great firewall – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Senator Warner’s RESTRICT Act Is Designed To Create The Great Firewall Of America

from the we-become-what-we-fear dept

Earlier this month, we wrote about Mark Warner’s RESTRICT Act, mainly in the context of how it appeared to be kneejerk legislating in response to the moral panic around TikTok.

Despite the bill being out for a few weeks, over the last few days, some of the discussion around it has gone viral, in particular the claims that VPN users “risk a 20-year jail sentence” under the bill. Senator Warner’s office has brushed aside these concerns, while somewhat bizarrely admitting that the bill is really designed to be something of a bill of attainder against any foreign company Mark Warner doesn’t like.

“Under the terms of the bill, someone must be engaged in ‘sabotage or subversion’ of communications technology in the U.S., causing ‘catastrophic effects’ on U.S. critical infrastructure, or ‘interfering in, or altering the result’ of a federal election in order for criminal penalties to apply,” Warner’s communications director, Rachel Cohen, said.

“The bill is squarely aimed at companies like Kaspersky, Huawei and TikTok that create systemic risks to the United States’ national security, not individual users,” she clarified.

To be clear: there’s basically no way this bill is going to be used against a person using a VPN. That is an exaggeration and something of a misreading of the bill. But, holy shit, does the bill still have massive, massive problems. It represents a ridiculously dangerous weapon in the hands of any US Presidential administration.

As Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason rightly noted, the language is so stupidly vague and so broadly worded that the whole “jailtime for VPN users” can be read into it in a non-crazy way.

But even if we take Warner’s spokesperson at her word and grant the claim that it’s not going to be used to jail people for using a VPN, that doesn’t actually make the bill any better. It’s absolutely terrible and shows a lack of understanding about how any of this works.

Tragically, this is becoming all too common with Senator Warner who, when he was elected to the Senate in 2009, was touted as a Senator who actually understood technology, based on his career in the mobile phone industry. But, in reality, he’s never been a tech guy. He was a political guy who did a bunch of venture investing in the mobile phone arena. And his lack of understanding of how technology actually works is evident from basically every tech bill he’s introduced.

He was on the wrong side of the encryption issue, he’s on the wrong side on Section 230, and for a few years now has been pushing a disastrous and dangerous plan called the SAFE TECH Act, which is a full frontal attack on the open internet. For what it’s worth, he just recently reintroduced the SAFE TECH Act, and I’d been meaning to write about that, but there hasn’t been enough time since so much other stupid stuff is going on, including this nonsense around the RESTRICT Act.

The RESTRICT Act has similarities to the SAFE TECH Act, to the point that I wonder if it’s written by the same legislative aid. Both bills are ridiculously broadly worded in a manner that is inconsistent with reality. Just as the RESTRICT Act required staffers to come out and say “no, no, it doesn’t criminalized VPNs,” with the SAFE TECH Act, Warner staffers had to run around and insist that it didn’t take away Section 230 from any site with ads (even though the poorly worded legislation certainly could be read that way).

You’d think that this might lead Warner to be more careful, but he seems committed to the bit of writing stupidly broad, vaguely worded bills that would create a huge mess, and then attacking those who criticize those bills (this he has in common with Senator Blumenthal, who similarly is unwilling to consider that his own bills might be poorly drafted).

In the case of the RESTRICT Act, we’ve already highlighted that any attempt to ban TikTok almost certainly violates the 1st Amendment. Warner’s bill does little to try to address that, but gets around it by… giving unprecedented, ridiculous authority and power to whoever is in the White House, to effectively ban any technology or service they deem to pose “an unacceptable risk.”

As always, judge any such bill as to how it would be used by the worst President you can think of.

The vagueness in language is kind of stunning. The bill authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to “identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate” situations “to address any risk” where the Secretary alone decides that the technology “poses an undue risk” of a wide variety of things with vague and scary sounding terms around national security and critical infrastructure, but also including this fun catch-all at the end:

otherwise poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the safety of United States persons.

That’s a pretty big subjective standard.

And, while the bill says that the Secretary should publish an explanation of the decision, they’re also allowed to hide it by shouting “national security!” Which, you know, is already abused like crazy.

The bill also allows the President to “compel divestiture” of any company that is deemed to be such a risk.

