links for 2006-02-23

• Yahoo's China problem - Feb. 22, 2006
  "There's no easy way for the search giant to fix the damage from its Chinese business. But it has missed at least one opportunity to mitigate it."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch yahoo! censorship surveillance freespeech humanrights GOFA)
• Washington Post: Chinese Media Assail Google
  "The unusually bold attacks in the state media suggest that the Chinese government is unhappy with Google's efforts thus far to filter politically sensitive results from its popular search engine in China, and that its ability to do business in the countr
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch censorship freespeech google)
• CDT Report Finds Changing Technology Makes Government Surveillance More Intrusive - CDT | Policy Post 12.4, February 22, 2006
  "Personal information held by service providers is accessible to the government under weak standards based on outdated Supreme Court decisions and statutes written before the World Wide Web even existed."
  (tags: surveillance privacy law congress)
• The Blog | Brian Palmer: Observations from al Asad, Iraq | The Huffington Post
  "It took me a few moments to realize that the nice men from al Asad Air Base's private security force, SOC SMG, were taking me into custody."
  (tags: iraq journalism)
• Half white-collars keep blogs, privacy top theme
  "Blogging has increasingly become more popular in China, with 52% of white-collar workers now keeping weblogs (blogs) according to CBP Career Consultants Co., Ltd., a leading career consulting firm in China."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch blogs internet)
• School of Hard Knocks - What President Summers never learned about Harvard. By James Traub
  "I have a soft spot for Larry Summers, who resigned yesterday as president of Harvard rather than face the humiliation of being fired."
  (tags: harvard)
• From 'Connectedness' to Conflict
  "why is an increasingly "connected" world such a mess?"
  (tags: internet media)
• Xinhua - English: Google rejects China license reports
  "U.S. Internet giant Google rejected newspaper reports yesterday that its new China platform does not have the correct license."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch google search)

Comments

[omih]

Just to comment on various blog blocking and the like in Vietnam.

Blogs, particularly blogspot blogs appear to be partially blocked depending on your internet provider.

In addition, Google seems very shaky right now...it's not often working although when it does work you appear to be able to search for anything.

I'm not entirely sure whether lack of access to either is as a result of simple, plain dodgy internet or something more sinister.

My feeling is that there are some attempts to block blogs, however, in Vietnams usual haphazard way they are not being nearly as succesful with their on line censorship as China.

[Lee may]

In general, I am not against censorship. I hail from Malaysia where our Malaysian government, then under the leadership of the great Dr. Mahathir passed a law not to censor the internet in the late 90s. This is in sharp contrast to the 80s where he shut down dissident news organizations.

But the freedom of information has actually led to a greater popularity of Dr. Mahathir to the dismay of organizations such as Human Rights Watch. We very quickly learnt about how the world media works and realized that nearly every major news network is a propaganda machine. The inaccuracy of news media report about Malaysia during the financial crisis which appear to sensationalize our "reformasi" movement further lend weight that the foreign media had a hidden agenda.

Dr. Mahathir's decision to ignore the IMF which let to a string of criticism from so called experts by the foreign media but the IMF made a mess out of Indonesia; and that further strengthens his popularity.

Today, with freedom to access the internet, many of us do not even bother to listen to Voice of America. Back when our freedom were restricted, I am sure some of us hid in cupboards to listen to VOA for fear of being found out. In hindsight, it was so silly. We grew out of it. And till this day, most of us still watch the state owned media on TV to get most of our news much more than if we ever even tuned to Voice of America or access their websites. Voice of America has become boring - no thanks, we are no longer interested in overthrowing our government.

Malaysia is an interesting case study for it shows that freedom of information does not lead to unfortunate events such as Orange Revolution, but can help the government govern better and become more popular.

But Malaysia is a small country, and China is big. The big question is, can China repeat the Malaysian experiment successfully?

I have met many Chinese students, and I think it could work. But I met only the university graduates, so it is only a small sample. Till now, I have yet to meet a Chinese student who does not support the actions that the government had taken at Tiananmen in 1989. So all the Western based news that I have read about dissatisfaction by the majority of Chinese populace over Tiananmen must either be wrong or I sampled the wrong crowd. I see many dissatisfaction about the Communist Party, but nearly all are voicing very good concerns to help them govern better for a stronger China, and almost none I have met that wanted to end its rule. So I believe that if the rest of China's population thinks like those university grads, then the Orange Revolution should not happen. Instead, we will see an intellectual revolution that will prepare China for the 21st century and potential reunification with the Republic of China which is temporatily HQ-ed in Taipei.

Many of Chinese censorship has good justification even if you think it is wrong. I have done some research for example about Falun Gong. Thanks to freedom of the internet, I now know that people who believe in Falun Gong believe that aliens created the internet and that Qi Gong can cure all illness and there is no need to seek medical help with Qi gong.
See: http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990510/interview3.html

others are arrested, but often there is justification for they being national security risks.

I fully applaud Yahoo's decision to turn over the information of anyone considered a national security risks to the proper authority. This is not about invasion of privacy. If a person is suspected of having committed a crime over the internet, and Yahoo or Google could help solve this crime, they should do so. They should not play the judge and decide if a person is guilty or not by their own standards. They should respect the country's legal system and let the courts decide if a person is guilty. If Yahoo decides to not turn over information because in their opinion that someone has done no crime, then they are effectively playing Judge.