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Censorship Your Rights Online

SMS, SARS, And Censorship 283

Posted by timothy from the beware-the-email-centralizers dept.
angkor writes with a link to this article about "How SMS messaging in China forced the government to acknowledge the 'fatal flu in Guangdong.' And the steps the Chinese government is taking to make sure it does not happen again."
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SMS, SARS, And Censorship More

SMS, SARS, And Censorship

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  • I can see their reasons (Score:5, Funny)

    by Keri Immos ( 681622 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:38AM (#6231688) Journal
    Well, I think it's perfectly understandable that the Chinese government block these SMS messages. It allows them to control their own country, instead of having to deal with rumor-spreading rabble rousers. Also, 120 million people hearing about this via SMS is small compared to the overall population of China, which is somewhere a little above one billion. That's a similar percentage to the 20-some million in the states who have heard about the penis length crisis.

  • That's repression for you (Score:5, Informative)

    by EricWright ( 16803 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:42AM (#6231718) Journal
    Nothing like addressing a deadly disease by imprisoning anyone who gets worried about it and sends a message to a remote family member to have them send "a cure." I guess I should say it once again... Information wants to be free!
    • Information doesn't want to be free.. it just wants to be healthy. :)
    • I mean, what's the deal. So there's a sickness going around that's a little more fiesty than you average 24-hour bug.

      Why keep it a secret? No one's going to blame you for it, every country goes through this stuff all the time. Is Communism so fragile that a few extra-heavy-duty flu cases will destroy it?

      Seems like if a goverment wants to gain trust and credibility, they should flat-out tell the truth sometimes.

      • Brittle Regimes (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @11:25AM (#6233778)
        > Why keep it a secret? No one's going to blame you for it, every country goes through this stuff all the time. Is Communism so fragile that a few extra-heavy-duty flu cases will destroy it?

        As a matter of fact, yes, it is.

        Authoritarian regimes are strong, but brittle. In an environment characterized by slow technological change, they can last indefinitely, because the tools used to control the proles change slowly enough that leaders can keep up with them.

        Rapid technological change upsets that balance. Such change is typically driven by technology - witness the printing press, the rise of the "freethinkers", and the eventual topplings of the monarchies of Europe and Russia. (And the despots that took their place - Robespierre in France, Lenin in Russia, and so on.)

        Authoritarian regimes typically rely on controlling the means of communication in order to maintain power. Technologically-driven change in the area of communications is one of the most threatening things an authoritarian regime.

        If the Communist Party lies about SARS, then maybe... *gasp*, they lied about the day the dam broke in my village. I've gotta call my brother who was 1000 miles away with the army when it happened and ask him if the Party told him his village's dam was the only one that broke that night. And my cousin who works in Hong Kong now, I remember him laughing when I first told him it was only our dam, maybe now I know why he laughed. And my grandfather back in my old village who remembers the times before the Party.

        When nobody believes the Party ("Pravda and Izvestia - There is no truth in Pravda, and there is no news in Izvestia"), the regime shatters.

        > Seems like if a goverment wants to gain trust and credibility, they should flat-out tell the truth sometimes.

        Any government's first duty is to perpetuate itself; "building trust and credibility" is a useful goal (from the government's point of view) only insofar as it enables the government to perpetuate itself and/or increase its power over its subjects.

        Telling the truth through the various Party news outlets doesn't serve the goal of keeping the Party in power, because the forms of media that can be controlled aren't set up to deliver truth.

        And the forms of media that can't be controlled... well, one day you're talking about SARS, and the next day you're talking about what life was like without the Party.

        And that, if you're a Party official, is a fate far worse than the deaths of a few million of your subjects.

      • Is Communism so fragile that a few extra-heavy-duty flu cases will destroy it?

        In a word : Yes

  • Chinese Government makes sure no one uses SMS (Score:3, Funny)

    by weeble ( 50918 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:43AM (#6231720) Homepage
    Pesky citizens allowing the truth to get out!!!