There is nothing even remotely approaching due process or consideration of Constitutional rights. Basically every foreign country will look at this bill and immediately scream that it will be used and abused in a protectionist manner. Warner is kinda blatant about this as it literally lists out which industries he’s trying to protect.

The worries about the VPN come from the penalties part of the bill, which say:

It shall be unlawful for a person to violate, attempt to violate, conspire to violate, or cause a violation of any regulation, order, direction, mitigation measure, prohibition, or other authorization or directive issued under this Act, including any of the unlawful acts described in paragraph (2)

Paragraph 2 is so broadly worded (sense a pattern here?) that it includes a ban on “counseling” or “approving” “any act” to try to get around a ban put in place under this bill.

There’s a lot more, but let’s call this out for what it is: a law worded so broadly that it will allow any administration to effectively designate any foreign company as some sort of “undue risk” and ban it, with little to no due process, and with some of the details kept secret. Anyone who thinks that won’t be massively abused simply has not been paying attention.

It’s jingoistic, propagandistic, authoritarian nonsense.

Indeed, it’s the kind of thing that we highlight when authoritarian countries with dictatorial leaders put something like it in place, and abuse it to protect friendly companies and shut down criticism. As such, even the fact that Senator Warner introduced this bill will be used by China, India, Russia, Iran, and many other countries as justification for their own leaders banning foreign companies they dislike.

Some point out that those countries would do the same thing anyway, which is true, but when doing so at least we can point out how terrible it is and highlight how it goes against basic concepts like due process and freedom. But the US going down that same dangerous path just completely throws that out the window.

What the RESTRICT Act creates, in a massive overreaction to concerns about Chinese-based companies, is a system for the US to create its own Great Firewall. Our attempt at pushing back on China only serves to make the US more like China, and stupidly bless their repressive and illiberal approach to banning foreign companies.

Warner, in fact, more or less admits all of this in an interview he gave to Russell Brandom at Rest of World. Brandom highlights just how anti-open internet and illiberal all of this is, and Warner’s response is basically “but China made us do it”:

But for me, it comes back to the hypocrisy of the Chinese government. China has prohibited American apps like Facebook and Google from their market for years. The Chinese version of Twitter is completely censored by the Chinese government.

So, because China takes a dictatorial, authoritarian, illiberal approach to the internet, so must the US?

It’s the worst kind of lawmaking: a severe overreaction to a potentially legitimate concern (though with little actual evidence to support the nature and scope of that concern), combined with a ridiculously powerful, likely unconstitutional bill that puts tremendous power in the hands of the administration with few limits (there is some ability for Congress to push back, but that’s unlikely to matter if the White House and Congress are on the same moral panic page).

In a reasonable world, people across the political spectrum would call out this monstrosity for what it is: a dangerous attack on freedom and openness, and a deep, cynical embrace of exactly that which Warner claims to fear.

Filed Under: banning apps, china, commerce secretary, great firewall, mark warner, moral panic, overreaction, restrict act, safe tech act
Companies: tiktok

The UK’s Online Safety Bill Would Be A Complete And Utter Disaster For An Open Internet

from the brexiting-the-internet dept

We already knew that the UK’s Online Safety Bill was going to be an utter disaster for the open internet, because that had been made clear early on. Last week, the government finally unveiled the latest version of the Online Safety Bill and it’s perhaps even worse than expected. It’s 225 pages of completely misunderstanding the internet, and thinking that if they just threaten companies to fix the internet, that will magically make the world work. Last year, when an initial draft was released, we noted that it was a near identical copy to the way that China’s Great Firewall initially worked, because it just sort of handwaves the idea that online service providers need to stop bad stuff… or else. And rather than recognize that’s a problem, the Online Safety Bill leans into it.

There’s a lot in this bill, and it’s going to take a while to dig through the whole thing and find all the many problems with it, but as UK lawyer Graham Smith highlights, the bill leans hard on giving the government the power to order websites to monitor and filter content.

