RConversation

U.S. and China on Internet freedom vs. security

Last week I attended a quiet event in San Francisco called the U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum, organized by Microsoft. This is the forum's third year - last year they met in Shanghai and the year before in Redmond. Attendees included executives from major U.S. and Chinese Internet companies, a few academics, and government officials from both countries - the highest ranking being Cai MIngzhao, Deputy Director of the Chinese Communist Party's Propaganda Department, and Robert Hormats, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs. The event was an opportunity for key players from industry and government - from the country which invented the Internet and the country with the world's largest number of Internet users - to hold frank conversations in a relatively informal setting without the pressure of government or business negotiations. For a good part of the time, however, I felt like I was in the middle of a more sophisticated and nuanced version of this video mashup on YouTube:

For readers who don't follow all the twists and turns of Chinese Internet policy and/or understand Chinese, a bit of background. (For people who do, skip down below the jump.) Earlier this year, the Chinese government issued an edict requiring that all computers sold in China after July 1st had to come pre-installed with censorware called Green Dam-Youth Escort. While the ostensible purpose of this software was child-protection, it also censored political content and subjected users to external monitoring. (The government later backed down on this edict as a result of industry backlash.) Soon after the government edict became public a BBC journalist asked Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman why the government was requiring Green Dam censor-ware on all of China's computers:

Qin Gang's response: 

"do you have any children? If you have any children or you are expecting some, you can understand the concern of the parents over the harmful Internet content. The Internet in China is open and the Chinese Government endeavors to promote sound development of the Internet. However, the Government also regulates the Internet according to law so as to safeguard the interests of the public and prevent the spread of harmful content."

The video juxtaposes Qin's statement with President Obama's remarks about the Internet at his town hall event in Shanghai: 

"Think about -- when I think about my daughters, Malia and Sasha -- one is 11, one is 8 -- from their room, they can get on the Internet and they can travel to Shanghai.  They can go anyplace in the world and they can learn about anything they want to learn about.  And that's just an enormous power that they have.  And that helps, I think, promote the kind of understanding that we talked about."

Back to the U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum. Much of the day-and-a-half long forum was under the Chatham House Rule, which means that participants can report on what was said but can't attribute anything directly. There were, however, several on-the-record keynote speeches. Cai and Hormats echoed the Qin-Obama riff. Here is how Xinhua News Agency reported Cai's speech:

An important part of network security was to ensure the security of online information, said Cai Mingzhao, former deputy director of China's State Council Information Office and an adviser to the Internet Society of China [note: they omitted his Communist Party post], which co-hosted the one-and-a-half-day forum with Microsoft Corporation.

Pornography, fraud, spam, online attacks and computer viruses were serious threats to information security and were impairing the public's confidence in the Internet, he said in a keynote speech on Thursday.

"Under such circumstances, it is not enough to emphasize the free flow of information alone. Information security should be put in a prominent position," Cai told an audience of more than 100 government officials, business leaders, academics and other representatives from both countries.

"If network information security is not guaranteed, the information flow will become irregular. If illegal and harmful information are allowed to flow rampantly without checks, it will do great harm to the real society," he said.

Cai said the first priority of ensuring online security should be protecting adolescents, as teenagers had become the largest online group and whose growth was increasingly influenced by the Internet.

Each country has its own unique circumstances, differing from each other in Internet penetration, economic and social development, cultural traditions and laws, Cai said, adding that ensuring online security should fully respect the cultural diversity and concerns of all countries.

"Therefore, Internet security around the world is unable to be measured by a unified standard. It is impossible to regulate security with a single law or manage it in a single pattern," Cai said.

What Xinhua did not report is that Cai called for the U.S. and China to move beyond differences and instead work together on four issues of common concern: Child protection, online intellectual property protection, spam, and cyber-security. He called on the two sides to create specific bilateral workstreams focused on these issues. 

Hormats, on the other hand, spoke of common ground but also made it clear that the differences are meaningful. While Chinese media covered Cai's remarks, they did not mention any elements of Hormats' talk that differed from Cai's views. No U.S. media appear to have reported on the forum at all - at least not on news outlets available to the public domain. The State Department has not released a transcripts of his remarks either. I took notes and made a recording of his on-the-record speech in which Hormats emphasized that Internet freedom is important to the  U.S. government. Here is an extended excerpt of the portion of the speech devoted to free expression (with relevant links added):

...The Internet offers us an unparalleled opportunity to acquire knowledge if we allow ourselves unrestricted access to it. As president Obama noted in his townhall meeting, freely flowing information allows people to think for themselves and to generate new ideas. It also encourages a great deal of creativity. this is true not only politically but also economically. The internet has produced entire new industries and revolutionized distribution of design and development of both goods and services. Unrestricted access to information is vital to the types of innovation that spark economic growth.

...It is the users and developers of online content who make our connections to the world wide web so valuable. Secretary Clinton has made improved access to information a significant part of her policy focus. She stated in a recent speech: "President Obama and i are committed to defending freedom of expression on the new terrain of the 21st century." Within the State Department our newly revitalized Global Internet Freedom Taskforce is ready to play a leading role in this critical effort. The task force, a policy coordinating body within the state department, co-chaired by myself and the State Department's Undersecretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero, works to advance free expression and access to information on the Internet. The State Department monitors and reports on threats to Internet freedom around the world. It pursues the free flow of information and freedom of expression on the Internet in our bilateral relationship and through multilateral organizations as well. 

The right to freedom of expression and the importance of the free flow of information over the Internet were confirmed by all participating governments at both phases of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 and then again in 2005, including the Tunis Commitment, and continue to form the foundation of U.S. government efforts on Internet freedom throughout the world. 

