12 ms·

The Great Firewall, China’s New Cybersecurity Law

63 points by Parbeyjr 10y ago

signalP 10y ago
It's always been fun to read comments below a China-related post, as a Chinese. 1. For me, our government is always trying to do some kind of lazy policy. 2. Try not to think of it in so-called Western way. China is a developing country and new web users are less-educated compared to those from the west(I have to say). That's why the web rumors are becoming a huge issue in China and people are actually supporting this kind of law. 3. Like almost all the users on HN can't understand people voting on Trump. Don't judge it right or wrong. Try understand their point of view.
hash-set 10y ago
The free people of the world need to be working on helping China get out from under censorship instead of letting our corporations abet this crime.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  Sadly, a large chunk of the free people of the world just decided that they want a world that's more like China in many respects, and they want leaders who are really committed to not telling corporations what they can't do as a matter of principle. :( And of course these two goals are totally contradictory, but based on their campaign promises it will be the worst of both worlds. Happy Friday everyone!
- balabaster 10y ago
  You don't think censorship, propaganda and flooding out the truth with lies happens in the West? Give your head a shake. Shit like this happens every time you turn on CNN, Fox News, BBC News, Al Jazeera and any number of other "news" outlets. You assume you're free and uncensored, but really you're just the product of the propaganda and media bias you buy into and are part of the echo chamber of that bias. Sure, China is likely doing some despicable things. Abhorrent things. Don't kid yourself that exactly the same shit isn't happening every day in the West. We're all subject to it, we're all victims of it and we all propagate it. Stop yourself and ask yourself this: How much of the shit I believe is actually true? How much of it can I prove from first principles and how much of it is just built on things I've learned through the media or the biases of other people I trust? How much of what they believe is true? What can you really trust? Who is really free?
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    It is not black or white! China is dark grey and the west is a lighter gray. It is a fallacy to think in binary, right wrong, good evil, there is nothing like that. I can guarantee you that both China and the USA have corruption, but the police and military aren't running brothels in the USA like they are in china. Yes, west and china has propaganda, but one more resembles North Korean ridiculousness than the other. The west and china both have pollution, but one is much worse than the other.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    This comment was so spot-on I had to upvote the parent post to make your reply more visible. I recently got in a discussion with a friend that wants to start a minimalist news outlet in order to focus on the truth and only the truth, but we still can't decide what exactly that means. Where do we get our information from? Can we trust that source? How much of a bias is automatically assumed by being Western and reading Western news? What's the "correct" proportion of "liberal" and "conservative" news sources? How can we divorce the information we choose to publish from our biases and opinions? We still don't know.
    - balabaster 10y ago
      The only way you can do that is to employ real investigative journalists yourself, chase down the cold hard facts - CSI style and then build the case for every story from first principles with absolutely no bias. The question is, can you find journalists that can stand outside those facts and paint a compelling picture of what they are without bias? Would you be able to raise enough of an income to pay those journalists what they would be worth? Could you get your news out there without it being crowded out by the propaganda machine at large? It's a worthy idea, truly. Is it realistic? When you're up against the entire media establishment? You're going to be a very lonely salmon swimming up the world's largest waterfall - that's if you even manage to keep yourself out of the kind of trouble that you will bring upon yourself and keep yourself out of jail or perhaps even worse. Perhaps you'd end up having to defect to another country or live in a foreign embassy to retain some semblance of freedom. I realize that's an extremely fatalist and cynical stance to take, but that's basically what you're up against. I have zero understanding what would need to be undertaken in order to get there, I have no understanding of marketing or funding. I don't have the first clue how you would begin to take such a stand. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken.
paradite 10y ago
Yes, this is bad. It goes against human rights, freedom of speech, globalisation and many of the principles of the free world. We know this because it is what the media is telling us everyday 24/7. And there is no way that intelligent and decent Chinese people support this, right? Whoever that support such censorship which clearly violates the principles that we hold so dear must be uneducated and uninformed deplorables, right? Oh now I see that you are being sarcastic and I am offended, let me give you a lesson on freedom of speech by downvoting you.
- CodeMage 10y ago
  > Yes, this is bad. It goes against human rights, freedom of speech, globalisation and many of the principles of the free world. I find it very interesting that you're putting the globalization in the same group as human rights and freedom of speech. > We know this because it is what the media is telling us everyday 24/7. No. We know it goes against freedom of speech by definition. We know it goes against human rights, because suppressing freedom of speech is one of the main ways to get away with violating human rights. We know being able to get away with violating human rights is bad, because we don't want that to happen to us. You don't need to blame media on what can be explained by reasoning and empathy. Media has enough to be blamed for already. > And there is no way that intelligent and decent Chinese people support this, right? Of course there is. History is full of intelligent and decent people supporting decisions that range from distasteful to downright horrific. Being intelligent has little to do with this kind of decision. "Decent", on the other hand, is hard to define and agree on. At best, it's a really low bar to clear. > Whoever that support such censorship which clearly violates the principles that we hold so dear must be uneducated and uninformed deplorables, right? That would obviously follow if your previous statement were correct. > Oh now I see that you are being sarcastic and I am offended, let me give you a lesson on freedom of speech by downvoting you. You seem to be under a false impression that freedom of speech means freedom of consequences. Just like freedom of speech doesn't protect you from legal consequences of falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, it won't protect you from the court of public opinion. I consider any downvotes to your comment rightfully earned, because it oversimplifies a very complex topic without adding anything to the discussion of it. Worse, the tone of it leads me to believe that it is meant to actively discourage discussion and disagreement.