Massive increase in Ofcom powers to require proactive monitoring by use of technology (S.116). Previously prohibited except for terrorism and CSEA. pic.twitter.com/OnG52rwis9

— Graham Smith  (@Cyberleagle) March 17, 2022

As that shows the regulator OFCOM will now have the power to order websites to use “proactive technology” (i.e., monitoring/filtering) to deal with illegal content, children’s online safety, and “fraudulent advertising.” Of course, anyone who knows anything about any of this would recognize the problems. How do you build a monitoring tool that recognizes “illegal content”? Or content that is a risk to children’s safety? It’s not like there’s some clear definition. Normally, to declare something illegal, you have to have a full adjudication. But here, the UK may be demanding that service providers just figure it out, and never get it wrong. That’s going to work out great.

As Smith notes, this is a complete switch from the EU’s rules that forbade general monitoring requirements. The UK, post-Brexit has gone in the opposite direction entirely, to now potentially mandating general monitoring requirements.

As UK open web activist Heather Burns notes, this is, in some ways, the UK trying to Brexit the internet. I recommend reading her entire article, as it (and another post she wrote) highlight how oddly nationalistic the Online Safety Bill is, positioning it as creating a uniquely British internet, at war with the evils of Silicon Valley (as opposed to the evils of the EU for regular Brexit). But the internet is a global tool, and creating a unique one for your own country misunderstands the entire purpose of an open internet.

But, perhaps even worse, like Brexit, it appears that the Online Safety Bill, like unfortunately too many internet regulation bills in the US and elsewhere, seems more driven by spite and petulance, than thinking through what makes good policy. It’s about playing the victim, because that riles people up in support, rather than figuring out what would actually be good.

The second aspect of the UK strategy to Brexit the Internet is a linguistic narrative of petulant, infantile victimhood at the hands of an other. The them. The evil external bogeyman responsible for all the ills of the world. That other used to be the EU. It’s now SiliconValleyWokeryNickCleggBigTech. That current narrative, now, is as false as the old one was then: the othering is the point.

But back to the more immediate issues of the bill. For years now, we’ve explained how the concept of a “duty of care” would be a disaster for the open internet, for a variety of reasons. First, it always leads to overzealous blocking to avoid any risk, second, it’s a completely subjective standard, meaning that failures require massively expensive litigation to figure out if you actually met your “duty of care” or not, and third it’s a meaningless phrase that sounds good to politicians (and the press and some silly academics) without giving companies anything concrete to actually do.

Finally, the enforcement mechanisms in the bill, again, remind one more of Chinese or Russian authoritarianism, where if you get something wrong, the UK now wants to throw tech execs in jail:

⚖️ The ‘tough’ announcement today is more criminal sanctions against tech executives — for failure to comply with Ofcom requests for information

This is pretty creepy, particularly in the context of Russia’s clampdown on free speech that included threatening tech execs. pic.twitter.com/XxFbgGNoN7

— Matthew Lesh (@matthewlesh) March 17, 2022

And, even worse, it says that you can get in trouble for keeping up content even if it’s legal. This is what is commonly referred to as “lawful, but awful” but the UK calls it “legal but harmful” content. And the Online Safety Bill will punish companies for allowing such content. Of course, to avoid such punishment, basically anything controversial is unlikely to be allowed on the British internet any more. Again, this is extremely reminiscent of the original Great Firewall of China, where the government would punish web services for allowing content that might make people sad.

Everything about this seems to have been written by people who have no idea how any of this works in practice, or who don’t seem to care that this will lead to a massive suppression of the ability to speak online. Like Brexit cut the UK off from the wider EU and all the benefits that brought, this is an attempt to wall off the UK from the wider internet… and all the benefits that brought. Good luck over there on your tiny disconnected island, UK. You’re going to need it.

Filed Under: brexit, duty of care, filters, free speech, great firewall, lawful but awful, legal but harmful, monitoring obligations, ofcom, online safety, online safety bill, surveillance, uk, upload filters

Tesla Urged Chinese Government To Censor Critics In China

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Tue, Jul 13th 2021 12:18pm - Karl Bode

Outside of the company’s unwavering fanboys, it’s fairly clear to most folks that the honeymoon phase of the planet’s relationship with Tesla is coming to a close. Whether it’s regulatory scrutiny of the company’s premature and often inaccurate self-driving claims, the loss of significant emissions credits in the US and Europe, frustration at the often stupid shit that comes out of Elon Musks’ mouth, legal issues related to the SolarCity acquisition, or major quality headaches related to the company’s solar installations and cars alike, the bloom has, as they say, fallen from the rose.