We also work closely with individual companies and industry groups to foster improved access to information. one example is the Global Network Initiative, a group of leading private sector companies, NGO's, academicians and investors, that seeks to advance both freedom of expression and privacy in information and communication technologies. A number of the authors and leading advocates of the GNI are represented here today, and i commend them for their vision and their initiative. As president obama noted in his town hall meeting in Shanghai, we believe that certain core principles enshrined in our founding documents are universal rights also present in international documents like the universal declaration of human rights and we speak out for these principles around the world

We believe that commerce should be open and the information should generally be freely accessible. we recognize that potential downsides and risks may come with new technology, such as threats to children and online ability of terrorists to use the internet to organize. we look forward to working with China and the private sector both here and abroad to mitigate these risks while maximizing the free flow of information. 

Hormats commended China for embracing the Internet and the global telecommunications revolution. He spoke at some length about the importance of the Internet in economic growth and recovery around the world. He also expressed concern about barriers erected by Chinese regulators against U.S. companies entering or fairly competing in the Chinese market. Later in the speech he also emphasized the importance of child protection, cyber security, and protecting intellectual property. If a full transcript of the speech becomes available later I will link to it here. (Update 12/19: An overview post about the forum by Microsoft VP Pamela Passman can be found here, and the transcript of a speech by Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie is here.)

In a closed door session devoted to Internet governance later that morning (which, according to the Chatham House Rule I can report on in general as long as I don't quote or attribute anybody directly), another Chinese official and another U.S. official outlined their governments' positions, with corporate and academic participants also contributing. 

The Chinese side emphasized that if Americans better understood the challenges faced by the Chinese government in maintaining social order, and if they realized that Chinese citizens hold high expectations toward their government in that regard, Americans would be more sympathetic to the Chinese government's policy choices and actions. Social problems tend to be amplified online and if people are allowed to do whatever they want on the Chinese Internet that would disrupt social stability, which they pointed out is in nobody's interest, and - given the Chinese Internet's size - isn't conducive to shared global goals of child protection, cyber-security and intellectual property protection anyway. They appealed to the Americans to focus more on commonalities and not try to impose their values on everybody else. 

The U.S. side focused more specifically on the future of global Internet governance, emphasizing three overarching goals: interconnectivity, free flow of information, and preserving the Internet's "dynamism." The best way of preserving that dynamism is to "leave it alone" as much as possible, and specifically not to put Internet governance in the hands of an "intergovernmental institution." The U.S. government supports a multistakeholder approach with a leading role for ICANN accompanied by a renewed mandate for the Internet Governance Forum. Putting Internet governance in the hands of inter-government bodies such as the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union is not desirable because such institutions can't keep up with the pace of technological change.  Restrictions on the free flow of information should be a "rare exception" in very narrowly defined cases of child pornography, human trafficking, and terrorism. Errors of under-reaction and over-reaction can only be achieved through continuous dialogue between public and private sectors. 

Asked to make some brief comments, I suggested that we combine components of both Chinese and U.S. suggestions made that day. Why not set up U.S.-China "work streams" to drill down on problem-solving in specific areas Mr. Cai suggested like cyber-security, child protection, and intellectual property. But as both Hormats and other U.S. officials pointed out, the Internet is what it is today not just thanks to the efforts of governments and big Internet companies, but because of the actions and choices of small entrepreneurs and individual Internet users of all kinds. Therefore it only makes sense that such work streams should be truly multi-stakeholder in nature, including members of civil society, representatives of user groups, consumer groups, open source programming groups, and other stakeholders - because after all, no solutions to any of the problems discussed are going to succeed without broad-based support and buy-in from netizens around the globe. Models for multi-stakeholder problem-solving are still in their infancy and have much room for improvement (as neither members of civil society nor the Chinese government hesitate to point out). So why not experiment with using bilateral meetings as an opportunity to improve on the multi-stakeholder model - in a more narrow situation involving only two cultures, instead of hundreds? A number of American heads nodded. I did not detect a positive reaction to this idea from the Chinese side. They did tell me that they wished my criticism of their censorship would be better balanced by an explanation of all the reasons why they need to do what they do. A corporate person asked me what might be done to help bridge misunderstandings between the two countries. I suggested that more direct dialogue between citizens of both countries - and more platforms to facilitate such interaction - would be helpful. 

Of course, the problem is that the Chinese citizens participating in such citizen dialogue may not necessarily be in lockstep with their government's positions... And oh yeah, you don't really need to build anything new or special because there are all kinds of great social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook out there... But wait they're blocked in China so Americans only wind up interacting with the most determined Chinese Internet users who are angry about censorship and figured out how to use circumvention tools....Which is why in another keynote speech at the forum, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales argued that the best way for China to get its story out is to let its citizens communicate with the world through unblocked platforms...

...sigh....

[UPDATED] Green Dam reincarnated in QQ? - initial comments received cast doubt..

UPDATE (Monday 10am London time): Comments received to this post so far indicate that the Boxun.com upon which this post is based may have significantly exaggerated the situation. I am be investigating further and will report back. Clearly I posted prematurely and for that I apologize.

----

Pseudonymous blogger dafengqixi, writing on a Hong Kong-based blogging platform, has linked to this very interesting post published Saturday on the overseas Chinese news platform, Boxun.com (blocked in mainland China).

It reports that QQ, China's largest instant-messaging and micro-blogging service (with over 570 million registered users of its IM service, see Wikipedia entry about it here), is now requiring users of the QQ IM client to install a censorware upgrade - possibly also containing spyware - before they can continue using the client.

