Reporters Without Borders Internet Annual Report 130
kratei writes "The BBC is running a report discussing the Reporters Without Borders internet annual report 2006. The RWB study details and decries the rising tide of net censorship and lays the blame squarely on the west as the source for the technology that allows repressive regimes to stifle freedom on the web." From the article: "China's success at censorship means it has effectively produced a "sanitised" version of the internet for its 130 million citizens that regularly go online. The wide-ranging scrutiny also means that it is the biggest jailer of so-called cyber dissidents. RSF estimates that 62 people in China have been jailed for what they said online. "
62 arrests? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Censorship and the Web (Score:3, Informative)
It's just you.
I don't know how they do it, but I guess Google either does geolocation and redirects to the appropiate version or they simple block access to google.com.
RSF isn't always right (Score:4, Informative)
Coming from China and pursuing graduate studies in Europe, I find that some of these organisations persist in criticizing the "Chinese way". Armchair philosophers pointing at our human rights record and our "one party state" as they like to call it as a "concern" (to put it very euphemistically).
I'd like to say that you may not completely understand the Chinese context. Not all of us have the same concept of "personal freedoms" that you do. We understand that we must sacrifice some of our personal freedoms for the greater good of the society as a whole. I can only speak for my friends, family and myself, but we give these freedoms happily and in the knowledge that we know that the government that we elected works for the benefit of all in China. Not all of us agree, we all know there are plenty of dissidents who openly voice their opinions, but you must recognise that these can be dangerous people.
In a society as large as China, there are always pockets where the seeds of discord can grow into a tree that could serve to disrupt the harmony. Does government censorship necessarily have to be a form of repression? No. I remind you that many of us freely voted for the government that we have and while you hear of the vocal minority who protest such actions, you never hear of the silent majority who recognise the benefits.
The Chinese government is not a "great evil" as some would have you believe. I, and others I know, feel that whatever is being done is more out of necessity and would like to at least point to things like our recent economic record and educational successes as some indication that the system works.
Getting around censors (Re:Proxies) (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a tool [jmarshall.com] to get around Web censorship. It's the censorhip-circumventing software itself, not just a site that runs it; anyone can downlad and install it on a Web server for their own use. It's been around since 1996, first developed when Singapore and China first announced they would try to censor the Web. I think this approach is more effective than the various sites running public proxies, because those can be blocked by censors much more easily than when everyone has their own private proxy.
If you try CGIProxy and find any shortcomings, please let me know so I can fix them. To my knowledge, it's the only such software out there that solves certain kinds of problems, such as proxifying JavaScript (in beta, but almost there); for example, this means that most Web-based email and other complex sites can work through it.
Note that out of the box, the CGIProxy isn't optimally configured for privacy, but there are config options to change that. The code is heavily commented, with the intention that users can customize it in several ways to make it unrecognizable to censors.
Have fun! Let me know if you have any questions.
Re:Big deal (Score:2, Informative)
Not that anyone cares (Score:2, Informative)
1) When I submitted the story I didn't include that bit about China in my version of the summary. I think that quote wasn't a good one to include. It TOTALLY misses the point RWB was making in the article. A better quote would have been:
In other words, China figured out how to most effectively silence those who wanted to use the web to promote political dissent by singling out online editors. Now many other countries are following suit, because the Chinese method works so well. You don't have to throw large number of people in jail, you just make a few draconian rules and get rid of the people who are causing the most trouble.The story is not about bashing China, it is about how more than a dozen other countries are following China's lead, now that China has figured out how to censor the internet effectively.
2) I thought the last section - about western complicity - was thought provoking (or at least here would spark some debate). Their comments are not inflammatory, they just state what has happened. "Secure Computing, for example, sold Tunisia a programme to censor the Internet . . ." and "Cisco Systems, created China's Internet infrastructure and sold the country special equipment for the police to use." I'd like to hear somone from each of those companies explain/defend themselves.