Beijing Police To Launch Animated Web Patrols

Reader geoffrobinson notes an AP story on a new initiative by the police in Beijing to put a visible police presence on the screens of Chinese citizens. Starting Sept. 1, little animated cop figures will wander across the displays of users of a baker's dozen of Chinese Web portals. The program is set to expand by year's end to all sites "registered with Beijing servers," according to the report. The point of the anime-like figures seems to be to remind citizens that their Web usage is being monitored, not to actually implement any further monitoring themselves.

Sweet!

Bonzi Buddy got a new job!

Oh no!

What is next, an animated goatse reminding us of the horrors that are to be found on the internet?

So

If you google Tiananmen does a little animated tank come out and crush your cursor?

Re:So

Nope. 404-Not Found.

(Most Chinese people under 30 don't know about the Tianamen Square protests -- Those that do don't really hold the event in high regard, as the student protest leaders are rumored to have had passports/visa's and transportation to get out of the country after the protest was held.)

Americans like the idea of revolution, but when it happens for real, good people die.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_revolut ion/ [wikipedia.org]) The Chinese government knows this, and freedoms will come, but it's going to take time. Generations. Not weeks.

Bad Link

I assume that you mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution [wikipedia.org]. And it was not a revolution in the way that we normally understand it. From the article:

It was launched by the Communist Party of China's Chairman, Mao Zedong on May 16, 1966, officially as a campaign to rid China of its "liberal bourgeoisie" elements and to continue revolutionary class struggle. It is widely recognized, however, as a method to regain control of the party after the disastrous Great Leap Forward led to a significant loss of Mao's power to rivals Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, and would eventually manifest into waves of power struggles between rival factions both nationally and locally.

Many people did die, but the net result was that some people who already had power got more, and some people that had power lost it (and frequently their lives).

Re:Bad Link

Many people did die, but the net result was that some people who already had power got more, and some people that had power lost it (and frequently their lives).

I think you grossly understate things.

I've personally met more than a handful people in China who simply refuse to discuss the Cultural Revolution in any detail at all. They wont even document their experience in writing. It's still too painful for them.

Re:Bad Link

It's not that it's painful as much as it's a giant black mark on Chinese history. The Chinese usually hate discussing ANYTHING that they/the government lost face on. An act that causes a loss of face (even if for a good reason) is something people disappear over in China.

Is it really funny?

If you google Tiananmen does a little animated tank come out and crush your cursor?

I laughed at first too, because the whole idea seems pointless and annoying, as if we don't have enough unwanted pop-ups and such. But then I realize I'm free, so I can only imagine how creepy, and how sad it is to be reminded every half hour that you are so subjugated.

Re:Is it really funny?

The biggest trick the government ever pulled was convincing the citizen that he was free

Re:Is it really funny?

The biggest trick the government ever pulled was convincing the citizen that he was free

Go outside and yell "The government sucks!" three times, then post conspiracy theory crap everywhere. Did they suppress you? No?

Re:Is it really funny?

Go outside and yell "The government sucks!" three times, then post conspiracy theory crap everywhere. Did they suppress you? No?

In China? No, you just disappear. Maybe the government did it. Maybe the mafia did it because you owed them money. Maybe you ran away with a girl. Maybe you're escaping after committing a crime. That's why they do it that way - people go missing all the time, and nobody can be sure which ones were government work. It makes it very easy for people to believe that the government isn't actually doing anything wrong, and that's part of how they convince the citizen that he's free.

Realistically though, the Chinese government does not tend to do anything about the kind of behaviour you describe. They don't actually care what you do - they just pay attention to the effect you have. Anybody who creates an effect that they don't like tends to disappear. Ineffectual people are left alone.

Re:Is it really funny?

You're not free. You are *more* politically free than the average person in China, but freedom ain't an "on/off" kind of thing, it's a "more/less" kind of thing.

The sad thing is though, that while the average chinese has become steadily more and more free lately, the trend in USA has been the other way, you guys are significantly less *free* now than you where a decade or two ago.