That also extends to China, where Tesla’s early successes appear to have hit a bit of a roadblock. Part of that roadblock recently emerged in the form of a massive recall of nearly every Tesla sold in China due to software issues. Responding to bipartisan US aggressiveness (see: TikTok), the Chinese government has also banned all Teslas from being used by government agencies, citing potential privacy natsec concerns. After initially rolling out the red carpet, Chinese officials have sharply shifted their tone over the better part of the last year.

As Bloomberg notes, genuine concerns about Tesla safety, government anger over Tesla hubris, and a souring US/China relationship appear to have fused into one big headache for the company:

“Tesla?s experience is ?a warning shot that they need to stay between the lines, and not be so flamboyant in their success,? said Bill Russo, a former Chrysler executive who?s now chief executive officer of Automobility Ltd., a Shanghai-based consultancy. ?You can?t be so far up front that you become arrogant in the way you conduct yourself.?…

Signals of a tougher stance toward Tesla came as early as February, when agencies including the State Administration for Market Regulation, China?s most important market watchdog, summoned executives to discuss what they said were quality and safety issues in Tesla vehicles, including reports of abnormal acceleration and battery fires. After the meeting, Tesla issued a statement so apologetic it verged on groveling, declaring it had ?sincerely accepted the guidance of government departments? and ?deeply reflected on shortcomings.”

To counter the shift, Tesla has engaged in a massive new PR push on social platforms, and some newfound groveling at the feet of Chinese authorities. But Bloomberg buries a troubling part of said groveling in a throwaway sentence halfway into the story. Namely the fact that Tesla went so far as to ask the Chinese government to use its immense censorship apparatus to censor company critics online:

Previously focused on state-run media, Tesla is now trying to build relationships with auto-industry publications and influencers on platforms such as Weibo and WeChat, for example by inviting them on factory tours, and conducting group ?discussion sessions? with policymakers, consumers, and media outlets. According to people familiar with the matter, it?s also complained to the government over what it sees as unwarranted attacks on social media, and asked Beijing to use its censorship powers to block some of the posts.”

Asking the government to censor online criticism of your products isn’t likely going to do much to shift public sentiment back in Tesla’s favor. Again, Tesla’s now facing what’s probably a combination of legitimate anger over the company’s documented hubris, exaggerated promises, and potential safety issues, fused with China’s over-arching policy goal of empowering its own electric car makers (Nio, Xpeng) and countering growing US animosity. Combined, they’ve resulted in a 50% drop in new Tesla orders in China over just the last few weeks.

I get the sense in the coming year that Tesla (and its unwavering devotees) will focus entirely on the latter (the government is unfairly targeting us for being American!) and less on the obvious need, both overseas and here in the States, for a dramatic fix for the company’s product quality issues, ridiculous hype, and less than flattering executive character flaws.

Filed Under: censorship, china, critics, elon musk, great firewall
Companies: tesla

China Warns Microsoft That LinkedIn Isn't Suppressing Enough Voices

from the now-that's-censorship dept

As a bunch of US lawmakers keep threatening new laws that would force websites to remove more content, we should note just how much such moves reflect what is happening in China. The NY Times reports that Microsoft is in hot water in China, because LinkedIn apparently has been too slow to block content that displeases the Chinese government. As the article notes, LinkedIn is the one major US social network that is allowed in China — but only if it follows China’s Great Firewall censorship rules.

If you’re not familiar with how that works, it’s not that the government tells you what to take down — it’s just that the government makes it clear that if you let something through that you shouldn’t, you’re going to hear about it, and risk punishment. And it appears that’s exactly what’s happened to Microsoft:

China?s internet regulator rebuked LinkedIn executives this month for failing to control political content, according to three people briefed on the matter. Though it isn?t clear precisely what material got the company into trouble, the regulator said it had found objectionable posts circulating in the period around an annual meeting of China?s lawmakers, said these people, who asked for anonymity because the issue isn?t public.

As a punishment, the people said, officials are requiring LinkedIn to perform a self-evaluation and offer a report to the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country?s internet regulator. The service was also forced to suspend new sign-ups of users inside China for 30 days, one of the people added, though that period could change depending on the administration?s judgment.

