Monthly Archives: August 2017

The shift which could affect a swath of users from researchers to businesses suggests that China is increasingly worried about the power of the internet, experts said.

It does appear the crackdown is becoming more intense, but the internet is also more powerful than it has ever been, said Emily Parker, author of Now I Know Who My Comrades Are, a book about the power of the internet in China, Cuba, and Russia. Beijings crackdown on the internet is commensurate with the power of the internet in China.

China still has not clamped down to its full ability, the experts said, and in many cases the cat-and-mouse game continues. One day after Apples move last week, people on Chinese social media began circulating a way to gain access to those tools that was so easy that even a non-techie could use it. (It involved registering a persons app store to another country where VPN apps were still available.)

Still, Thursdays test demonstrates that China wants the ability to change the game in favor of the cat.

A number of Chinese internet service providers said on their social media accounts, websites, or in emails on Thursday that Chinese security officials would test a new way to find the internet addresses of services hosting or using illegal content. Once found, these companies said, the authorities would ask internet service providers to tell their clients to stop. If the clients persisted, they said, the service providers and Chinese officials would cut their connection in a matter of minutes.

The Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

Studies suggest that anywhere from tens of millions to well over a hundred million Chinese people use VPNs and other types of software to get around the Great Firewall. While the blocks on foreign television shows and pornography ward off many people, they often pose only minor challenges to Chinas huge population of web-savvy internet users.

Chinas president, Xi Jinping, has presided over years of new internet controls, but he has also singled out technology and the internet as critical to Chinas future economic development. As cyberspace has become more central to everything that happens in China, government controls have evolved.

It is difficult to figure out the extent of the new efforts, since many users and businesses will not discuss them publicly for fear of getting on the bad side with the Chinese government. But some frequent users said that getting around the restrictions had become increasingly difficult.

One student, who has been studying in the United States and was back in China for summer vacation, said that her local VPN was blocked. She said she had taken the period as a sort of meditation away from social media and left a note on Facebook to warn her friends why she was a gone girl.

A doctoral student in environmental engineering in at a university in China said it had become harder to do research without Google, though his university had found alternative publications so that students did not always need the internet. He has since found a new way to get around the Great Firewall, the student said, without disclosing what it was.

Close observers of the Chinese internet said some VPNs still work and that China could still do a lot more to intensify its crackdown.

We do think that if the government has decided to do so, it could have shut down much more VPN usage right now, said a spokesman for VPNDada, a website created in 2015 to help Chinese users find VPNs that work.

If the government had sent more cats, the mice would have a tougher time, said the spokesman, who declined to be named because of sensitivities around the groups work in China. I guess they didnt do so because they need to give some air for people or businesses to breathe.

Chinas online crackdowns are often cyclical. The current climate is in part the result of the lead-up to a key Chinese Communist Party meeting, the 19th Party Congress this autumn. Five years ago, ahead of a similar meeting, VPNs were hit by then-unprecedented disruptions.

Much like economic policy or foreign affairs, censorship in China is part of a complicated and often imperfect political process. Government ministries feel pressure ahead of the party congress to show they are effective or can step in if a problem appears, analysts said.

So its definitely not an apocalypse for VPNs, said Paul Triolo, head of global technology at Eurasia Group, a consultancy.

Just a more complex environment for users to navigate, and new capabilities and approaches give China better ability to shut off some delta of VPN use at a time and place of Beijings choosing, he said.

Chinas population is learning to deal with those difficulties at a younger age. Earlier this summer, Chinas internet giant Tencent began limiting the time that people under 18 were allowed to play the popular online game Honor of Kings to an hour a day for those under 12, and two hours for those age 12 to 18.

So Chinese youths have taken to an age-old solution: getting a fake ID.

Your Honor of Kings being limited? Interested in getting an over-18 identification? read a recent advertisement on Chinese social media. No problem. Get in touch for a low-price ID.

Carolyn Zhang contributed research from Shanghai. Adam Wu contributed research from Beijing.

A version of this article appears in print on August 4, 2017, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Chinas Internet Censors Test a New Way to Shut Down Access.

Read the original:
China's Internet Censors Play a Tougher Game of Cat and Mouse - New York Times

There's a grassroots movement brewing to kill the new HBO docudrama "Confederate" before it even begins filming, let alone airs. The Guardian has a useful summary of the controversy so far:

Confederate, the new HBO show from the Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, was announced in a press release a few weeks ago and is slated to begin filming sometime after the final season of Thrones, which will probably air in 2018. But already there seems to be little appetite for the series, which plans to take a revisionist approach to American history, imagining a world in which the South successfully seceded from the union and slavery persists "as a modern-day institution" ... Since the project was revealed in early July, it has become a kind of cultural albatross for HBO, and especially Benioff and Weiss, each of whom have fielded criticisms over the years for both the overwhelming whiteness of Game of Thrones ...