You require government-permission if you want to take pictures of a group of more than 2 people for over 20 minutes in Central Park, using a tripod. You are not allowed to talk about certain kinds of knowledge, like for example even that de-CSS exist. Your government maintains it can legitimately keep people imprisoned indefinitely while giving same neither the rigths of a POV nor the rigths of a criminal. You cannot bring something as trivial as a can of coke with you on a plane. You have to walk trough metal-detectors and accept answering questioning to be allowed to enter public buildings. You're not allowed to take apart objects that you own to figure out how they work. (not generally anyway) and if you *do* figure out how they work, sharing that knowledge with others may be a crime. You've been falling steadily on "freedom-of-press" rankings for the last decade, you used to be near the top, these days you're under average for a western democracy. "Free speech zones" (no comment needed)

USA is still in pretty good shape, certainly miles ahead of countries like china. But you're on the wrong track. You need to wake up.

Here's a question...

... prompted by the word "Tianamen" - the Great Firewall of China blocks "objectionable content" based on keywords. Presumably it doesn't only work on port 80, otherwise people would be proxying web traffic through non-standard ports.

If I'm getting a lot of spam from China, would sticking words that trigger the firewall in my SMTP HELO response automatically block them?

The Internet is Dangerous

But I thought Internet Safety Month was in June?

1984

Big Brother is Watching You

Re:1984

Shouldn't that be "Big Brother is watching Yu"?

A study I was a part of in college

During college I took a SOC or PSYC class (I forget which) and as part of the class you were required to "volunteer" as a subject in a study on campus. The one I was part of was doing data entry and every so often a little head would appear in the top corner that was to signify that a "supervisor" was watching what you did.

They wanted to see if your data entry slowed/sped up, if your errors increased/decreased, etc. While I don't know what the end result was, I was shown my results and found that when the "supervisor" was in the corner I was less attentive and my data entry slowed.

What if a majority of students/researchers in China are working on their Internet (yes, their) and the "virtua-cop" fucks up their work? I can't imagine that this will do anything but be ridiculous and annoying.

Waste your time on something else, seriously.

Re:A study I was a part of in college

>>every so often a little head would appear in the top corner that was to signify that a "supervisor" was watching...
Fascinating study! I guess the Panopticon would cause people to just freak out. Maybe the pervasive monitoring in some societies (UK, Hong Kong) is both a symptom AND a cause of the very crime it's meant to monitor.

>>What if a majority of students/researchers in China are working on their Internet (yes, their) and the "virtua-cop" fucks up their work?
The short answer is: the officials don't care. Truly. Government is about control, not service, and it's certainly not measured by the results it gives. That's a very "western" viewpoint. And this government has a particularly nasty (and long) history of killing its own folks.

Insert clippy joke here.

You look like you're trying to access the Real Internet! Would you like me to:

-block the sites you're trying to access
-uninstall your proxy software
-report you to the authorities for re-education
-subtly rewrite your search results

I for one

welcome our animated police overlords.

I saw one of these guys hanging around this site

Just like the cops at home. [dunkindonuts.com]

Paper Cut-Outs

I must admit that I do slow down sometimes when I see a paper cut-out on the side of a highway.

How annoying

I've voluntarily installed screenmate software [adtoolsinc.com] before and typically it doesn't last past the day. I can't imagine there won't be plenty of programs written to turn them off.

Easy Vista

This should streamline running Vista. Now whenever you are prompted for Allow/Deny the character will go ahead and choose Deny for you. Every time.

conflict with China

With the end of the cold war, I was hopeful that the ideological conflict between the west and the rest of the world was over. It looked like China was opening up.

It appears, with stories like this and many others, not to be the case. China is obviously acting in ways that are not good for people - as defined by Western standards of freedom. Unlike Russia, they do not appear to have the financial decay leading to an eventual collapse.

I've heard people argue that no one will go to war with China - the stakes are too high. Frankly, I'd rather see a massive 3rd world war than have the world societies slip silently into a death-like state like that the of Chinese government oppression.

Got oppression?

I'll bite the trollbait...

I live in China, and I can tell you that it's certainly not in a "death-like state like that the of Chinese government oppression". Sure, censorship exists, the government is quite corrupt and abusive, especially on the lower levels, and it can be hard to find a good book. It drives me up the wall sometimes, just how flat the popular culture is- anything controversial gets dropped like a hot rock.