    They closed down the Internet Cafes!

    The Government now need to remove all mobile phones.

    Breaking news is that they may ban speach altogether

    :-)

  • It's the same the world over (Score:5, Insightful)

    by freedommatters ( 664657 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:44AM (#6231728)
    "Its technology allows it, for example, to search the country's entire volume of email traffic for words such as "Falungong", or to monitor any individual's text messages.

    Anyone snared in its high-tech web can expect surveillance, intimidation, arrest and prison."

    and that is different from the US and the UK how exactly? maybe they search for different words but the principle is the same.

    john
    All I Want For Christmas Is My Constitutional Rights [wildjelly.com]

    • Re:It's the same the world over (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WPIDalamar ( 122110 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:55AM (#6231787) Homepage
      It's different becaus the US can only use that information in the search of terrorism. (or at least that's how it will be eventually with the way things are going!)

      After that happens, look for the ever broadening scope of terrorism...

      Murder? You make people afraid... TERRORIST!
      Armed Robbery? TERRORIST!
      Speeding? TERRORIST!
      Jaywalking? TERRORIST!

    • here's now it's different (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ender Ryan ( 79406 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @08:36AM (#6232029) Journal
      U.S. surveillance incident:

      PERSON1: Hey, we're going to blow up the bridge tomorrow.
      PERSON2: Excellent. Praise Allah, the infidels will die!
      P1: LOL, we better STFU before the FBI think we're really terrorists :)
      FBI: Come with me, you terrorist scum.
      several weeks later...
      P1: Yeah, let's not do that again...
      P2: No shit.
      PERSON3: DIE INFIDELS DIE! Wha? My shoe won't blow up!

      Chinese surveillance incident:

      PERSON1: Help, everyone is dying, we need to do something!
      PERSON2: Don't go outside if you can avoid it, wear a mask if you do, and don't touch anyone. Since our government won't help us, we need to get help wherever we can.
      CHINESE GOV'T: You two, come with me. You're never going to see the outside of a cell again, ever.

      THE END

    • It is not effective (Score:3, Interesting)

      by r6144 ( 544027 )
      I'm in China using a Chinese free mail service. There isn't much spam (2/week), but 70% of which is about FaLunGong.

  • Big news? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Groote Ka ( 574299 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:47AM (#6231735)
    The China government is already for quite some years working on censorship of electronic media. I cannot imagine that this is the first time they monitor and 'regulate' SMS traffic. When it is the first time, the Chinese are not as smart as I would have thought them to be.

    Furthermore, SMS is nothing more than e-mail, basically (even little less, duh...). Problems will occur when foreign network companies will enter China, for example Vodafone. On the other hand, quite some Western countries are happy to co-operate with the Chinese government to apply censorship. Even from the land of the free.

  • China shops at Villian Supply (Score:5, Funny)

    by Michael's a Jerk! ( 668185 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:47AM (#6231737) Homepage Journal
    The Good folks at Villain Supply [villainsupply.com] are selling a VAGUE, PANIC-PROVOKING COMMUNICABLE DISEASE [villainsupply.com] for a mere US$149,999.99.

    As the age of SARS has proven, nothing scares the gullible, scientifically illiterate population like a vague, panic-provoking communicable disease. Just tack a scary acronym onto any poorly-defined set of flu-like symptoms, and watch the fun begin.

    Your Vague, Panic-Provoking Communicable Disease comes with several medical journal articles identifying the disease in the most non-specific terms possible, a batch of press releases, and 25% ownership of a face mask factory.

    Mod me down if you must, but I couldn't resist.

  • I wonder when.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrZilla ( 682337 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:47AM (#6231739) Homepage
    ..we'll see encrypted SMS? On the other hand, if it's not already, it'll probably soon be a criminal offense to send any encrypted messages over there as well..
    • "I wonder when we'll see encrypted SMS?"