It features this screenshot:

Upon opening his (or her - the author is not named) QQ client, the reporter was greeted with the above pop-up window. It says:

QQ Online Upgrade

Your QQ must install the upgrade below before you can continue to use it:

Upgrade content:

Security, Important Patch Upgrade

Detailed information:

Improves the user's login performance

The Boxun article reports that due to recent unrest in Xinjiang and related concerns about security and social stability, the government has required QQ to implement a mandatory software upgrade which would block and track the use of sensitive keywords, enabling authorities to follow conversation trends of users, track and monitor them, etc. The model, according to the reporter, is Green Dam.

The QQ client only works on Microsoft Windows computers. As a Mac user I am unable to download and duplicate the reporter's experience. I would like to hear from others confirming whether they get the same popup requiring the mandatory download. I also hope people will test the upgraded client with some of the Xinjiang-related keywords found in a recent government order to filter search engine results, and some of the political keywords recently unearthed from the Green Dam software.

For readers unfamiliar with QQ, here is how Scott Harley at the Internet and Democracy Blog recently described QQ's importance Chinese Internet users:

Another emerging form of domestic communication is Tencent’s Instant Messaging (IM) on QQ.com. No site in China enables greater horizontal web communication than QQ.com, now the 9th largest web property in the world. Founded by Pony Ma in 1998, Tencent –a Chinese-listed company earning $1.2 billion annually in revenue, 88 percent via the sale of “virtual goods” rather than online advertising– has over 570 million registered users of its IM service. In January Tencent launched an English version of the IM platform at IMQQ.com, and a 3G version that offers QQ chat, real-time news, and search engine accessible over mobile phone.

Many users in Western China, and across rural China, do not have email accounts. And many rural Chinese view and understand the Internet as Tencent, the platform on which they’ve grown up. In fact, as of March 2009 China had as many active Tencent QQ users as it officially had people online. Despite focus on access to Google and Twitter –observations of Tweet trends, and Google search engine query data patterns– undoubtedly most relevant in China is continued access to those domestic services of communication most widely used by Chinese citizens.

Green Dam is breached...Now what?

As a number of China hands predicted, the Chinese government has postponed its mandate requiring that all computers sold in China must include the Green Dam -Youth Escort censorware by today.

Yesterday after the news broke I told the Financial Times: "There's been this impression in the internet industry that when the Chinese government makes a demand, they have to roll over and play dead. The lesson here is that's not necessarily the case." I'll put it more strongly here: The Green Dam episode proves yet again that when companies respond to critics by saying things like: "it's beyond our control if we want to do business in China" or "there's nothing we can do or we will get kicked out," that is a huge pile of, well, equine excrement.

What should be abundantly clear from events of the past several weeks is that industry and even ordinary citizens can have a real impact on policy outcomes in China - especially information and technology policy that has a direct impact on large numbers of people nationwide. It's not clear whether a new deadline will be set, the mandate radically revised, or the whole thing quietly scrapped. Which of those three options becomes reality depends very much on the actions over the next few months by industry, Chinese netizens, and various other actors.

Andrew Lih writes:

This should be seen as a case study on how the complexities of China’s decision system is much more nuanced than what a “Communist” regime would suggest, and the role of citizen deliberation in a new, upwardly mobile, aspirational, IT-savvy China.

While the outside world sees the PRC government in absolute control, in reality the heavy handed, top down authoritarian system rides on a delicate balance of, bottom up public consent that supports the state’s legitimacy.

Sky Canaves at WSJ.com's China Journal has a great post titled Green Dam and the Politics of Consent, in which she points out:

While it’s impossible to know what impact Chinese critics of the plan had relative to the vocal protestations of foreign governments, trade organizations and PC makers, the ministry’s latest move on Green Dam highlights the consensual nature of government and politics in China, which emphasizes stability and agreement among all parties involved.

Dan Harris sees this as an example of how China really is moving in the right direction:

China is billing it as a delay, but I can virtually guarantee this software will never be heard from again. I say this for two reasons. One, the people did not like it and Beijing does NOT want to go against the people on something like this. Since there is absolutely no reason to believe the people will ever start liking something like this, there is absolutely no reason to believe the software will return. Two, I know movement has been slow, and I know it has been in fits and starts, but if we were to draw a straight line through the rises and falls, freedom is on a fairly inexorable march in China.

William Moss, a.k.a. "Imagethief," however, isn't ready to pop the champagne just yet:

Green Dam Youth Escort may have submarined as predicted, but make no mistake, this isn't over. The objective that drove it the Green Dam plan, the desire to "purify the Internet", still stands. All attempts are being made to wrap the demise of Green Dam in face-saving balm, but there is no disguising the thoroughly humiliating nature of the episode. Nothing stokes the fires of zealotry like a bout of punishing humiliation, and I'd expect to see that zealotry redirected in coming months in an attempt to justify the Green Dam initiative. The recent assault on Google may be a sign of things to come. PC makers may be able to breathe a sigh of relief now, but portals, video sharing sites, social networks, Internet cafes and others may be in for an interesting few months. Watch this space.

A piece in today's Financial Times (subscription required) points out that scrapped mandates sometimes get resurrected later on in somewhat different forms. One example was Beijing's failed attempt to require that all mobile phones sold in China adhere to a new WAPI standard (alternative to Wifi). Strong industry pushback caused that mandate to be scrapped but it's now been revived, the FT writes:

In 2004, the Chinese government surprised the communication industry with an edict that the homegrown wireless encryption standard – in competition to WiFi – would be compulsory for all mobile data products sold in the country. Only just before the May deadline, Wu Yi, then vice-premier, backed down during a visit to the US. After China failed to win recognition for WAPI as an international standard two years later, the industry assumed the episode was over.