On the other hand, there are raunchy popular novels (printed by half-legal vanity presses) being sold right outside my door. There's tons of (bad) modern art expressing the pain of living in Chinese society, and (bad) rock 'n roll expressing the pain of being young and unloved. Although there are fewer than 100 movies released to theaters each year on the mainland, every film ever made is sporadically available on DVD, from Deep Throat to To Live to They Live. Chinese people can find every sort of approved and forbidden idea under the sun if they're curious, and they're mostly free to discuss it in private. Publishing is another thing, but the Cultural Revolution is over, and you can pretty much say whatever you want to your friends.

China is booming, and the authorities can barely keep it under control. I won't defend their actions (although cartoon cops are hardly the worst things they do....) but the notion that China in any way resembles 1984 is absurd. While the government is sliding from totalitarian Communism towards plutocracy, the people are getting away with everything they can, and it's a lot. I don't hold out a lot of hope that we'll have big D Democracy here anytime soon, but to imagine that this country, or the US, or anyone else would somehow be better off in a Massive 3rd World War is insane.

You are insane.

Re:conflict with China

Last time I checked, China has about 130 nuclear warheads, US has 9 960, and Russia has 16 000.

Guess who is going to be obliterated first when the WW3 begins.

Whoever the guy with the fastest missiles hates most ?

Please understand that having 9960 nuclear warheads in no way stops 130 enemy warheads from reaching you. While 130 nuclear warheads is not sufficient to carpet bomb a country the size of the USA, it is quite sufficient to take out large cities, industry, food production and central administration. The end result is likely massive death toll from starvation and plague, and collapse of the USA as a nation, or at the very least its removal from its world power status.

So no, no one dares attack China.

Olympics pledges?

With all this intimidation of web surfers, I am beginning to get suspicious the Chinese delegation must have had their fingers crossed when the promised to alleviate human rights abuses in their country in time for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Nah, I guess it is impossible to believe that with the eye of the world on their country, China would continue to hold the world's youngest political prisoner, the Panchen Lama, and kill prisoners so they can harvest their organs. They clearly wouldn't continue to block access to websites that hold views contrary to the wishes of their government either (even though the information is considered the truth by the rest of the world).

Awww...

They're so cute they just make me want to limit my searches to government approved propaganda and puppies.

This is a problem because...?

Look, we all know that the Chinese government is going to be monitoring as much as it can. They're control freaks. I, for one, welcome any measures they take to remind the people that they're being watched - maybe such reminders will help the people of china think about what kind of society they live in and what kind of society they would like to live in, and encourage them to take action to try to shape their future.

Good Evening Chinese Web Surfer...

...I see you are viewing a pornographic website. I'd like to remind you that viewing websites with one hand underneath your desk can cause damage to your keyboard.

Carry on and have a nice day.

I've already got something like that.

I dunno about the beijing version but this one is pretty awesome.

http://www.virtuagirl2.com/index.php/ [virtuagirl2.com].

Ironic to link to Yahoo's report

Given that they'll do anything for the Holy Dollar (or Yuan Reminbi), even if it would violate our laws as well.

waste of screen real estate

The Chinese communist government not only wants to detain Tibetans [bbc.co.uk], monitor Internet useage, and do other nasty things typical of fascist states, but it now also wants to steal the precious screen real estate of its people. It must be ridiculous to live in a state that not only fscks up your rights but also forces you to put silly animated cops on YOUR computer's screen!

Tentacles

Can you get all hentai on that girl cop and "interact" with her using a tentacle cursor?

Old News?

This was already done in Shenzhen [chinadigitaltimes.net] last year. I don't understand why this is such a surprise.

1984

This is just standard police-state stuff. Just as Orwell had posters of Big Brother Is Watching You everywhere, the Chinese Fascist Party need to keep their population in a state of fear. This keeps them from combining with strangers (since they are afraid to trust anyone) and ultimately from fighting for their freedom. Oppressive Regimes 101.

Remind me again why I should give a shit about athletes who are going to China to help support this bunch of bastards?

TWW

Already done....

This has been done before, although for different reasons. It was called 'Tiny Elvis' [wikipedia.org], and he stayed towards the bottom of your screen, occasionally saying things like 'Whoa, check out that icon. That sucker's huge!' They just put a cop uniform on it and took away the catchy phrases...