Or, Microsoft/LinkedIn could do the right thing and tell the Chinese government “sorry,” and just stop doing business in China. The NY Times article even notes that LinkedIn doesn’t even get that much usage in China. So why bother with this hassle in a way that makes the company look so bad?

Also, I’ll just note the grand irony of Microsoft doing this just a week or so after Microsoft’s President Brad Smith testified before Congress on how “technology companies” must support “democracy.” Of course, in that context, Smith was just doing it to attack Google and the open web. But, hey, as long as it can get money from China, apparently all that “democracy” stuff isn’t so important to Microsoft any more.

Filed Under: censorship, china, great firewall, social media
Companies: linkedin, microsoft

Tim Wu Joins The Ban TikTok Parade, Doesn't Clarify What The Ban Actually Accomplishes

from the fluff-and-nonsense dept

Thu, Aug 20th 2020 06:53am - Karl Bode

I’ve mentioned a few times that I don’t think the TikTok ban is coherent policy.

One, the majority of the politicians pearl clutching over the teen dancing app have been utterly absent from other privacy and security debates (say like U.S. network security flaws or the abuse of location data). In fact, many of them have actively undermined efforts to shore up U.S. privacy and security, whether we’re talking about the outright refusal to fund election security improvements, or repeated opposition to even the most basic of privacy laws for the modern era. Let’s be clear: a huge swath of these folks are simply engaged in performative, xenophobic politics and couldn’t care less about U.S. privacy and security.

Two, banning TikTok doesn’t actually accomplish much of anything. It doesn’t really really thwart Chinese intelligence, which could just as easily buy this data from an absolute ocean of barely regulated international adtech middlemen, obtain it from any one of a million hacked datasets available on the dark net, or steal it from the, you know, millions upon millions of “smart” and IOT devices we attach to our home and business networks with no security and reckless abandon. In full context of the U.S., where privacy and security standards are hot garbage, the idea that banning a Chinese teen dancing app does all that much is just silly.

That said, I remain surprised by the big names in tech policy who continue to believe the Trump administration’s sloppy and bizarre TikTok ban accomplishes much of anything. Case in point: Columbia law professor Tim Wu, whose pioneering work on net neutrality and open platforms I greatly admire, penned a new piece for the New York Times arguing that a “ban on Tiktok is overdue.” Effectively, Wu argues that because China routinely bans U.S. services via its great firewall, turnabout is fair play:

“For many years, laboring under the vain expectation that China, succumbing to inexorable world-historical forces, would become more like us, Western democracies have allowed China to exploit this situation. We have accepted, with only muted complaints, Chinese censorship and blocking of content from abroad while allowing Chinese companies to explore and exploit whatever markets it likes. Few foreign companies are allowed to reach Chinese citizens with ideas or services, but the world is fully open to China?s online companies.”

Wu proceeds to insist that refusing to behave like China and ban their products in retaliation is somehow a sucker’s bet:

“Some think that it is a tragic mistake for the United States to violate the principles of internet openness that were pioneered in this country. But there is also such a thing as being a sucker. If China refuses to follow the rules of the open internet, why continue to give it access to internet markets around the world?”

This being 2020, I suppose I’m not surprised to see the guy who invented the idea of net neutrality advocate that the United States begin behaving more like one of the most repressive countries on the planet in regards to technological openness. The piece doesn’t spend much time (read: none whatsoever) pondering what becomes of the millions of young U.S. content creators who’ll suddenly lose their platform or be shoveled off to Facebook’s dull TikTok clone.

I don’t agree, but at least understand why retaliation is the default instinct for so many folks on this subject given China’s longstanding behavior. My problem, again, is that Wu’s piece lacks any mention of what this singular ban of a teen dancing app actually accomplishes. So we ban TikTok, then what? Do we ban every single Chinese-made “smart” television in the country (TCL has a 16.5% market share)? Every single IOT device? Every crappy Chinese-made router? All global adtech? They’re all technically the same type of threat, and if you’re freaking about one of them, shouldn’t you be advocating for a ban of all of them?