But now, WAPI is back, with a demand by the Chinese government that WiFi handsets for sale in the country will only receive approval if they are also equipped with WAPI.

I agree with "Imagethief" that while the Green Dam mandate may never be revived in its present form, we can absolutely expect that Chinese government efforts to clean up Internet smut, promote a "green Internet," and control Internet content in the name of protecting China's children are by no means over.

There is the short run and the long run. In the short run, everybody's unavoidably in for a rough patch which is likely to continue in one way or another through the end of the year with the 60th anniversary of the PRC's founding on October 1st.

In the long run the Chinese public will value companies that treat adults like adults and give them choice and control over their lives. In the long run such products will win consumer loyalty. Ethical business practices that demonstrate respect for users' and customers' interests and rights - despite a very difficult regulatory environment - will serve companies better in the long run. A roll-over-and-play-dead policy is no way to build a brand's reputation in China or anywhere else.

Industry should take the Chinese government at its word that its goal is to protect children, and try to work out sustainable, ethical solutions on that basis. The drive to censor porn does actually have roots in genuine public frustration about children's easy access to smut and violence on the Chinese Internet. There is a real problem and lots of people expect their government to do something about it. Chinese parents' frustration is shared by parents around the world. Whether the problem can actually be solved by technical means without over-censoring and violating civil liberties, however, or whether the problem's real solutions are social and cultural (requiring parents and teachers to do the hard work as parents and teachers instead of foisting most of the responsibility on companies and governments), is subject of debate in China as well as in pretty much every country with substantial Internet penetration.

Because the Chinese government is un-transparent and unaccountable it will keep using porn as an excuse not only to exercise political control but also to go after foreign companies like Google when the mood suits them (with Chinese competitors egging them on) - and maybe even to help give a leg up to home-grown businesses. But it's also important to recognize that the Chinese government views itself as being part of a global pro-censorship, anti-porn freak-out "we have to do something" bandwagon.

Even democratically elected governments are increasingly turning to national-level Internet censorship as a solution to child porn and hate speech, and in some cases also intellectual property theft, and other real or perceived social ills - depending on whose opinion you go by. The German parliament passed a bill two weeks ago to implement a national Internet filtering system. As I wrote in my op-ed for WSJ Asia last month (links added):

In a petition against the bill, German civil liberties groups call it "untransparent and uncontrollable, since the 'block lists' cannot be inspected, nor are the criteria for putting a Web site on the list properly defined." These concerns aren't unfounded: Some German politicians have already suggested extending the block list to Islamist Web sites, video games and gambling Web sites, while book publishers have suggested it would also be nice to block file-sharing sites too.

Since 2007 Australia's Labor government has advocated a policy of mandatory national filtering. In the face of fierce public criticism the censorship plan may be downgraded to a voluntary industry initiative. But critics remain concerned the block list will not be selected and maintained in a transparent or accountable way -- and that the process for appeal is very unclear, making it likely that some Web sites will be blocked in error or that "mission creep" could take place without adequate public supervision.

In Britain, a "block list" of harmful Web sites, used by all the major Internet Service Providers, is maintained by a private foundation with little transparency and no judicial or government oversight of the list. At least one British family protection group, Mediamarch, has already spoken out in support of the Green Dam concept of moving censorship from the network down to the device level.

PC makers, mobile phone companies, search engines like Google and Internet content providers will remain under strong government pressure in China to "do something" about things the government doesn't like - just as today they are under pressure in many other countries from Thailand to Turkey.

Industry should give the Chinese government as little excuse as possible to use child protection as an excuse to accomplish other goals that have much less public support and which are contrary to globally recognized human rights norms. Industry should perhaps encourage and maybe even fund in China a set of public forums and independent research efforts and so forth to examine how can industry work together with China's parents, teachers, and government to protect China's children. Initiate efforts to work with Chinese experts to develop strong culturally appropriate Chinese-language parental control software that puts control in the hands of end users. China is a potential R&D test-bed to innovate on genuine best practices in child-protection technologies... to the extent that we can realistically expect technology to be able protect children from humans...

Ultimately the problem extends well beyond China and the solutions must also be approached in a global way. It's too easy once technical censorship systems are put in place for them to be abused, or for there to be "mission creep" even in democratic societies. There is little consensus in democratic countries on questions like: What are the best ways to protect children in the Internet age? Is too much emphasis being placed on technical solutions? Do politicians and civil society need to recognize that ultimately the solutions are social and cultural? How best to develop child protection policy and business practices that really accomplishes the goal of protecting children without encroaching on civil liberties and giving governments the excuse to censor content that goes beyond porn without appropriate accountability mechanisms? We need a more intelligent global policy and industry discourse on these questions, because as it stands global political trends are not on the side of free speech protections... whatever the trend-line might look like in China on any given day.

(Note: Some content at the end of this post appeared on this blog briefly last week when an unfinished draft post was mistakenly published.)

Some more Green Dam documents...

This photo, posted last week on Twitpic by a pseudonymous blogger claiming to be based in Hangzhou, shows a document included in the box of a new Sony Vaio computer. (Click to enlarge.)

It is titled: "Sony Disclaimer Notice Concerning the Green Dam - Youth Escort" Software." The document makes the following points (my summary, not verbatim translation):

• Green Dam doesn't support a 64-bit operating system, so PC's with the 64-bit OS don't include this software.
• The software is provided to users in accordance with government requirements.
• Sony cannot guarrantee the authenticity, legality, or compatibility of the software's content, function, service or any other feature.
• Sony assumes no responsibility whatsoever for any kinds of loss or harm incurred by the user as a result of use of Green Dam. Sole responsibility lies with the software's maker.
• The locations on the PC's hard drive of the program and user manual are then listed.

