5 ms·

a program which marks the bleakest moment yet in the history of the Internet Writes someone from the other side of the Great Firewall.

• tty 13y ago
  What an insightful contribution.
• zalzane 13y ago
  The only thing more terrifying than the great firewall is a construct with the same purpose that doesn't block internet access, but silently lets the government know when youre likely to be the kind of person who steps out of line.
  • panacea 13y ago
    It's all rotten to the core. I honestly think the method for defeating fascism, the blue meanies, is sustained whimsy and fantasy. Block their rigid methodologies with simply enjoying life and giving them the middle finger as they sit in dark rooms poring over the details of our lives. Cave dwelling sickos.
  • im3w1l 13y ago
    It depends on how numerous the threat is. Silently disappearing is useful for a small highly organized enemy, but for preventing large scale unorganized rioting, restricting the information flow is probably better.
  • etherael 13y ago
    I feel quite ashamed to admit this now, but when I was much younger and had less scruples, I had a consulting role with an elite private school in a well to do suburb of Melbourne in Australia that had chronic problems with students accessing material that violated the school's internet usage policy. They had experimented with many, many blacklists and blocking solutions before, but with little success. The problem was that the kids were smart enough to know that they could just keep trying random sites until they got through the simplistic measures that flat blocklists were taking, and it was just a matter of time before they'd finally find something that wasn't in a list and get through. I came up with the bright idea of turning the blocking off, and turning the blocklist into a honeypot regex matcher in the squid logs and deep packet inspection on accessed urls. Now any attempts to circumvent the rules would invisibly tripwire a sysadmin or staff member to take administrative and or disciplinary action on the students. I'm told they had no more violations after that, I have my doubts mind you, but not about whether it was a more effective form of control. It forced them to self censor so big brother didn't have to do it for them, I think that's the real goal of pervasive permanent surveillance, even if you're not being watched, you can't be certain, so you'd best watch yourself.
• bionerd 13y ago
  You can't take seriously any kind of propaganda no matter what political extreme it comes from.
• Breakthrough 13y ago
  While I agree it was a bit odd to read this coming from someone in China (given the state of their own internet), I'm as surprised as you are to have read this. However, you have to read between the lines: > How do we make sense of the fact that the market and the state colluded in the abuse of private information via what represents the backbone of many modern day infrastructures? [...] How do we understand the one-sided cyber attack accusations the U.S. has poured upon China in the past few months? After I read those two questions, I realized, there was a difference. People in China know about the firewall. Sure, they have no choice, but the government isn't going behind their backs or allowing them unrestricted internet access and penalizing those who access "disallowed" content. And I do, for one, agree with that last question; I hardly could believe that the US was just taking cyberattacks from China for years without at least attempting to get some revenge (and indeed, I know the US has the resources to fight back). That being said, I admit I did laugh a bit to myself at this part: > this force is acting in an unconstitutional manner and entirely contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights And that's when I started reading in-between the lines, because half of it's the truth, and half of it's probably state-ordered propaganda. The only difference this time is that this propaganda has some truth to it.
  • glurgh 13y ago
    I realized, there was a difference. People in China know about the firewall. That's the part they know about. Political dissenters in China are actively censored, suppressed, imprisoned, spied upon - systematic efforts to access overseas email accounts of dissidents and the personal computers of journalists outside of China have also been reported. So the government is most certainly 'going behind their backs' and doing a great deal more. But my point wasn't really to discuss the ways in which China isn't actually an open democratic society - everyone knows that. I usually hesitate to use the word 'propaganda' since it tends to be broadly over-applied to things like 'US Congressperson says a stupid thing' which are just 'someone saying a stupid thing' rather than propaganda. But this particular item is clearly a piece of hypocritically indignant state-sponsored propaganda. There's a great deal to talk about regarding the NSA surveillance programs - I just have a really hard time imagining how this sort of piece is a useful or interesting starting point for any such discussion.
  • 13y ago
• teawithcarl 13y ago
  The writer is an official (propaganda) editorial writer. It's important to understand Xinhua and CCTV are official mouthpieces of the CCP.
  • daywalker 13y ago
    And some people call the NYTimes 'Pravda on the Hudson'.