Many TikTok hyperventilators would immediately say, “yes!” We’re to ignore that American governance can’t even currently tie its own shoes, much less help its citizens obtain food, shelter, and aid during an avoidable health crisis. A ban on all domestic Chinese hardware, software, adtech, apps, and services (something you’d need to do to truly follow this retaliatory logic to its ultimate conclusion) is likely impossible. Context matters. And in full context, American security and privacy standards are a dumpster fire, TikTok is among the very least of our worries, and a much broader view of our security and privacy problems is necessary.

If we genuinely wanted to protect U.S. consumer data from bad actors, we’d be funding a major expansion in election security reform. We’d stop kneecapping and under-funding our privacy regulators. We’d pass a basic privacy law for the internet era. We’d hold adtech, telecom, and “big tech” companies genuinely accountable for violating consumer trust. We’d shore up the integrity of our communications networks. We’d help develop and implement security standards for IOT devices. We’d build a coherent framework of policy that protects consumers and businesses from all threats, not just Chinese apps.

To be abundantly clear we aren’t doing this. We’re not even anywhere close to doing this. Instead, we’ve spent the last month freaking out over a teen dancing app (when we weren’t busy trying to ruin encryption). Despite the growing list of big policy names that somehow think this proposal makes sense, I still don’t see the point.

Filed Under: apps, bans, china, data, great firewall, tim wu
Companies: bytedance, tiktok

State Department Announces That Great Firewall For The US; Blocks Chinese Apps & Equipment

from the this-is-not-good dept

Forget banning TikTok, the Trump State Department just suggested it wants to basically ban China from the internet. Rather than promoting an open internet and the concept of openness, it appears that under this administration we’re slamming the gates shut and setting up the Great American Firewall for the internet. Under the guise of what it calls the Clean Network to Safeguard America, last night Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a program that is full of vague statements, that could, in practice, fragment the internet.

This is incredibly disappointing on multiple levels. While other countries — especially China, but also Iran and Russia — have created their own fragmented internet, the US used to stand for an open internet across the globe. Indeed, for whatever complaints we had about the State Department during the Obama administration (and we had many complaints), its commitment to an open internet was very strong and meaningful. That’s clearly now gone. The “Clean Network to Safeguard America” consists of five programs that can be summed up as “fuck you China.”

So, take the talk of banning Huawei and ZTE on the networking side, and the rumblings about banning TikTok on the app side, and multiply by everything.

I certainly understand the arguments that certain Chinese companies and technologies may be conducting surveillance on Americans (even though investigations into both Huawei and TikTok haven’t shown anything out of the ordinary), but this approach is incredibly short-sighted. First of all, it goes against the basic American stance on openness, especially regarding the internet. That just damages what little moral high ground we had left to stand on regarding the internet.

Second, all this does is justify the Chinese approach. Make no mistake about it, China will turn around and use this to justify its (much worse) practices, by saying “look, even the Americans filter out “foreign” apps and services.” Giving the Chinese ammo like that is so incredibly short-sighted.

Third, so much of American technology is still made in China — including pretty much every electronic gadget and IOT and “smart” device that fills everyone’s homes these days. This is going to backfire in so many ways. The trade war and tariffs have already hit parts of the technology industry hard, and this move will certainly lead to retaliation in all sorts of ways — potentially having a massive impact on American firms being able to make use of factories and technology from China. That will have ripple effects throughout the economy and will likely limit certain innovation possibilities. Indeed, this may even allow Chinese firms to justify abusing technology to do the kinds of surveillance people are now freaked out about.

Fourth, it will allow China to expand its influence elsewhere in the world, showing how the US can’t be trusted and plays favorites with its own companies through protectionism.

In short, this is the kind of short-sighted policy that we’re all too familiar with from the Trump Administration, but which will do significant damage to the US in the process.

Filed Under: apps, censorship, china, clean network, great firewall, mike pompeo, networking equipment, technology, us
Companies: huawei, tiktok

NY Times Uncritically Says Fake News Debate Supports Chinese Style Censorship

from the did-we-not-warn-of-this? dept

It used to be a laughable claim: that the US should emulate the Great Firewall of China and support much greater internet censorship. Sure, you’d have people like the MPAA’s Chris Dodd or U2 frontman Bono cheer on Chinese censorship as a good example of how to censor the internet (in their cases, to block infringing content), but most people still remained rightly horrified by the idea that the answer to “bad” content online is a massive censorship regime. But, apparently, that may be changing.