So it appears that Sony has gone ahead with distribution of Green Dam on at least some of its computers sold in China, providing the program on the hard disk for the user to install if they want, with major disclaimers.

Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal reports that a broad coalition of international business associations, including most of the world's major technology companies have issued an appeal directly to Premier Wen Jiabao:

The letter, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, says the plan "raises serious concerns for us and seems to run counter to China's important goal of becoming a vibrant and dynamic information-based society."

It urges the government to "reconsider implementing the Green Dam requirements," and proposes an open dialogue on parental controls over content for children. "The Green Dam mandate raises significant questions of security, privacy, system reliability, the free flow of information and user choice," it says.

An executive from the Taiwanese computer company Acer is quoted saying they're going ahead with compliance, having "no choice."

I have also received two documents from an anonymous source. Both were issued by the Ministry of Information Industry in 2006. They're in Chinese, and quite long. I have not had a chance to go over them in detail. I am sharing them both in full. Hopefully somebody with more time and stronger technical translation skills than I have will help the community by doing a partial or full translation.
In sending me these documents my source points out: "Note the Jinhui and others were drafters of this standard. The 国家计算机网络应急技术处理中心 is a national cyber security related organization... Note that it also refers to possible mobile phone standards of similar nature. Also language in there about having a remote access capability."

The first is titled "Technical Requirements of Internet Parental Control Software Based on PC"
Green Dam Technical Requirements - Official Doc (Chinese)

The second document is titled "Test Methods of Internet Parental Control Software Based on PC"Green Dam Test Methods Official Document

China's censorship blowback

I'm not sure what the Chinese government is thinking, or whether certain parts of certain ministries and party apparatus have gotten completely out of control.  

Until recently, it had seemed to me that the Chinese government was managing its censorship system with surprising success: censoring enough (combined with strategic arrests) to keep people from using the Internet to organize a successful nation-wide political opposition movement; but at the same time allowing enough space for online discourse and citizen-muckraking that people have felt freer and more empowered than ever before, which actually seemed to work in favor of the central government's legitimacy - despite being very bad news for corrupt local officials. But this month, something shifted. It's unclear whether the shift is long-lasting or just temporary madness until the PRC's 60th anniversary on October 1st.

Most of China's educated, largely apolitical, internet-connected urbanites have until now been generally willing to accept the political status quo - and with it a certain amount of censorship, thuggishness and injustice, political paranoia and occasional bizarreness - in exchange for overall social stability (compared to any other time in living Chinese memory), economic growth, plus an impressive increase in China's global power and status. But whoever is driving the latest Internet crackdown and the accompanying moralistic propaganda drive may have done substantial damage to the government's credibility.

June began with the expected tightening of Internet censorship around the 20th anniversary of the June 4th crackdown, including the temporary blocking of Twitter and various other websites. That in itself was not a huge surprise. It followed the usual logic of Chinese Internet censorship: tighten up the bottleneck between the Chinese Internet and the outside Internet during politically sensitive periods. Chinese Internet users who tend to be concerned with politics know to expect this kind of thing. However a simultaneous suspension in service for "technical maintenance" on many domestic websites impacted a much larger number of Chinese Internet users who don't visit overseas-hosted news or social networking sites very much. It would likely not have occurred to many million Internet users that June 4th was a politically sensitive date if China's "net nanny" hadn't made it so blatantly obvious, prompting many teenagers who weren't even born in 1989 to ask each other and their parents what happened on June 4th. But that was June 4th. People expect a certain amount of government paranoia around that time.

Little did we know, that was just the beginning of The Month The Censors Stopped Taking Their Medication.

The next week the government's Green Dam censorware mandate became publicly known. Authorities insist on implementing the mandate despite the fact that it doesn't work as intended or advertised, is a security risk and has been subject to widespread domestic criticism (by bloggers as well as state-controlled media and respected public figures like Caijing editor Hu Shuli). Now the U.S. government warns it could be a violation of the WTO. It seems the government is having trouble finding a face-saving way to climb down. Rather than admit they made a mistake and work out a sensible solution with domestic and foreign industry, they have chosen instead to escalate in an increasingly irrational manner that serves only to increase Chinese Internet users' scorn and irritation.

Last week the propaganda department turned it sights on Google China, and continues to blame Google for smut on the Internet. Horror of horrors, when you type smutty words and phrases into the Google search box, you get smutty content coming back in your search results! Many people including this blogger (via Roland Soong) and this blogger have pointed out that plenty of smut remains available via Google's Chinese competitor Baidu. How commercially convenient for Baidu... though some bloggers point out that the whole fracas - aided by outrage and ridicule over a staged anti-Google interview on CCTV - is actually making Google more popular among netizens, who were already annoyed with the government for dispensing commercial favoritism on the makers of Green Dam.

So far this week we've seen the temporary blocking of Google.com and related services hosted outside of China including GMail. As if that wasn't bad enough for one week, we're now told that sexual health websites are a no-go for ordinary Internet users.

