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China to Set Up ‘Security Offices’ Inside Internet Companies
- mtgx 11y agoWhat will the cops do? Shoot at cybercriminals?
- jacquesm 11y agoMake sure that everybody toes the line and if they don't report them to the prosecution who will then find some reason to make their lives miserable.
- braythwayt 11y agoThe “cops" will make sure that all the appropriate filters and processes are in place for the government to monitor its own citizens. They are there to enforce regulation on the companies, not on “cybercriminals.” Or to put it another way, operating an Internet company that fails to acts as a de-facto arm of the state’s surveillance and culture-control policy is itself a cyber-crime.
- toyg 11y agoAlso, people who are that close to the pipe are probably the ones most likely to know how to circumvent their rules, so a bit of extra monitoring on their day-to-day surely won't hurt.
- caskance 11y agoThe same thing any compliance officer does anywhere. Whether you have one because you're legally required to or you have one because you don't want to risk getting fined or sued isn't really a meaningful difference.
- codewithcheese 11y agoChina seems to be the crucible of some remarkable scary political and social innovation. I don't know what is more likely to happen: police stationed within a office will be ridiculously corrupt or it will totally kill any innovation or risk taking within the company.
- jacquesm 11y agoIt will certainly have a 'chilling effect' if there ever was. China is between a rock and a hard place. Either they're going to have to open up completely (which will result in a democracy and obliteration the group that has been running the country for decades) or they're going to have to try to contain the genie. They're obviously trying to do the latter but it will hurt them economically in the longer run. As long as there is visible progress my guess is the current batch of leaders will do just fine, as soon as progress stagnates there may be a more dramatic change.
- baseballmerpeak 11y agoTechnology leaders should “demonstrate positive energy in purifying cyberspace,” Xi said. It's not censorship; it's purification.
- alexro 11y agohasn't it been the same in China for 5000 years? What's different now? The only difference I can tell is China becoming the world empire and this is not because of the democracy.
- codewithcheese 11y agoMany things have changed in the last 5000 years. For one now most Chinese can easily communicate with people for all over the world.
- alexro 11y agoAnd what's that the china people will learn about other countries would make them act differently to the last 5000 years?
- iamthepieman 11y agoI guess they are finally catching up to the U.S. Edit: pre-preemptively editing because the original, though I believe correct, was too glib and snarky. Three Letter Agencies in the U.S. have long had commercial "partnerships"[0] with private companies including internet and telecom companies. As has come to light in the past couple years, these partnerships were not "just" about securing national interests and infrastructure. [0]https://www.nsa.gov/business/programs/ncsc.shtml https://www.nsa.gov/business/programs/ncsc.shtml
- zekevermillion 11y agoThe difference is one of degree only. Sometimes differences of degree can be big enough that they are effectively differences in type (e.g., jumping off a stool vs. jumping off a building; popping one pill vs taking the whole bottle). In this case, I wonder if there is anything fundamentally different about the US or US people that would resist a deployment of the security state to the degree that China has deployed. Or, given similar large-scale social unrest, would we also go along with the program? Is there an equilibrium here with J. Edgar Hoover on one end, and Thomas Jefferson on the other? Or, are we sliding down a one-way slope toward a totalitarian state?
- caskance 11y agoYou are missing the point. As far as digital surveillance goes, the US already does much more than China.
- zekevermillion 11y agoI would say that we do less, but we do it much more effectively. But then, I only know what I read in the news, so to speak.
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- okasaki 11y agoAt least they're open and honest about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
- codewithcheese 11y agoInteresting map seems to indicate NSA is spying domestically as much as they spy on China
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- gobengo 11y agoFirst thing I looked for was whether someone had shared this link yet. :)
- jebblue 11y agoWhen the US gets close to election time and there is at least the chance of a conservative win in the White House; the Chinese government gets worried and defensive. They will probably remove the police after a couple of years and the new president (conservative or liberal) has settled in.
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoThe same way the Great Firewall went down during Clinton or Obama? Come on, don't be naive. This is the status quo in China and has NOTHING to do with the USA. Stop blaming the failings of other nations on the US.
- rdlecler1 11y agoPartnerships with major Chinese companies now introduces new counterparty risk if that relationship can be leveraged as a back door. Interesting to see how that effects large U.S. Companies working in China. Long term, this can't be good for the country.
- ZoeZoeBee 11y agoMinistry Of Truth, Hard at it again
- jqm 11y ago"demonstrate positive energy in purifying cyberspace" I think I'm going to have that put on t-shirt.
- codeshaman 11y agoA very sad thing. I don't think the early hackers writing GPL code envisioned this turn of events. Most of those Internet companies would not exist if it weren't for the free and open source software that they run on. Instead of 'liberating' people and bringing them 'freedom', the free sofware has the undesired effect of creating the Supreme Big Brother. We are "Hacker news" here, we should be very worried about this - the early hacker's visions are being killed by the hour. How can we win back the dream ?
- dmihal 11y agoI'm confused, what does GPL have to do with China's restrictions on the internet?
- codeshaman 11y agoWell, it doesn't, but then deep down, it does :). The point I was trying to make is that GPL and free software in general is the manifestation of a deeper idealistic dream - a society in which collaboration and sharing makes people free and everyone wins. Free to make their own choices, to do what they want, free from any form of control. That dream is what created most of the Internet, but now it's being hijacked by people who've contributed nothing... And that is the sad part.
- tobltobs 11y agoAre you talking about the NSA or China?
- krapp 11y agoThe only thing free software is intended to liberate people from is closed-source binaries and proprietary code. If governments choose to use GPL code to spy on and oppress their people, that's perfectly within the spirit of free software, as long as they respect the users' freedoms regarding the source code while doing so.
- codeshaman 11y ago
- lectrick 11y agoThis is all a bid to control information. We should airdrop millions of copies of a Chinese translation of "Fahrenheit 451" all over China... http://ebookbees.com/fahrenheit-451-free-ebook/ http://ebookbees.com/fahrenheit-451-free-ebook/