Chinese City Wants To Build a Censorship-Free Hub

itwbennett writes "The city of Chongqing's proposed Cloud Computing Special Zone would be home to 'a handful of state-of-the-art data centers and is designed to attract investment from multinational companies and boost China's status as a center for cloud computing,' writes the IDG News Service's Michael Kan. The part that's drawing the ire of Chinese Internet users: This censorship-free hub would only be for foreign companies."

We promise we won't spy on your data...

[Nutria]

... unless you have secrets we really, really want.

Reminds me of Intershop

[cpghost]

In former Eastern Germany, their communist regime provided retail stores only for foreigners [wikipedia.org] (or specially privileged East Germans with western money). This made people there very resentful of their government... and eventually, they got rid of it. China's communists should be careful not to rise the ire of their citizens too much if they want to remain in power. Then again, why not? China could really need a breath of fresh air, at least politically.

Re:um are companies really this dumb?

[fabioalcor]

Realy low cost service. There are lots of companies that don't give a shit about privacy, they only care about budget cuts. Especialy those companies who deal with other people data, not theirs.

Re:We promise we won't spy on your data...

[Nutria]

How will they?

If you build all the components, assemble the computers and build the data centers, it's easy enough to build in side-channels and back doors.

I'm guessing this is more about the use of cryptography

Great in theory, but not so useful in the real world of non-geeks, where pass phrases are pathetically weak.

Re:Selective Communism

[lul_wat]

When will people finally understand that there's a difference between communism/socialism and fascism/dictatorship.

You can have a democratic socialist system, you can have a despot ruled capitalist system.

Mix and match, bitches.