Meanwhile, the increased discussion of censorship all over the Chinese Internet is prompting China's netizens to educate themselves about the various technical methods to "jump over" the "great firewall." There are no hard and fast statistics on how many people in China are now using proxy servers, Tor, Psiphon, Freegate/Dynaweb, or OpenDNS as compared to a month ago. But based on the frequent mentions of these tools I've been seeing every day on blogs, in Twitter, and on other social networking sites, it seems that the latest Net Nanny follies have helped raise awareness of circumvention tools to a whole new level. If you plug the term 翻墙 (which means "scale the wall" - the most common Chinese euphemism for censorship circumvention) into Google's search insights and restrict it to searches coming from China, you see a big spike in early June and a bigger spkie in the past few days (click to enlarge):

Searches for Tor (a nonprofit tool for anonymizing and circumvention) are also substantially up this month, and Chinese-language searches originating in China for Freegate (a tool developed and operated by a FLG-affiliated organization) spiked dramatically over the weekend.

Aggravation is certainly mounting. After finding Google.com and GMail blocked on Wednesday night Beijing time, Jeremy Goldkorn, who runs Danwei.org wrote a letter to China's "net nanny," in which he pointed out: "You are making Chinese people look like children on the world stage. You are bringing shame to the People's Republic of China, and the Chinese Communist Party."

To protest the mounting ridiculousness, Ai Weiwei is calling for an Internet boycott on July 1st. Others like lawyer-blogger Liu Xiaoyuan believe a boycott is not the best way to protest Internet restrictions. He writes (translated by Roland): "We have nothing against the Internet. We should not boycott the Internet. We should be using the Internet to promote democracy, rule of law, people's livelihood and progressiveness." Roland suggests some other kind of protest that is more measurable, as the success or failure of an Internet boycott is very hard to measure. Meanwhile a group of anonymous Chinese Netizens have issued an open letter, vowing to take collective action on July 1st. It's not clear exactly what they will do, other than to say: "we are going to acquaint your censorship machine with systematic sabotage and show you just how weak the claws of your censorship really are. We are going to mark you as the First Enemy of the Internet."

The following paragraph is particularly interesting. They claim they're not interested in overthrowing the government; but the government is bringing on its own punishment for behaving in such a stupid manner:

NOBODY wants to topple your regime. We take no interest whatsoever in your archaic view of state power and your stale ideological teachings. You do not understand how your grand narrative dissipated in the face of Internetization. You do not understand why appealing to statism and nationalism no longer works. You cannot break free from your own ignorance of the Internet. Your regime is not our enemy. We are not affiliated in any way with any country or organization, and we are not waging this war on any country or organization, not even on you. YOU are waging this war on yourself. YOU are digging your own grave through corruption and antagonization. We are not interested in you, destined for the sewage of history. You cannot stop the Internetization of the human race. In fact, we won't bat an eyelid even if you decide to sever the transpacific information cables in order to obtain the total control you wanted. The harder you try to roll back history, the more you strain the already taut strings, and the more destructive their final release. You are accelerating your own fall. The sun of tomorrow does not shine on those who are fearing tomorrow itself.

June has been pretty wild. I wonder what July has in store...

Green Dam's makers fail to fix problems

Last week, computer scientists at the University of Michigan, The Open Net Initiative, and an independent group of Chinese programmers all found serious security flaws in the government-mandated Green Dam-Youth Escort software.

Earlier this week a Chinese official told the China Daily "that all security problems reported by the professors from University of Michigan had been fixed."

Well, not really. The Michigan team has found that while some problems are fixed, more serious security problems remain. Here is the summary of their latest update:

Following our initial analysis, the makers of Green Dam have released at least one security update and two filter updates. These updates address the original web filtering security vulnerability we described above, disable certain blacklists that were copied from the CyberSitter program, and bring the software into compliance with the OpenCV license.

Unfortunately, we have discovered an additional remotely-exploitable security vulnerability in the patched version. Even with the updated version installed, any web site a user visits can exploit this problem to take control of the computer. We continue to recommend that users protect themselves by uninstalling Green Dam immediately.

While Green Dam's developers have patched the software quickly, the program's continuing vulnerability suggests that its security problems run deep. We fear that the deeper problems cannot be resolved in time for the July 1 deadline for PC makers to distribute Green Dam on all new PCs sold in China.

Read the details here.

Also of possible interest is my Op-Ed in yesterday's Asian Wall Street Journal, The Green Dam Phenomenon: Governments everywhere are treading on Web freedoms.

Whether or not Green Dam ends up being mandated, this is not the end - not for China nor for the rest of the world. It's just the beginning. Get ready. I conclude:

It is very encouraging that a coalition of industry groups has pushed back publicly against the Green Dam mandate, calling on the Chinese government to reconsider. But the Green Dam incident is yet another example of why it behooves companies to think ahead about how they are going to uphold their larger responsibility to society. Industry has a choice: be reactive -- and be forced into growing complicity with government censorship and surveillance around the globe. Or be pro-active, develop robust human-rights policies, and consider how to responsibly handle the inevitable pressures by all kinds of governments to serve as national auto-parent, if not auto-cop.

Green Damned

Chinese netizens are certainly having fun mocking the government's mandate for PC manufacurers to install the Green Dam-Youth Escort software. Danwei posted some great pictures of cartoon "green dam girls," greated in the style of Japanese porno manga. This one on the left (click to enlarge) is removing the underwear of "Windows XP Girl". Hecaitou has a lot more.

The Guardian, Associated Press, and even the China Daily are now quoting an unnamed Chinese official at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology who says that the installation of Green Dam-Youth Escort is "not compulsory." The China Daily reports:

"The PC makers only need to save the setup files of the program on the hard drives of the computers, or provide CD-ROMs containing the program with their PC packages," said an official of the department of software service under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, who did not want to be named.

PC users have the "final say" over installing the filter and recent reports of the government compelling them to use the software was "a misunderstanding", the official said.

"The government only provides the Green Dam-Youth Escort software for free."