Roxanne Gay, an associate professor at Purdue University, chimed in on the opinion pages of the New York Times:

Each time I see a reimagining of the Civil War that largely replicates what actually happened, I wonder why people are expending the energy to imagine that slavery continues to thrive when we are still dealing with the vestiges of slavery in very tangible ways. ... My exhaustion with the idea of "Confederate" is multiplied by the realization that this show is the brainchild of two white men who oversee a show that has few people of color to speak of and where sexual violence is often gratuitous and treated as no big deal. I shudder to imagine the enslaved black body in their creative hands. And when I think about the number of people who gave this project the green light, the number of people who thought this was a great idea, my weariness grows exponentially. ...

Let's put aside complaints about the "whiteness" of "Game of Thrones." It makes sense for a fantasy set in a Medieval European-like fantasyland to use predominantly (but not exclusively) European-looking actors, just as it made sense that the 1980 miniseries "Shogun" used many Japanese actors or, for that matter, for the 1977 miniseries "Roots" to use black actors. If actors should be cast without reference to skin color or identity, than that should go both ways.

Let's also put aside the fact that alternative histories are not uncommon. "The Man in the High Castle" imagines the world if Germany and Japan won World War II. "Confederate States of America" is a deeply satirical look at what would happen if the South had won the Civil War. Philip Roth's The Plot against America imagines what would have happened if nativist Charles Lindbergh had defeated Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 and signed non-interference treaties with both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

What is truly discomforting about the current campaign to shut down "Confederate" is that neither those who are leading it nor those who are piling on in an international Twitter campaign have read a single line of its script. They have no idea how the writers will address issues of race and race relations, nor whether the alternative history will open the door to productive discussion and debate.

If the writers do a bad job, critics pan the show, and people stop watching, that's one thing. But to pre-emptively try to shut down a show sight unseen, that's different.

In a sense, what we are seeing increasingly appears to be the Western version of the Satanic Verses affair.

In that 1989 case, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses for blasphemy, even though neither he nor those around him had ever read the work.

At the time, dozens of writers stood up for Rushdie's right to write and publish. Today, most are silent, and the leading outlets of progressive thought side with the proverbial lynch mob. True, Khomeini's fatwa is an extreme example. No one is suggesting Benioff and Weiss be murdered, but the idea that it is proper to censor works without first reading their content in order to protect popular mores is similar.

Progressives might cry foul at a comparison between what they seek to do and what Khomeini did. After all, haven't conservatives also sought to censor? In the 1980s, many conservatives criticized the funding choices of the National Endowment for the Arts, especially in the wake of a racy Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit and the production of the "Piss Christ" photograph of the late 1980s. Recently, the Washington Post recalled those controversies:

Conservative Sens. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Alphonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) took to the Senate floor in May 1989 "to question the NEA's funding procedures." Helms called Serrano "not an artist, he is a jerk," and D'Amato theatrically tore a reproduction of the work to shreds, calling it a "deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity." Meanwhile, more than 50 senators and 150 representatives contacted the NEA to complain about the exhibits. [Piss Christ artist Andres] Serrano still remembers being "shocked" by the angry reaction and, he told The Post on Sunday, how suddenly the work became a "political football." ... But the exhibit that pushed Helms over the edge was a retrospective of work by late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who Andrew Hartman, author of "A War for the Soul Of America: A History of the Culture Wars," wrote "became the Christian Right's bte noire." ... Like the exhibit containing "Piss Christ," it was partially, indirectly funded by the NEA. The exhibit featured 175 photographs. One hundred sixty-eight were inoffensive, such as images of carefully arranged flowers. The seven from his "X-Portfolio," though, were intensely provocative. One presented a finger inserted into a penis. Another was a self-portrait showing Mapplethorpe graphically inserting a bullwhip into his anus. Two displayed nude children.

What the Washington Post misses, however, is that the controversy was over public funding for such exhibits; it did not demand pre-emptive censorship over writers or artists. Likewise, when 25 years ago Vice President Dan Quayle famously criticized the television character Murphy Brown for having a child out of wedlock, his goal was not to censor the hit CBS sitcom, but rather simply to criticize its judgment. Likewise, criticisms of the Broadway play "Oslo" or the anti-Israel propaganda play "My Name is Rachel Corrie" focus on how they twist the truth or cherry-pick history rather than demand they be shuttered.

