China and Censorship
The Chinese government won’t budge on their resolution that all computers to be sold in China will contain censoring software. In fact, it seems they are going even further! They are thinking about recruiting some 10,000 people to be Internet monitors; find bad sites and report them.
The plan was offered up for discussion on Tuesday. This goal is to create a system that can “purify society.”
They are definitely on the offensive. One group, the China Illegal Internet Information Reporting Center, has been seeking out sites and warning them to take down their offensive content. They are afraid of no one, even going after the Chinese Google for hosting vulgar images and sexual content!
China has always had a history of interfering with people’s freedom rights by censoring and blocking content deemed inappropriate, or harmful to their Communist party. Internet-savvy citizens can easily get around these blocks through a myriad of ways, but this new computer installation software could prevent them from doing so any longer, and they are up in arms.
The software, called Green Dam Youth Escort, will be used (as stated by the company) to block pornography and other sexually explicit content, but some suspect it is just another device to stop people from visiting websites with opposing political views.
Once people got a hold of the software, and began dissecting it, some major flaws were found. After some extrapolation, they found that computers running the Green Dam software could actually be commandeered by some interloper with a mind to break through the bugged security. While the Chinese officials have claimed they ordered programmers to fix this, American companies like Dell and HP are worried for customers. They have asked China to reconsider this technology, but to no avail. Unfortunately, they can’t just refuse to sell to China either; a large part of their customer base is the Chinese.
The largest manufacturer of computers in China, Lenovo, refused to make comment on the subject and revealed no information.
This discrepancy of information was created Monday, when the English written newspaper in China, The China Daily, reported from an unofficial source in Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that the Chinese government was planning on making the software come on a separate disk, or just installed in preliminary set-up files: it would be optional.
As telephone call after telephone call went into the Ministry, it turns out the speaker wasn’t speaking the truth, and they offered no backup of what he or she said. This means, as of right now, no plans are made to rescind the mandatory software.
A couple of days later, the Ministry contacted computer companies and told them that the software may be delivered in disk form, but must be installed as back-up files to the computer. This solidifies the Chinese’s stance; the software is on the system no matter what.
New controversy is boiling over this situation. One software company, called Solid Oak Software, is coming down hard on the two companies that programmed the Green Dam program, Jinhui Computer System Engineering and Dazheng Human Language Technology. Solid Oak claims that these two companies plagiarized a lot of their programming code for the Green Dam software. The two Chinese companies acknowledge the similarities, but deny any stealing or copying of Solid Oak’s programs.
Solid Oak is deciding whether or not to take legal action, and has sent numerous letters to urge HP and Dell to halt production of these computers with the Green Dam software installation.
This software has been proven to hold security bugs, and while developers are working on them, it’s hard to get everything. This will be as important a time as any for Chinese citizens and netizens to stay safe and protected online. An anonymous proxy will help them in their Internet ventures, and it could probably even get around the ridiculous blocks that will be instated. Staying anonymous under these peeping eyes is a greater necessity when, not only is a government watching you, but so is some software on your own computer.