      You can do it already using a one-time-pad if you want to communicate with particular people. SMS is very short anyway, and completely textual, so manual use of a OTP should be no trouble at all, and considerably more secure than anything your mobile-phone company could (or would) create.

    • Many sites allow sending SMS via the web. It is very simple to encrypt and base-64 encode the message with a script.

      Well, with most cellphones here, one needs to type the encrypted message onto a computer to decrypt it. They aren't long, anyway.

      Of course key exchanging has to be done using regular methods.

    • Re:I wonder when.. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cilix ( 538057 )
      The problem would be the same as all other non-centralised encryption techniques (pgp etc). It's damned inconvenient. For a start each person you talk to is going to have to have some kind of key for you (or you for them) which makes the whole thing massively impractical.
      You clearly can't just use encryption to and from the server (ssl type things) because the government will control the servers... p2p encryption is the only way, but its not really viable.

    • Re:I wonder when.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by vr ( 9777 )
      http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/3669.html
    • An important distinction here:
      encrypted vs. encoded
      encryption may (or may not) be difficult over SMS.
      encoded would not be. The already cryptic form of abbreviated messages would make it easier both to implement and to hide.

      encoding is basically using a lookup table as a translator. A good lookup table is some popular book (the bible was an old favorite, but other choices would work also). Composing the message can be a chore, but one way of doing it is this:
      1) write out the message
      2) select first word t

  • Hmmmm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ducster ( 682492 )
    Typical chinese government really, cover it up and silence those who speak. Abuse the power they have for their own benefit. Actually, sounds like pretty much most governments

  • BIG BIG BROTHER (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:51AM (#6231765)
    Well ... China has around 30,000 government employees whose sole function is to monitor and censor communications over the Internet.

    The fact that SMS was used in this case isn't a big deal. The current cellular platforms deployed in China do not allow filtering, tracking, etc. at the basestation level. However, as someone who worked on these danged things, the new base stations have features that track and filter all SMS traffic.

    At the end of the day, network communication is not anonymous and it is sad that people who do not have a total understanding of technology get others into trouble.

    • Re:BIG BIG BROTHER (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why would they need to filter SMS traffic at the basestation level? All SMS traffic is sent/received by a SMSC, which is the central point where all SMS traffic is routed through.

      Logging/filtering on the SMSC is trivial and is probably already done in more countries than China.

  • How wonderfully effective... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mgcsinc ( 681597 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:51AM (#6231769)
    "In March last year it required all websites and domestic and foreign internet providers to sign a "self-discipline pact" obliging them not to disseminate "harmful texts or news likely to jeopardise national security and social stability, violate laws and regulations, or spread false news, superstitions and obscenities"."
    I love the references to rumors, superstitions, etc. When will the Chinese government take into account the lessons of history and realize that the best way to cultivate rumors and suspicion is to have a population as in the dark as the one they have created. You let your media report freely, and rumors will be quickly shot down with reliable references. You control your media, and you lost the trust of your citizens, who, not knowing any better source, trust the equally-uninformed rumors which then spread like wildfire.
    In addition, I read with utter amusement China's wish to maintain a huge telecom and information infrastructure. Would someone like to explain how a nation so inhibiting of communication and information expects to make use of such technology... It's hypotrical, China would love to look Western while keeping its citizans controled in this fashion, and they'll never prove sucessful.
    • Is it just me, or should we smuggle 1 billion copies of '1984' into China?
    • When will the Chinese government take into account the lessons of history and realize that the best way to cultivate rumors and suspicion...

      But they're not worried about whether or not rumors and suspicion are circulating. They're worried about being able to control the amount and veracity of the information that reaches the public. If the unofficial version of the truth is declared a "rumor" they can crack down on it.

  • Bertrand Russell's commandments (Score:3, Insightful)

    by danielrendall ( 521737 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:51AM (#6231773) Homepage Journal
    I've got no idea why people don't pay more attention to these...

    2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

    6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

    Offtopic - #7 seems appropriate for the /. readership, but you'll have to look it up...