Criticism and censorship are not synonymous. The former advances productive debate; the latter seeks to avoid it. With "Confederate," it seems progressives are siding firmly with censorship as they argue against the right to tackle subjects which run afoul of their own narrow orthodoxy.

Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.

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On censorship of 'Confederate,' it's 'Satanic Verses' deja vu - Washington Examiner

China held a drill on Thursday with internet service providers to practice taking down websites deemed harmful, as the country's censors tighten control ahead of a sensitive five-yearly political reshuffle set to take place later this year.

Internet data centers (IDC) and cloud companieswhich host website serverswere ordered to participate in a three-hour drill to hone their "emergency response" skills, according to at least four participants that included the operator of Microsoft's cloud service in China.

China's Ministry of Public Security called for the drill "in order to step up online security for the 19th Party Congress and tackle the problem of smaller websites illegally disseminating harmful information," according to a document circulating online attributed to a cyber police unit in Guangzhou.

An officer who answered the phone in the Guangzhou public security bureau confirmed the drill but declined to elaborate.

President Xi Jinping has overseen a tightening of China's cyberspace controls , including tough new data surveillance and censorship rules. This push is now ramping up ahead of an expected consolidation of power at the Communist Party Congress this autumn.

The drill asked internet data centers to practice shutting down target web pages speedily and report relevant details to the police, including the affected websites' contact details, IP address and server location.

China's Ministry of Public Security and China's cyberspace administration did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

Get Data Sheet , Fortunes technology newsletter.

Several service providers, including 21Vianet Group and VeryCloud, issued notices to users, warning of possible temporary service disruptions on Thursday afternoon as a result of the drill, which were confirmed to Reuters by their customer service representatives.

Nasdaq-listed 21 Vianet Group is China's largest carrier-neutral internet data center services provider according to its website, and counts many Western multinationals including Microsoft , IBM , Cisco and HP among its clients. It runs Microsoft's Azure-based services in China.

21 Vianet Group did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

China has been tightening its grip on the internet , including a recent drive to crack down on the usage of VPNs to bypass internet censorship, enlisting the help of state-owned telecommunication service providers to upgrade the so-called Great Firewall.

Apple last week removed VPN apps from its app store, while Amazon's China partner warned users not to use VPNs.

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China Holds Drill to Shut Down 'Harmful' Websites - Fortune

Courts in modern times are generally protective of the First Amendment, specifically our freedoms of speech and press. On the whole, they vigorously oppose any attempt by government to minimize those essential liberties; they recognize that a free press is critical to any society that values expression and intellectual diversity. The Supreme Courts 1983 ruling inMinneapolis Star v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue(1983), striking down certain taxes on ink and paper, shows that attempts to regulate the media as a group, even when broadly applied, are considered unacceptable if they crowd out certain viewpoints.

The University of California San Diego (UCSD), a public university, attempted to do something similar when it defunded certain student organizations in a thinly veiled attempt to censor one organizations opinions. The Koala, a satirical newspaper funded by student activity fees, published an article mocking safe places that sparked controversy on campus and debate in the schools student government. In response, the student government enacted a Media Act that defunded all student-printed media organizations, in order to prevent the The Koala from publishing further articles that contradicted the student governments political sensibilities.

The Koalasued in an attempt to restore its funding, but the federal district court remarkably ruled against them. Cato has joined the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education on an amicus brief supporting its claim.

There is a longstanding, constitutionally based tradition of public universities serving as conduits for freedom of expression, a tradition that UCSD has unceremoniously abandoned. By providing funding to certain groups and not others, the university is effectively restricting certain members of the public from a public forum, in blatant violation of the First Amendment.

The lower court misread well-established jurisprudence regarding the scope of such forums, and failed to consider the evidence of viewpoint discrimination prevalent in the schools Media Act. Not only does this rule have a discriminatory effect, but also it constitutes unconstitutional retaliation in direct response to the controversy surrounding The Koalas article.

In addition, the Supreme Court has established that student activity fee programs are required to respect viewpoint-neutrality, in order to ensure that political bias does not stifle speech. UCSD has violated all of these core constitutional principles in pursuit of political correctness and the comfort of ideological homogeneity.

In The Koala v. Khosla, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit should reverse the lower courts decision and stop UCSDs efforts to seek vengeance against student groups for satirical articles.

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Should the Koala Bear the Brunt of Censorship? - Cato Institute (blog)