lowpro 10y ago
It seems people sometimes forget China is still an extremely authoritarian state. 2 of my good friends moved here from China a few years ago, they never want to go back, there's very little freedom. I often wonder if laws like these will pressure people not directly affected to do something about it. Then I remember how so much of history was caused by people doing nothing, and I suspect that will continue to happen into the future. Long term, I don't see China giving up control of anything, only getting tighter restrictions. I just hope this doesn't result in too big a war in the future.
- avh02 10y ago
  "2 of my good friends moved here" 'here' - the internet is not one place. I'm going to assume US, but come on dude.
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    not china is pretty obvious, you don't need much more.
danieltillett 10y ago
We operate a Chinese server in China for our Chinese customers, but the Great Firewall make it almost impossible to maintain it from outside China. The speed of any ssh connection is so low that any command that outputs more than a few characters to the screen make the experience worse than dial-up via a GSM modem. It will literally take me minutes to ls -l a directory.
- doctorshady 10y ago
  If you don't mind me asking, why don't you set it up with a dial-up modem? Termination prices for Chinese phone calls are extremely cheap (meaning besides the obvious point of cheaper calls, you'll easily get higher quality routes that're more likely to reliably pass modem traffic), and SSH, let alone any sort of encrypted point to point serial data, over a modem isn't particularly painful to use unless you're transferring large files.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    The server is a dedicate machine located in a professional colo. I am not going to be able to put a dial-up into that server. The problem is getting into China from outside - not to the server once inside the Great Firewall.
    - doctorshady 10y ago
      Ahh, it's one of those datacenters that only give you ethernet? I know some will let you bring in POTS/DSx/whatever else, but they can be a little uncommon. My point was though, if it's as bad as you describe, an international phone call to the server would probably be cheap enough to work.
- lunaru 10y ago
  May I ask what provider you're using and how your process was for obtaining the license? We're in the same boat -- Chinese customers are just much better served if we can get a physical server in the country, but I've heard the experience is traumatic.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Look, we all know this sucks. It's no surprise to us that governments the world over are hell-bent on mass surveillance... BUT, we shouldn't also disregard the historical and cultural contexts. China has always maintained a very strict command of its people to preserve state stability. Just ask the scholars from the Qin Dynasty. Oh that's right, you can't, because their writings were burned while dissenters were buried alive in mass graves. You can rail all you want about totalitarianism and mass surveillance from the comfort of a Hacker News thread, but let's be honest here: if a several-thousand-year history is any guide, China will likely move in the direction of more surveillance and control, not less.
lunaru 10y ago
I'm not a foreign policy politician and never plan to be, but I wonder if the US has been engaging in conversations with China in the wrong way on this subject. My guess is that we've been approaching this from a moral standpoint (human rights, freedom of speech, etc) but those arguments have never budged China. I can't think of one issue where we've been able to convince them of policy from a "rights" or "morals" perspective. In this regard, they'll go at their own pace. In the meantime, one of the US's strongest industries (software/internet) stands to lose a ton of competitive ground with the rising middle class in China consuming their own domestic version of the internet. It's already created behemoths like Alibaba and Tencent with genuine innovation (e.g. WeChat Payments). Perhaps if we removed the moral arguments and simply attempted a trade agreement (even if somewhat compromised) we'd get some ground on getting US internet businesses into China. That'll probably have a greater effect on openness in the long run than sitting from an exiled position lobbing moral arguments over the Great Firewall.
- CodeMage 10y ago
  Maybe it's just me, but I find that there's a strong parallel between that argument and the reason why many people voted for Trump. And I could try to give you my own views on why that might be morally questionable, but Joe Scalzi already did that way better than I could ever hope to: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/11/10/the-cinemax-theory-of-racism/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/11/10/the-cinemax-theory-of-...
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  So on the one hand we have the privacy oriented people in the West saying "Don't use Facebook, Google, Twitter, because they're tracking you, eroding your privacy, and have a mains-pressure tap running off to the NSA". And on the other hand we are criticising China for blocking these same services. This leads in to other avenues of discussion about protectionist economic policy Chinese internet services must store their data in China, vs. a general displeasure in foreign ownership of residential property in the West, and I feel under-qualified to write about, and too under-educated to express in a coherent fashion.
  - 10y ago