Last year, right after the election, we directly warned that everyone freaking out about “fake news” on Facebook would eventually lead to calls to censor the internet a la China. And, now the NY Times has taken a big step in that direction, by posting a ridiculous article talking about how China has been “vindicated” by its approach to censoring the internet:

For years, the United States and others saw this sort of heavy-handed censorship as a sign of political vulnerability and a barrier to China?s economic development. But as countries in the West discuss potential internet restrictions and wring their hands over fake news, hacking and foreign meddling, some in China see a powerful affirmation of the country?s vision for the internet.

?This kind of thing would not happen here,? Mr. Zhao said of the controversy over Russia?s influence in the American presidential election last year.

Of course, as Ben Thompson pointed out, the reason it won’t happen in China is because there are no Presidential elections in China:

While the NY Times does attempt to present some “balance” in the form of “concerns” from human rights activists, it also celebrates some of the internet’s censors in China, and says that the success of Chinese internet companies is proof that censorship doesn’t appear to harm innovation. The article closes on a chilling example of a “volunteer” spying on fellow internet users, and handing them happily over to the police — and suggesting that this is a good way to stop bad people online:

In a restaurant called Europa, Mr. Zhao ? who declined to disclose details of where and how he works ? described China?s system not as ?Big Brother? so much as a younger brother, which he is, protecting children, like those of his sister, from harmful material.

?Even though the internet is virtual, it is still part of society,? he added. ?So in any space I feel no one should create pornographic, illegal or violent posts.?

In his new capacity, he scours Weibo in search of the lurid and illicit. Some posts, he explained, are thinly veiled solicitations for pornography or prostitution, including one message he reported to the police the other day for using what he said was a euphemism for selling sex.

When he reports abuse, it is the police who follow up. He excitedly displayed his smartphone to show the latest of his more than 3,000 followers on Weibo: the division of the Beijing police that monitors the internet.

?Normally, if you don?t do bad things, you don?t get followed by the police,? he said. ?I think this ? for someone who has been online for so many years ? is really special.?

Those paragraphs should be chilling for those who believe in free speech or who have even the slightest knowledge of the history of authoritarianism and how governments — including China’s — stamp out alternative and reformist viewpoints with an iron fist. It should be antithetical to how we operate here, and to have the NY Times post a pretty glowing profile of the Great Firewall of China is downright frightening.

Filed Under: china, fake news, free speech, great firewall

The Great Firewall Of China Grows Stronger As China Forces App Stores To Remove VPNs

from the total-information-control dept

Fri, Jul 7th 2017 03:23am - Karl Bode

Like clockwork, governments eager to censor the internet inevitably shift their gaze toward tools like VPNs used to get around restrictions. We’ve documented rising efforts to ban the tools use in countries like Russia, where VPN providers are being forced out of business for refusing to aid internet censorship. Whether it’s to protect VoIP revenue for state-run telecom monopolies, or to prevent users from tap-dancing around state-mandated filters or other restrictions, VPNs have become the bogeyman du jour for oppressive governments looking to crack down on pesky free speech and open communication.

China’s great firewall is a sterling example of draconian censorship, and since 2012 or so China has been trying to curtail both encryption and VPN use. Earlier this year China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology declared that all VPN providers now needed prior government approval to operate, a move generally seen as the opening salvo of an outright ban. These new restrictions will last until July 2021, impose fines up to $2000 on companies offering unsanctioned VPNs (read: all of them), and feature government warnings sent to users consistently caught using the tools.

But in some areas, the pretense has washed away and VPN usage has been simply banned entirely. And as of July, VPN services began disappearing from both the Android and iOS app stores, with popular VPN providers like Green informing their customers the government has forced them to shut down completely:

“Dear respected Green customers,

We have received notice from the higher authorities. We regret to inform you that Green will cease our service on July 1st, 2017. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

We will start processing our users? refund request after service stopped (the amount will be calculated based on the remaining days in your plan). If you need a refund, please make sure to submit your refund request by August 31, 2017. We won?t be able to process any refund request submitted after that date. Since the workload of processing the requests, information verification and money transfer would be huge, we won?t be able to set an exact date for the refund. We plan to process the refund soon after August 31, please wait patiently.