Is it the "good" animated cop?

Hopefully they give them the Flash-animated 36/24/36 blond haired blue eyed stiletto wearing temptress officer with a whip in tow on their desktops.

Woo hoo!

I hope my computer screen gets the naughty cop.

But..

Do they have little speed cameras to catch people with fat pipes? :P

Cop Killer??

The real question is who will be the first to come up with a program allowing you to shoot the cop? and how much time will they spend in jail???

FPS Game?

How many points do you get for each cop you knock off?

Better than in the US

At least in China the government is honest about it's internet monitoring practices. Here in the US, the feds pretend that such a program doesn't exists, but we all know better.

Revenge of Clippy The Adventure Continues...

Didn't Microsoft just ditch their digital mascot because it was so annoying? Let's hear it for Chinese politicians being at least a decade behind the tech curve.

sentence does not parse

"Despite the controls, nudity, profanity, illegal gambling and pirated music, books and film have proliferated on Chinese Internet servers."

  Books and film have proliferated on Chinese Internet servers despite "the controls, nudity, profanity, illegal gambling and pirated music" ?

  Well, Good! I say. Wait a minute...

SB

Re:Odd...

"He said he was going somewhere he would need Euros"

Damn you single trade currency!

Re:AT&T, NSA andHomeland scrutiny are the next

I am sure the NeoCons are drooling at a visual reminder "We are watching your every mouse click".
They will have the "Terror level" displayed on a flag carried by a little goose-stepping Uncle Sam.

They're doing enough of that in the media. They'd rather let you pretend you are supporting the "land of the free" with some sense of false freedom feeling.

Honestly, at least the Chinese know they're being watched at every step and don't have a government watching them closely but pretending they don't.

Re:AT&T, NSA andHomeland scrutiny are the next

Perhaps if you hate America so much,

My country! Right or wrong! Eh?

Re:AT&T, NSA andHomeland scrutiny are the next

Your paranoia's completely off base. The current administration has very obviously shied away from visible losses of freedom and displays thereof, which is integral to its "protecting your freedom" defenses. The only exception is airline security, where the public wanted them to take some freedom. You need to pay more attention.

Re:AT&T, NSA andHomeland scrutiny are the next

Maybe you should consider that a country can be fucked up even if it isn't the worst on Earth. Sure, we might be doing better than China based on some criteria, but that doesn't mean there aren't quite a few things seriously wrong. "If you don't like it, leave." No thanks. If I don't like it I'll do what I can to fix it. Pointing out what's wrong is the first step.

Re:AT&T, NSA andHomeland scrutiny are the next

i don't know where to begin, either you're a total idiot, or just another ditto-head, and frankly i can't tell the difference anymore. while your rights and liberties are being slowly^H^H^Hrapidly eroded, you sit back and say, "if you don't like it, leave." perhaps you'd care to comment on adequate controls in government as they apply to electronic communications by the executive branch staff? or even more so, on the number of executive orders made by the current administration?

foreigners, nationals of a country widely considered to be the most corrupt in the first world, have said to me, " its not that we're any more corrupt than you are, its just that you're professionals at it."

trust me, when it comes to electronic communications, you are every bit as monitored here as in china. why don't you google 'network packet monitor index'. the vendors returned by such a search will be those that contracted to the intelligence agencies years ago; the chinese use equipment cloned from such specifications.

and while you're on the subject of forced abortions, why don't you think about the possibly of forced pregnancy.

They outsourced it.

Clippy watched your keystrokes and has grown up into "desktop search". The little shields and popups made sure you were "safe". In the background, encrypted communications stream back to the mother ship. If that's not all obvious and continuing reminder that every stroke is monitored, I'm not sure what is.

Only community based free software will really give you privacy and dignity. Non free systems will sell you to the highest bidder.

Re:AT&T, NSA andHomeland scrutiny are the next

Someone who hates America, or approves of how China is governed, would simply keep silent and let things go on as they have been.

Re:AT&T, NSA andHomeland scrutiny are the next

no.

Re:AT&T, NSA andHomeland scrutiny are the next

I used to run a dashboard widget where John Ashcroft's face changed color along with the National Threat Advisory.