63 points by Parbeyjr 10y ago

It's always been fun to read comments below a China-related post, as a Chinese. 1. For me, our government is always trying to do some kind of lazy policy. 2. Try not to think of it in so-called Western way. China is a developing country and new web users are less-educated compared to those from the west(I have to say). That's why the web rumors are becoming a huge issue in China and people are actually supporting this kind of law. 3. Like almost all the users on HN can't understand people voting on Trump. Don't judge it right or wrong. Try understand their point of view.

hash-set 10y ago

The free people of the world need to be working on helping China get out from under censorship instead of letting our corporations abet this crime.

mwfunk 10y ago
Sadly, a large chunk of the free people of the world just decided that they want a world that's more like China in many respects, and they want leaders who are really committed to not telling corporations what they can't do as a matter of principle. :( And of course these two goals are totally contradictory, but based on their campaign promises it will be the worst of both worlds. Happy Friday everyone!
balabaster 10y ago
You don't think censorship, propaganda and flooding out the truth with lies happens in the West? Give your head a shake. Shit like this happens every time you turn on CNN, Fox News, BBC News, Al Jazeera and any number of other "news" outlets. You assume you're free and uncensored, but really you're just the product of the propaganda and media bias you buy into and are part of the echo chamber of that bias. Sure, China is likely doing some despicable things. Abhorrent things. Don't kid yourself that exactly the same shit isn't happening every day in the West. We're all subject to it, we're all victims of it and we all propagate it. Stop yourself and ask yourself this: How much of the shit I believe is actually true? How much of it can I prove from first principles and how much of it is just built on things I've learned through the media or the biases of other people I trust? How much of what they believe is true? What can you really trust? Who is really free?
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  It is not black or white! China is dark grey and the west is a lighter gray. It is a fallacy to think in binary, right wrong, good evil, there is nothing like that. I can guarantee you that both China and the USA have corruption, but the police and military aren't running brothels in the USA like they are in china. Yes, west and china has propaganda, but one more resembles North Korean ridiculousness than the other. The west and china both have pollution, but one is much worse than the other.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  This comment was so spot-on I had to upvote the parent post to make your reply more visible. I recently got in a discussion with a friend that wants to start a minimalist news outlet in order to focus on the truth and only the truth, but we still can't decide what exactly that means. Where do we get our information from? Can we trust that source? How much of a bias is automatically assumed by being Western and reading Western news? What's the "correct" proportion of "liberal" and "conservative" news sources? How can we divorce the information we choose to publish from our biases and opinions? We still don't know.
  - balabaster 10y ago