It seems like there must have been some kind of policy tug-of-war going on these past few days. Late last week the Communist Party's Propaganda Department sent round an edict to the media instructing them to say nice things about Green Dam and stop being so critical. But Caijing and other media continued running critical articles, and then the People's daily website, Renminwang, launched a whole feature section on Saturday with full coverage of the Green Dam story - pro and con. Plus a reader opinion poll. Here's the screenshot I took Monday morning of the results, soon before the whole thing got taken down (click to enlarge):

At the time the screenshot was taken, more than 5 million readers had voted. 16 percent (nearly 880 thousand) supported Green Dam, while 74 percent (more than 4 million) voted against it.

On the left is a screenshot of the front page of the feature section, provocatively titled: "Have you been 'Green Dam-Youth Escort-ed' today?" (Click to enlarge.) Interestingly, the accompanying discussion forum has not been deleted - and it's full of comments criticizing or mocking Green Dam. Even though the main section has been taken offline, Chinese media insiders say the fact that the critical analysis and online poll managed to appear at all on the People’s Daily website is proof of strong internal government disagreement over how to respond to this public relations fiasco.

Despite today's reports about an apparent climbdown, however, I got an email from one person in the industry who said his company has yet to hear anything different from the original directive in his company's discussions with the government. So the game may not be completely over, and some in the industry are concerned about the implications of even providing an accompanying disc, knowing the security and IP issues in addition to the free speech implications.

Meanwhile the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has ordered Green Dam's maker, Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co. to urgently patch their now well-documented security flaws. That could take a while if it’s to be done right: the University of Michigan computer scientists who analyzed Green Dam last week warned that the problems are so serious that they can only be resolved with “extensive changes to the software and careful retesting.” Whether the government requires installation or just an accompanying disc, it’s unclear whether it will still hold PC makers and importers to the original July 1^st implementation deadline. It also remains unclear whether the mandate will ultimately end up being enforced. If Jinhui fails to patch Green Dam’s leaks to government satisfaction in a timely manner, that could give the authorities solid reason to scrap the plan. Meanwhile, never a dull moment on the Chinese Internet. I look forward to the continued Chinese online humor... including this doozy that some reader managed to post for a short period of time also on the People's Daily site:

Open Net Initiative report on Green Dam

The Open Net Initiative has released a detailed analysis of Green Dam. Executive summary (emphasis added):

A recent directive by the Chinese government requires the installation of a specific filtering software product, Green Dam, with the publicly stated intent of protecting children from harmful Internet content. The proposed implementation of software as reviewed in this report would in fact have an influence that extends beyond helping parents protect their children from age inappropriate material; the filtering options include blocking of political and religious content normally associated with the Great Firewall of China, China’s sophisticated national-level filtering system. If implemented as proposed, the effect would be to increase the reach of Internet censorship to the edges of the network, adding a new and powerful control mechanism to the existing filtering system.

As a policy decision, mandating the installation of a specific software product is both unprecedented and poorly conceived. In this specific instance, the mistake is compounded by requiring the use of a substandard software product that interferes with the performance of personal computers in an unpredictable way, killing browsers and applications without warning while opening up users to numerous serious security vulnerabilities. The level of parental control over the software is poor such that this software does not well serve parents that wish to the limit exposure of their children to Internet content.

The mandate requiring the installation of a specific product serves no useful purpose apart from extending the reach of government authorities. Given the resulting poor quality of the product, the large negative security and stability effects on the Chinese computing infrastructure and the intense backlash against the product mandate, the mandate may result in less government control.

Read the whole thing online here or download the PDF here.

More Green Dam documents and statements

Several primary documents related to the government-mandated Green Dam censorware/malware - and the opposition to it - have emerged over the past 12 hours or so. Here are some of them:

• In chatrooms like this one people have been posting scanned copies of the above notice sent from the Central Propaganda Department to news media, telling them to tone down the criticism and take on a more positive tone toward Green Dam. The document has been quoted in blog posts like this one as well.

• Chinese Lawyer Challenges Filtering Software Order and Requests Public Hearing. Human Rights in China has translated the request by Beijing rights lawyer Li Fangping. Summary: "Li challenges the legality of the directive, citing an October 2008 notice1 sent by the State Council – China’s legislature – to government agencies requesting them to “hold hearings for items subject to examination and approval which concern the major public interests or the vital interests of the people.” Using regulations relevant to the Chinese government’s Open Government Information policy, Li also submitted an application to MIIT requesting the ministry to make public the legal basis for the new directive and information relating to the approval process for the funds to purchase the software, the impartiality of the bidding process, and how the software would affect the protection of individual privacy and information security, etc."

• Green Dam censorship system internal brief to Chinese government, doc, Jan 2008 "This internal document from early 2008 contains negotiations between Jin Hui, the maker of the software, and the Chinese government, together with a detailed description of the Green Dam system." Posted as a downloadable PDF (very detailed, in Chinese) on Wikileaks.

• A technical analysis of the Chinese 'Green Dam Youth-Escort' censorship software, a collaborative work by Chinese bloggers and programmers, posted on Wikileaks and constantly being updated.

• Chinese Green Dam Falun Gong related censorship keywords: June 2009, posted on Wikileaks. So much for the claim by Jin Hui executives and officials that Green Dam censors porn only.

• GNI Principles Offer Guidance to ICT Manufacturing and Software Sector: The Global Network Initiative's position statement on Green Dam and appeal for computer manufacturers and software companies to follow the GNI principles for free expression and privacy. Below is the statement in full:

GNI Principles Offer Guidance to ICT Manufacturing and Software Sector

Posted: Jun 11, 2009

The Global Network Initiative is actively monitoring developments regarding the Chinese government’s directive that requires computer manufacturers to install the Green Dam/Youth Escort content control software on personal computers produced or sold in China. This directive is ostensibly intended to protect children from sexually explicit content, but in fact raises significant challenges for companies in the technology sector that also have a responsibility to respect human rights. The Global Network Initiative (GNI) offers a multi-stakeholder forum that provides operational guidance and a credible system for companies to develop effective strategies in response to these challenges.