  • China is watching you! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thelandp ( 632129 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:57AM (#6231802)
    During the height of the IT boom I was wokring for an internet startup. One of the other teams in the company was writing some spyware (not particularly happy about it, but work is work). The software sent all of your web clicks to the server to be perused at leisure.

    Guess who one of our major customers was ... the Chinese Government!

    Luckily it never got off the ground...

    • "During the height of the IT boom I was wokring for an internet startup. One of the other teams in the company was writing some spyware (not particularly happy about it, but work is work). "

      Work is work? During the height of the boom? You have to be shitting me....every highschooler who was smart enough to put down "internet, HTML, webpage design" on their resume got a job.

      I'm curious as to the personality of the people working on that project if you happen to know. Were they having serious ethical issu

    • "(not particularly happy about it, but work is work). "

      I wonder hw many people thought that same thing when commetng deeds agains a populace?

      If nobody did it, it wouldn't get done.
      I'm not pointing fingures, because If it was "write spyware, or don't feed your family" I don't know what I would do. I would like to think I could come up with another plan, but i haven't been there.

  • Keep Stories Like This in Mind (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @07:59AM (#6231810)
    When you bitch about those evil, unjust copyright laws, the RIAA/MPAA, DCMA and Microsoft here in the US.

    We could have it a *lot* worse.

  • Famine and Epidemic (Score:3, Insightful)

    by drdale ( 677421 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @08:03AM (#6231834)
    The philosopher Amartya Sen has argued that the best way to prevent catastrophic famine is to have freedom of expression. When the world community sees that an area is moving toward serious famine, it is able to respond in time to keep the problem from becoming too severe. But when a government hides how bad things are getting until it is too late, you have mass starvation. SARS seems to illustrate that the same may hold in the case of epidemic. If China had told the outside world about SARS earlier, then its spread could probably have been slowed. And perhaps it at least was slowed some inside China through the spread of information by SMS (if ordinary citizens knew how to respond to the information properly).
    • As I get it, it is not (only) the outside world which needs to be aware of the famine threat, but the people themselves, who can put political pressure on the government.

      Of course, in order to be able to do such a thing, they must enjoy a democratic society (which usually goes hand in hand with freedom of expression).

      Although the SMS messages in China forced the government to acknowledge the problem, it is not likely that those in power can be overturned, should they fail to act to stop the epidemic, so

    • Fascinating point, wholly taken, but I won't call Amartya Sen as a 'philosopher'. His job spec is more development economics than anything else. :-)

  • SARS Rumor Mongering in Southern California (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crazyhorse44 ( 242315 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @08:03AM (#6231835)
    in the San Gabriel Valley... someone began circulating an email stating that several cases had been found locally and named specific restaurants and markets that had been closed.

    The first time I read it I thought it was a hoax, but then a friend who worked at a local hospital called me and told me they were distributing it as a general alert at the hospital.

    I ended up going to the Police Department, scared, to find out. Turns out the email was a fraud, and that the PD had been recieving 500 calls a day about it. The establishments mentioned had seen a decrease in business of 50% as a result of some A-HOLE playing a joke. This is similar to what happened in China, I think. I would applaud if they caught the originator and put them in prison.

    SECOND EMAIL. [about.com]

    • And Boston (Score:5, Informative)

      by SolemnDragon ( 593956 ) <solemndragon&gmail,com> on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @08:41AM (#6232076) Homepage Journal
      I'm giving up the option to mod in this conversation just to add to that... Here in Boston, the hoax was about Chinatown, and he Mayor finally had to go have lunch there just to shut people up. There was no covered up mini-epidemic swweeping across Chinatown. It was frightening, how even when the local health authorities talked about it as a hoax, people started taking subway lines that didn't run by it, if they could.