    The only way you can do that is to employ real investigative journalists yourself, chase down the cold hard facts - CSI style and then build the case for every story from first principles with absolutely no bias. The question is, can you find journalists that can stand outside those facts and paint a compelling picture of what they are without bias? Would you be able to raise enough of an income to pay those journalists what they would be worth? Could you get your news out there without it being crowded out by the propaganda machine at large? It's a worthy idea, truly. Is it realistic? When you're up against the entire media establishment? You're going to be a very lonely salmon swimming up the world's largest waterfall - that's if you even manage to keep yourself out of the kind of trouble that you will bring upon yourself and keep yourself out of jail or perhaps even worse. Perhaps you'd end up having to defect to another country or live in a foreign embassy to retain some semblance of freedom. I realize that's an extremely fatalist and cynical stance to take, but that's basically what you're up against. I have zero understanding what would need to be undertaken in order to get there, I have no understanding of marketing or funding. I don't have the first clue how you would begin to take such a stand. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken.

paradite 10y ago

Yes, this is bad. It goes against human rights, freedom of speech, globalisation and many of the principles of the free world. We know this because it is what the media is telling us everyday 24/7. And there is no way that intelligent and decent Chinese people support this, right? Whoever that support such censorship which clearly violates the principles that we hold so dear must be uneducated and uninformed deplorables, right? Oh now I see that you are being sarcastic and I am offended, let me give you a lesson on freedom of speech by downvoting you.

CodeMage 10y ago
> Yes, this is bad. It goes against human rights, freedom of speech, globalisation and many of the principles of the free world. I find it very interesting that you're putting the globalization in the same group as human rights and freedom of speech. > We know this because it is what the media is telling us everyday 24/7. No. We know it goes against freedom of speech by definition. We know it goes against human rights, because suppressing freedom of speech is one of the main ways to get away with violating human rights. We know being able to get away with violating human rights is bad, because we don't want that to happen to us. You don't need to blame media on what can be explained by reasoning and empathy. Media has enough to be blamed for already. > And there is no way that intelligent and decent Chinese people support this, right? Of course there is. History is full of intelligent and decent people supporting decisions that range from distasteful to downright horrific. Being intelligent has little to do with this kind of decision. "Decent", on the other hand, is hard to define and agree on. At best, it's a really low bar to clear. > Whoever that support such censorship which clearly violates the principles that we hold so dear must be uneducated and uninformed deplorables, right? That would obviously follow if your previous statement were correct. > Oh now I see that you are being sarcastic and I am offended, let me give you a lesson on freedom of speech by downvoting you. You seem to be under a false impression that freedom of speech means freedom of consequences. Just like freedom of speech doesn't protect you from legal consequences of falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, it won't protect you from the court of public opinion. I consider any downvotes to your comment rightfully earned, because it oversimplifies a very complex topic without adding anything to the discussion of it. Worse, the tone of it leads me to believe that it is meant to actively discourage discussion and disagreement.

lowpro 10y ago

It seems people sometimes forget China is still an extremely authoritarian state. 2 of my good friends moved here from China a few years ago, they never want to go back, there's very little freedom. I often wonder if laws like these will pressure people not directly affected to do something about it. Then I remember how so much of history was caused by people doing nothing, and I suspect that will continue to happen into the future. Long term, I don't see China giving up control of anything, only getting tighter restrictions. I just hope this doesn't result in too big a war in the future.