Protection of children from exploitation and exposure to inappropriate material online is a legitimate public policy goal, which many countries around the world pursue. This goal can be achieved in ways consistent with international norms protecting the rights to freedom of expression and privacy. For example, public education regarding the availability of a wide variety of user-controlled filtering tools to choose from allows parents and guardians to manage unwanted content in a way that is most appropriate for children under their care. Various companies – including the three company members of GNI – as well as other organizations offer a wide range of such software tools. However, the government mandate to pre-load the Green Dam/Youth Escort software on all PCs produced and sold in China clearly raises human rights concerns that the information and communications technology (ICT) sector must address.

The GNI Principles are grounded in international human rights standards for freedom of expression and privacy. Under these standards, the right to freedom of expression should not be restricted by governments except in narrowly defined circumstances, consistent with international human rights norms and the rule of law. Importantly, such restrictions should be necessary and proportionate for the relevant purpose.

Much about how the Green Dam/Youth Escort software functions in practice is yet to be determined and several GNI members are undertaking such an analysis. However, a number of facts about the software have been established that raise human rights concerns.

The concurrent and cumulative issues that implicate human rights and undermine user choice include the requirement for mandatory installation; the difficulty of uninstalling the software; and filtering that goes beyond sexually explicit or other content inappropriate for children. Results from independent tests of the software reported on Global Voices Online and elsewhere indicate that political content was indeed part of the website library of filtered content. An approach for protecting children online that requires the mandatory installation of a particular software package that is difficult to uninstall and filters far more than sexually explicit content is not consistent with the practices of other countries that have encouraged parental control tools and is far out of proportion to the goal of child protection.

Public opposition (including a legal challenge) to this software mandate within China is growing. The Chinese press and diverse parts of Chinese civil society have expressed concerns about privacy, security, transparency, consumer choice, and whether the cost of this effort is justifiable. In fact, the government recently clarified that use of the software by citizens is not mandatory in its official media statements. We hope that the domestic reaction within China will encourage the Chinese government to reconsider this mandate more fundamentally.

Nevertheless, there are many questions unanswered. Are any companies working with the software vendor to try and put the software in the market? If the government clarifies its directive so that the software is shipped on a disk but not pre-installed, what should companies do to avoid complicity in censorship of political, religious, and cultural information online? How can governments appropriately protect children from exploitation and exposure to inappropriate material? What steps should companies take to address such requests or directives? Hardware and software design companies will need to have adequate due diligence measures in place to ensure that they are prepared to address these questions in a way that respects fundamental human rights.

The GNI can help to address those dilemmas since it is a unique organization with the capacity to provide operational guidance on human rights issues in a collaborative setting. In particular, the GNI offers credible, operational guidance for companies, built on extensive experience, guided by a broad set of perspectives, and rooted in international human rights principles. The GNI also offers both technology sector companies and academics, investors, and non-governmental organizations an opportunity for frank discussion, collaboration on matters of public policy and corporate responsibility, and the sharing of expertise. Among the GNI principles and operational guidelines that are relevant to manufacturing and software companies:

   * Participating companies will respect and protect the freedom of expression of their users by seeking to avoid or minimize the impact of government restrictions on freedom of expression.

   * Participating companies will employ human rights impact assessments to identify circumstances when freedom of expression and privacy may be jeopardized or advanced, and develop appropriate risk mitigation strategies, e.g., when designing and introducing new technologies, products, and services.

   * GNI participants will engage proactively with governments to reach a shared understanding of how government restrictions can be applied in a manner consistent with human rights norms. Companies will seek modification from authorized officials when government restrictions appear overbroad, not required by domestic law or inconsistent with international human rights standards.

   * Participating companies will give clear, prominent, and timely notice to users when access to content has been limited due to government restrictions.

   * GNI participants acknowledge and support appropriate initiatives that seek to identify, prevent, and limit access to illegal online activity such as child exploitation. Such initiatives raise potential concerns regarding freedom of expression and should therefore be narrowly tailored and subject to the rule of law.

University of Michigan: Analysis of the Green Dam Censorware System

A team of computer scientists at the University of Michigan have released this report about the Chinese government-mandated censorware, Green Dam. Here is the summary:

We have discovered remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities in Green Dam, the censorship software reportedly mandated by the Chinese government. Any web site a Green Dam user visits can take control of the PC.

According to press reports, China will soon require all PCs sold in the country to include Green Dam. This software monitors web sites visited and other activity on the computer and blocks adult content as well as politically sensitive material.

We examined the Green Dam software and found that it contains serious security vulnerabilities due to programming errors. Once Green Dam is installed, any web site the user visits can exploit these problems to take control of the computer. This could allow malicious sites to steal private data, send spam, or enlist the computer in a botnet. In addition, we found vulnerabilities in the way Green Dam processes blacklist updates that could allow the software makers or others to install malicious code during the update process.

We found these problems with less than 12 hours of testing, and we believe they may be only the tip of the iceberg. Green Dam makes frequent use of unsafe and outdated programming practices that likely introduce numerous other vulnerabilities. Correcting these problems will require extensive changes to the software and careful retesting. In the meantime, we recommend that users protect themselves by uninstalling Green Dam immediately.

Read the rest of it here.