      A lot of excellent restaurants got extra health inspections and red-tape harrassment for the first week- and then, after the hoax was demonstrated to be a hoax email alert that someone sent (probably a variant on your california one) they still faced weeks of harassment- at the hands of the general public. It's been a bad time in Boston for the gainfully employed, and they had it even worse for a time. I'm betting that there are an awful lot of small-regional economic crunches because of hoaxes like these. (this was before the public pan on smoking in Boston went through, so now they've just been hit again, while everyone adjusts.)

      Is this (sars hoax) affecting other cities? (I'm sure that it is; i'm just curious which ones...)

      • ...er, make that a public "ban" on smoking...

      • Re:And Boston (Score:2, Informative)

        by bla ( 96124 )
        the same thing happened in philadelphia. our mayor took his whole entourage and went and had dinner in chinatown too, and after that, things more or less seemed to calm down, at least in the media.

        although a few weeks ago, my husband (who is vietnamese) was approached by a black woman and told that she "didn't want to seem prejudiced, but it was [his] people who brought SARS over here." so i'm not entirely convinced things have backed off in public opinion.
      • Ah, that solves one mystery I had been wondering about. I went to Boston for dim sum last month (I live up in Maine, and hadn't heard any rumors about SARS in Boston Chinatown). The place I go usually has at least 50 people waiting for tables, but last time I went, I was able to just walk right in, there was no one waiting. I've never seen the place so empty. I wondered where everyone was.

        I went back again last weekend, and business was starting to pick up again, although still not nearly up to its usu

      • Re:And Boston (Score:2, Insightful)

        by jnik ( 1733 )
        Is this (sars hoax) affecting other cities? (I'm sure that it is; i'm just curious which ones...)
        As of mid-April (when I was doing SARS research persuant to flying guests to Boston from Japan and Vancouver) most Chinatowns in the US had taken about a 50% hit in business. I think the CDC may have even issued a counter-advisory, and as you've mentioned many local governments tried to show the public it was just a hoax. Despite all that I still had a hard time getting people to go to Dim Sum...."it's only pr

        • NO (Score:2)

          by geekoid ( 135745 )
          its prudent.
          How is not going someplace because you heard there was a plague breakout racisit? I'm not racist, but if I heard there was a SARS out break anyplace, I would not go there. Once it was comfirmed to be a hoax, I would return.

          The fact that people are returning proves that they are not racist. Hell, the fact they ever went there proves there not racist(or why would they go there in the first place?)

          It would be racist if they had heard the same rumor in 'little italy' and still went there.

          This kin
    • The thing is, it doesn't even require a rumor. My wife started worrying about going to a chinese resturant because "the people their might have relatives in China, and they might have been visiting". Not assertions of truth, but fears. And fears that weren't quite groundless. (It might be/have been true.)

      It seems to me that chinese resturants currently still have a larger proportion of chinese customers that was common previously...but this is so small that it could easily be statistical fluctuation.
  • Please don't give GWB ny more ideas!

  • Censored information about SARS in the USA? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Advocadus Diaboli ( 323784 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @08:04AM (#6231840)
    The German magazine "Telepolis" (from Heise.de) has an interesting article [heise.de] about SARS in the USA.

  • Hypocrisy or Censorship - take your pick... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @08:07AM (#6231854) Journal
    Okay.., while we bash the draconian dragon that is China, let's stop a while and think of other 'informed' societies.

    How many of the millions of car owners in the US knew that they had 'black boxes'.

    How many of the 1,500 receipients of SCO's extortion letters registered a protest of any description?

    How many are aware that MS is stifling a project named 'Schnazzle' - on questionalbe grounds?

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesste ch nology/134994939_esiod14.html

    How is it that Germany, Poland and Australia have protested and asked SCO to shut up, while the silence in the US is deafening?

    Why is it that cellphones and cellphone tech is more advanced in China than in the US?

    A free society does not gurantee fairness.
    A (seemingly) unfair society does have benefits.

      • How many of the millions of car owners in the US knew that they had 'black boxes'.

        Which "black boxes" exactly?