avh02 10y ago
"2 of my good friends moved here" 'here' - the internet is not one place. I'm going to assume US, but come on dude.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  not china is pretty obvious, you don't need much more.

danieltillett 10y ago

We operate a Chinese server in China for our Chinese customers, but the Great Firewall make it almost impossible to maintain it from outside China. The speed of any ssh connection is so low that any command that outputs more than a few characters to the screen make the experience worse than dial-up via a GSM modem. It will literally take me minutes to ls -l a directory.

doctorshady 10y ago
If you don't mind me asking, why don't you set it up with a dial-up modem? Termination prices for Chinese phone calls are extremely cheap (meaning besides the obvious point of cheaper calls, you'll easily get higher quality routes that're more likely to reliably pass modem traffic), and SSH, let alone any sort of encrypted point to point serial data, over a modem isn't particularly painful to use unless you're transferring large files.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  The server is a dedicate machine located in a professional colo. I am not going to be able to put a dial-up into that server. The problem is getting into China from outside - not to the server once inside the Great Firewall.
  - doctorshady 10y ago
    Ahh, it's one of those datacenters that only give you ethernet? I know some will let you bring in POTS/DSx/whatever else, but they can be a little uncommon. My point was though, if it's as bad as you describe, an international phone call to the server would probably be cheap enough to work.
lunaru 10y ago
May I ask what provider you're using and how your process was for obtaining the license? We're in the same boat -- Chinese customers are just much better served if we can get a physical server in the country, but I've heard the experience is traumatic.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

Look, we all know this sucks. It's no surprise to us that governments the world over are hell-bent on mass surveillance... BUT, we shouldn't also disregard the historical and cultural contexts. China has always maintained a very strict command of its people to preserve state stability. Just ask the scholars from the Qin Dynasty. Oh that's right, you can't, because their writings were burned while dissenters were buried alive in mass graves. You can rail all you want about totalitarianism and mass surveillance from the comfort of a Hacker News thread, but let's be honest here: if a several-thousand-year history is any guide, China will likely move in the direction of more surveillance and control, not less.

lunaru 10y ago

I'm not a foreign policy politician and never plan to be, but I wonder if the US has been engaging in conversations with China in the wrong way on this subject. My guess is that we've been approaching this from a moral standpoint (human rights, freedom of speech, etc) but those arguments have never budged China. I can't think of one issue where we've been able to convince them of policy from a "rights" or "morals" perspective. In this regard, they'll go at their own pace. In the meantime, one of the US's strongest industries (software/internet) stands to lose a ton of competitive ground with the rising middle class in China consuming their own domestic version of the internet. It's already created behemoths like Alibaba and Tencent with genuine innovation (e.g. WeChat Payments). Perhaps if we removed the moral arguments and simply attempted a trade agreement (even if somewhat compromised) we'd get some ground on getting US internet businesses into China. That'll probably have a greater effect on openness in the long run than sitting from an exiled position lobbing moral arguments over the Great Firewall.

CodeMage 10y ago
Maybe it's just me, but I find that there's a strong parallel between that argument and the reason why many people voted for Trump. And I could try to give you my own views on why that might be morally questionable, but Joe Scalzi already did that way better than I could ever hope to: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/11/10/the-cinemax-theory-of-racism/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/11/10/the-cinemax-theory-of-...
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
So on the one hand we have the privacy oriented people in the West saying "Don't use Facebook, Google, Twitter, because they're tracking you, eroding your privacy, and have a mains-pressure tap running off to the NSA". And on the other hand we are criticising China for blocking these same services. This leads in to other avenues of discussion about protectionist economic policy Chinese internet services must store their data in China, vs. a general displeasure in foreign ownership of residential property in the West, and I feel under-qualified to write about, and too under-educated to express in a coherent fashion.
- 10y ago