Originally, statements made by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology seemed to suggest the country’s VPN ban wouldn’t be fully implemented until March 2018. But these recent reports indicate that the Chinese government has grown tired of the pretense and has expedited its VPN crackdown dramatically. Since around 1-3% of China’s 731 million internet users use tools like VPNs to tap dance around internet filters, even with this crackdown this will be a long, difficult, expensive game of Whack-a-Mole for the Chinese government all the same.

While VPNs are not a panacea for our endlessly eroded privacy rights, they remain an incredibly useful tool for those living under repressive regimes. Most legislative VPN bans are of the “death by a thousand cuts” variety, where lawmakers go out of their way to pretend they’re not trying to kill VPNs, even if the end goal always remains the same: the elimination of any tool that might let citizens peek through the curtain of draconian efforts at information control.

Filed Under: app stores, china, encryption, great firewall, mobile, privacy, security, surveillance, vpns

China's Latest Target For Online Crackdown: Live-Streaming Foreigners

from the I-saw-what-you-did-there dept

As we’ve noted before, China’s grip on the domestic Internet seems so complete that it’s hard to think how the authorities there might tighten control yet further. But the Chinese government is nothing if not resourceful, and has managed to come up with a new group to target, as this report on the Sixth Tone site explains:

Multiple foreign users have received suspension notices from major live-streaming apps, including Blued, China’s most popular gay social networking app, and Yizhibo, which is backed by microblog platform Weibo.

This seems to be as a result of the new regulations governing the Internet in China, brought in at the end of last year. Among the measures there is one that requires online broadcasts to be “beneficial to the promotion of socialist core values”, while another stipulates that platforms should not allow hosts from outside mainland China to create channels without first asking permission from the country’s Ministry of Culture. That’s where the difficulty arises:

According to an employee of one of the biggest streaming companies, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record, the problem with the new regulations is that there are no details on how to apply. Live-broadcasting platforms have dealt with the uncertainty in a variety of ways. At the employee’s company, old users are allowed to continue broadcasting, but new foreign users cannot sign up for the time being.

However, other services have decided to play it safe by taking all non-Chinese users offline until the new rules have been clarified. A Yizhibo employee told Sixth Tone that a key issue was a requirement for real-name verification — something that Techdirt has discussed before. Apparently, it’s not a straightforward process when it comes to foreigners.

The crackdown on live-streaming services is not the only recent move by the authorities that targets foreigners. Last week, China made another announcement, much more far-reaching in its effect than the live-streaming ban:

China is to begin taking fingerprints of all foreign visitors as it steps up security on its borders, the Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday.

Perhaps the Chinese government feels that it has the domestic population sufficiently under control now that it can move on to tightening up the rules for foreign visitors.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: censorship, china, free speech, great firewall, live streaming

Russia Draws On Chinese Expertise And Technology To Clamp Down On Internet Users Even More

from the this-could-be-the-start-of-something-big-but-not-so-beautiful dept

There seems to be some kind of unspoken competition between Russia and China to see who can clamp down on the Internet the most. Techdirt readers might like to offer their own views in the comments as to who is winning that unlovely race. But the days of repressive rivalry are drawing to a close; according to this article in the Guardian, Russia has decided that it would be much simpler to borrow some of China’s ideas:

> Russia has been working on incorporating elements of China’s Great Firewall into the “Red Web”, the country’s system of internet filtering and control, after unprecedented cyber collaboration between the countries.

Just as important as the ideas is the actual technology:

> The Russians apparently see no other option than to invite Chinese heavyweights into the heart of its IT strategy. “China remains our only serious ‘ally’, including in the IT sector,” said a source in the Russian information technology industry, adding that despite hopes that Russian manufacturers would fill the void created by sanctions “we are in fact actively switching to Chinese”.

That Russian source is clearly trying to suggest that this new partnership is all the fault of the West for imposing those silly economic sanctions, and that this could have been avoided if everybody had stayed friends. But the coziness between Russia and China has been coming for a while, as their geopolitical ambitions align increasingly, so the collaboration over surveillance and censorship technologies would probably have happened anyway. The interesting question is how the new alliance might blossom if the future Trump administration starts to reduce its engagement with the international scene to concentrate on domestic matters. The new Sino-Russian digital partnership could be just the start of something much bigger, but probably not more beautiful.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: censorship, china, great firewall, internet, russia