        These black boxes [slashdot.org]. The ones that keep a diary of the car's last moments to testify at court (for or against you, it doesn't matter). Most people aren't aware they have them, or that their car can be made to testify against them. They exist in most if not all vehicles that have airbags, which is nearly all cars made in the past decade or so.

    • If you actually read the article about Schnazzle, you'd know that the conflict arose because the creators of Schazzle are ex-Microsoft developers, and that their product had a likeness to aspects of Longhorn that made Microsoft accuse them of breaching the no-compete clauses in their contracts (which expire after a year anyway).

      Is the silence deafening in the US with regards to SCO? Not from IBM or the tech community in general. Novell has spoken up as well.

      You rant strikes me as illogical, at best. People are free to be informed, yes. Does Sally Housecook give a flying fuck over Unix copyright disputes? Does she want to be informed? No more than I would care about a copyright dispute in the sewing machine industry. The information exists if people want it. What you should really be worried about are people too apathetic or ignorant to exercise this right.

      A free society does not gurantee fairness. A (seemingly) unfair society does have benefits.

      Well, if you'd like a fair society with benefits, I recommend a Stalinist/Leninist regime, where everyone is guaranteed the impoverished welfare-state hellhole. Capitalist democracies provide equal opportunity, they do not guarantee fairness and I don't know where that idea got started.

    • http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstech nology/134994939_esiod14.html

      I had to find a Google Cache [216.239.53.100], as the government-owned proxy I work behind blocked access to the original article. I love the smell of irony in the morning!

    • How many of your "crises" have cost hundreds of lives around the world?
    • Man, what the heck are you talking about!?

      How many of the millions of car owners in the US knew that they had 'black boxes'.

      Wait, we are not a free people if the last 5 seconds before a crash are recorded? Freedom is when you can say that you were going 35mph when you hit an old lady when you were actually going 50? It's unfair to have an unbiased 'witness' at a carcrash?

      How many of the 1,500 receipients of SCO's extortion letters registered a protest of any description?

      What does this have to do with fr

  • Couple of things... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by techturtle ( 528069 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @08:39AM (#6232057)
    First off, this is outrageous! Not like I haven't been made aware of China's repression tactics and such before, but it's still amazes me.

    So, from the article:
    But blanket censorship is reserved for extreme situations, and this fact reflects its long-standing dilemma: while it desperately wants to control the flow of news and opinion, especially dissent, it also wants an open, modern and efficient economy, including a state-of-the-art telecom and information infrastructure.

    Wow! The statement that they're reserving censorship for 'extreme' situations is so bogus. Look at what they're doing! They're flat out trying to set up a fear driven filter system that would let them block a SINGLE WORD from entering ANY MEDIA source in the country! The idea that they could do this is amazing, and the fact that they're actually accomplishing it is even more so.

    And as for an open economy, how the hell do you do that if the citizens can't participate? I suppose people get mind-numbed enough that even government driven mis-information is better than nothing, but at some point it becomes pointless doesn't it? The government will be forcing the economy down faster than it can grow.

    Oh yeah, and... The authorities seem to have asked the websites to add the term Sars to the long list of banned words....

    ASKED!?! PFFFFFFFT!

    Don't get me wrong. Yes, I'm an American living in the U.S. No, I have no idea what it would take to actually run a country with such a huge population. But, I'm fairly certain this isn't going to help anyone and will eventually be the govt's down fall. I try not to be judgemental, but I just can't believe that this kind of stuff is for the good of the people.

  • China is like Iraq (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @08:41AM (#6232081)
    News agencies are treating China like Iraq. That is, in Iraq, CNN and other international news organizations chose not to report stories about government atrocities. They wanted to skip the horrors so that they could continue to report from the country.

    The same is happening in China. Various news agencies are not reporting actual news worthy events in China, as it would get them kicked out. There is a tremendous market in China. CNN would rather skip the truth than report what is actually happening.

