human rights in China and elsewhere in the world.

The free flow of information does not respect political borders

3 October, 2009 by sky 1 Comment

The free flow of information, which is facilitated by the Internet, should have no respect for political borders. Nations that try to restrict the flow of information by either cutting it off at the border (using Internet routers and filtering) or by cutting it off in the “last mile” to your computer (using content filtering and throttling [see China’s Golden Shield] – or by thwarting net neutrality^[1] principles) will ultimately fail to do so. Information wants to be free.

We are a species that communicates by telling tales, and we learn from the stories told by others.

YaleGlobal Online carried an interesting article [part II is the part you want to read] examining China’s dual standard when it comes to interference in what they call their “internal affairs.” China strongly opposes the granting of visas to His Holiness the Dalai Lama when he visits countries around the world — calling it “interference in China’s internal affairs.” However, the attempts by the Chinese to block the Dalai Lama’s appearances can just as easily be interpreted as Chinese attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. They have succeeded in many countries, and notably failed in countries such as Germany and France. And particularly in the US, where the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, and in Canada, where he received honorary citizenship in 2006.

Here’s what YaleGlobal said about their two-part article: “China, a significant beneficiary of globalization, is happy to go out into the world, but seems less willing to let the world come in, according to writer Frank Ching. In fact, China, which asserts that it does not interfere with the internal affairs of other countries, appears to do the exact opposite, especially with regard to issues surrounding alleged separatism in China. Notably vocal whenever a foreign leader meets with the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama or a country grants him a visa, Beijing claims that such actions “grossly interfere” with China’s internal affairs and “hurt the feelings” of the Chinese people. For a country that prides itself on having signed more human rights treaties than the US – certainly a mature approach to international affairs – such a reaction seems oddly truculent. Indeed, as Ching argues, globalization is a two-way street where the benefits hopefully compensate, even outweigh, the loss of sovereignty. Rightly or wrongly, China seems yet to agree with such logic. – YaleGlobal”

[1] Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the [US] Federal Communications Commission, on net neutrality

Google and censorship in China – the tale continues

8 September, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

With Kai-Fu Lee leaving Google.cn [see Wall Street Journal article which first announced the departure] the story of how Google has gone from a company that provides access to “everything” on the web, to one that provides access that is modified by special interests—albeit national interests, such as those of China—is once again in the spotlight.

This June 16, 2009 c|net article — Google’s censorship struggles continue in China describes many of the ups and downs. I’ve written a few articles about this relationship, including Censorship as Punishment and Search engines’ blocking in China “improves.” [See also the Related articles section below]

Google is reported to have around 15% of the online search market in China, compared to 75% for Baidu.com. Both companies comply with Chinese government site blocking (censorship) regulations. [Network World article cites the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) as the data source – they publish periodic reports on Internet use in China]

CNNIC’s reports are quite interesting, and for a statistician they’re a lot of fun to puzzle through. For instance, of 338 million Internet users, the “accounts or passwords of 110 million were stolen.” And among all users, 320 million (94%) are on “broadband” – but note that 46% of users access the Internet from “mobile” connections…which seems to me like they would in no way be considered broadband. Also, 28% of mobile Internet users said they would access the Internet by 3G mobile phone – what are the rest using? Maybe wi-fi is considered mobile Internet? Anyone have the answer?

Previous articles I’ve written on Google and censorship in China:

Censorship as Punishment

The Onion- Internet adds 12th website

24 July, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

I don’t ever post humor^[1], and I delete humor videos when they’re sent to me by friends, but this Onion article about China recognizing the appearance of the 12th website cracked me up! Too many right-on-target references. Can you count how many references there are to recent (and legitimate) news stories about Internet censorship in China?

[1] OK, so I lied, this is a humor post. But it is my first!

Censorship- Monkey See, Monkey Do

27 June, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

The Washington Post (byline Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post Foreign Service) reports that several authoritarian governments, including those of China, Cuba and Myanmar (Burma) are censoring in whole or in part, news of the strife that has followed the Iranian elections. Probably for fear that people living under the control of their regimes will get the message and understand that modern viral (social) media have the potential to spread dissent much farther than it ever might have gotten before, in eras when media publication could be held tightly in check.

Of course this is a fundamental human tendency – to do things we’ve seen done elsewhere. In criminology it’s called “copycat crimes.” And certainly these regimes consider those who do this kind of thing to be criminals.