    The biggest human rights abuses occurr in China. Millions die in accidents there every year that you never hear about. Local communist organizations still kill people routinely.

    Economic reforms have occurred in a vacuun. Without political reform, all of this investment and wealth will be for nothing. The leaders of China still believe they are communist. The local communist groups still kill people and oppress the rest. People are still disappeared for talking to reporters who want to report what is really going on.

    China is a nation that murders its citizens. It denies the most basic of human rights. It is still ruled by incompetent men like Jiang Zimen. China is a disgrace to the world community.


    I would use my real name, but I am afraid for my fiance's family, who still live in China.

  • Chinese repression isn't the whole story (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hussar ( 87373 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @09:33AM (#6232511) Homepage
    Granted, having recently read Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution [smartmobs.com] (Here is the /. review [slashdot.org]), I am probably somewhat oversensitive to stories like this.

    Be that as it may, what makes this interesting to me is not only China's response, but the fact that 120 million people were using SMS to discuss and act on a single issue. And, there are other examples of this as well, such as the toppling of the Philipine president, tactical organization of WTO protestors, and the organization of protesters against the war in Iraq.

    Thinking on a broader scope, these all seem to me to be examples of self-organization in the complexity theory sense of the term, and it has the potential to be more important than email because:

    - it can be done on a relatively inexpensive devise I can slip into a pocket.
    - the user does not have to be "logged in" in the same way that one does in order to get email on a computer. (Yes, I am aware of the Blackberry, but it doesn't have the market share SMS-capable phones have.)
    - it is nearly instantaneous. The user is told that a message has arrived, and does not have to periodically check an account.
    - it doesn't have the language issues the web has because if people send SMS's to recipients in other countries, they will share a common language with the person to whom they have sent the message. The recipient is an intelligent translator who can retransmit the message in another language as necessary.

    It would not surprise me to see global movements applying nearly instantaneous pressure on local governments in the not-too-distant future using SMS. With the increasing popularity of MMS and phones with built in cameras, we will even get pictures.

  • Remember the old BBSes? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Shillo ( 64681 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @09:42AM (#6232614)
    1'v h33rd dat g0v7's l15t3|\|1|\|g. Wh4ts 4ll di5 54r5 th1|\|g? 4nyw3y, l3t d3m c3n5or th15!

    Although I suspect this might be tad more difficult with Chinese letters. ;)

    --

  • China vs. the West (Score:2, Interesting)

    by operagost ( 62405 )
    How the West handles a medical crisis:
    1. A disease breaks out and spreads rapidly.
    2. The news spreads across SMS, the internet, etc.
    3. Authorities use the information gathered to avoid future epidemics.

    How China handles a medical crisis
    1. A disease breaks out and spreads rapidly.
    2. The news spreads across SMS, the internet, etc.
    3. Authorities use the information gathered to suppress communications so that future outbreaks can spread quietly and unchecked.

  • Scary Very Scary (Score:5, Informative)

    by Plug1 ( 588101 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @10:07AM (#6232886)
    I was in Hong Kong in January and February when SARS was just starting. At the time the government was covering it up and the news reported it as a bird flu outbreak in Guangdong province. The really scary thing is that our entire time there no one knew the real threat this disease posed. I was allowed to enter the US and Canada no questions asked. Thankfully no one on the trip got sick, but this case shows that supression of information can have far reaching consequences. Had someone on our trip contracted the illness they could have possibly infected an entire college campus, with little information on what the disease was the result would have been a disaster. I hope this experience teaches the chinese gov't that information needs to be shared not hidden. Had they been honest SARS would have never spread as it did.

  • Bomb Anthrax Nuke Iraq Bomb Bomb (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @10:15AM (#6232965)
    Its technology allows it, for example, to search the country's entire volume of email traffic for words such as "Falungong", or to monitor any individual's text messages.

    Considering how susceptible Chinese computers have been in the past to e-mail worms, I bet I know what sort of messages the next big worm will send out....

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