The World's Largest Phone Network China Mobile Censors Content -- Even in the United States (washingtonpost.com) 61
Isaac Stone Fish, reporting for The Washington Post: On Monday, the U.S. Department of Commerce recommended the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deny a license to China Mobile, the state-run company that is the world's largest phone network by subscribers. (It reaches more people than Verizon and AT&T combined.) The Commerce Department suggested the move because of the national security risk China Mobile poses. Indeed, because China Mobile is an arm of the Chinese state, there are legitimate concerns that Beijing could use it to gather data on American citizens. There is, however, a previously unreported concern with China Mobile that adds to worries about the company's suitability in the United States.
According to several interviews with frequent Chinese travelers to the United States, those with China Mobile as their carrier are often unable to access American websites and apps that are banned in China. A Chinese journalist who regularly travels to the United States for work, and who asked to speak anonymously, said she couldn't access Facebook or the New York Times in the United States with her China Mobile number. Even Google Maps is banned, leading to some frustrating travel experiences. When she was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, the Chinese journalist said, "it took me a long time to find her place because my VPN failed me and I couldn't use Google Maps." She was referring to a Virtual Private Network, a method that some Chinese use to circumvent the Chinese censorship apparatus.
According to several interviews with frequent Chinese travelers to the United States, those with China Mobile as their carrier are often unable to access American websites and apps that are banned in China. A Chinese journalist who regularly travels to the United States for work, and who asked to speak anonymously, said she couldn't access Facebook or the New York Times in the United States with her China Mobile number. Even Google Maps is banned, leading to some frustrating travel experiences. When she was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, the Chinese journalist said, "it took me a long time to find her place because my VPN failed me and I couldn't use Google Maps." She was referring to a Virtual Private Network, a method that some Chinese use to circumvent the Chinese censorship apparatus.
Bigger problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Bigger problem (Score:1)
No, but they lose safe harbor protection if they do.
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Much bigger problem is that it isn't against the law for private corporations to censor. While we rightfully condemn China Mobile for blocking NYT, there is no law preventing, for example, AT&T from doing the same.
Of course there is... there are net neutrali... oh yeah...
Re: Bigger problem (Score:2)
we should start a petition to either allow china mobile or enact true net neutrality. because free market and all that.
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While we rightfully condemn China Mobile for blocking NYT, there is no law preventing, for example, AT&T from doing the same.
Also known as the american "do as i say, not as i do"-doktrin...
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Bullshit. IF it's ATT, you switch to Verizon, or any number of others. It's called a free market.
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The unicorn free market where magic cable flies out of the unicorns butt to provide you a connection. You can only connect to the services provide at your location, no competition at all if you can only get one service and if you can get more expect a cartel to form from the two or three services you can get. Same bloated prices, same shitty services and when it comes to complaining, free market unicorns is what they scream at you.
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While it may not be against the law for AT&T to block a site. It does have to contend with Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile who would be more then willing to show that AT&T are blocking sites while they are not.
This why the world didn't end when Net Neutrality was repealed. If these companies just started restricting sites, people would notice, and switch to those who do not.
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The reason AT&T and the other major cellular carriers won't enact censorship is the people living in the US are allowed to loudly complain about such actions in public. Protests and attack campaigns hurt the bottom line of the company even if the protests and complaints have no basis.
And sad to say but no evidence of wrong doing is required today. Accusations are good enough to proclaim a company or an individual guilty as charged. It's ironic that the people throwing around the accusations have no prob
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And the best part is, the new SCOTUS nominee is for private censorship and against net neutrality. Yay.
Shocking! Well, OK, not that shocking. (Score:4, Insightful)
Who is surprised by this? This is SOP for them and exactly what is expected. In all likelihood, it is a legal requirement for Chinese telecom services.
China makes a lot of stuff, they act in some ways like a modern country, but in fact they are a communist totalitarian state - and now (with Li's "presidente for life" declaration) a dictatorship. This is what they are, and this is what they do.
China Mobile is an arm of the Chinese state (Score:1, Informative)
We know this. Why not just ban all companies that are arms of the Chinese state? We know they're not to be trusted under any circumstances, so why allow them? Let them meet our standards or go fuck themselves full of rice.
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Re:China Mobile is an arm of the Chinese state (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a lot of state-own companies in China. In fact, there are too many that the Chinese government wants to get rid of, but they tried (mostly in the 1990's) but cannot privatize those companies because most of those companies are highly inefficient and privatize them would cost a lot of jobs. So I don't understand what's this fear of Chinese state-own companies is about? If state-owned companies are a thing of threats, then the Soviet Union would be ruling the world today. This is all fear mongering.
By the way, China Mobil is not totally state-owned. They are a public trade company listed in Hong Kong Stock Exchange. And the company has to carry the mandate of the Chinese government to provide mobile network services to the remotest rural areas in China at an affordable price, unlike AT&T et. al, who couldn't even provide complete service coverage in Silicon Valley, so that would already damp its competitiveness.
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in the other news, Iraq has WMDs.
Owned, schmowned, pwned (Score:1)
Again, this is a totalitarian state. State-owned or not, they exist to serve the ends of the government. They are not independent entities in any way.
All the communist states figure out that state-owned/planned operations are inefficient and donot work, usually pretty quickly. To first approximation, they wouldn't care, but if the business is not working, there are a lot less profits to steal for themselves. So they quickly adopt *fascist* models, where the businesses are ostensibly f
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If state-owned companies are a thing of threats...
Bob Readerman of the New York Times raves: "James Patterson's A Thing of Threats is a riveting delve into the seedy underworld of state-owned companies. My buttcheeks literally did not unclench once as this gripping thriller wove its way through not one, not two, but—spoilers!—a whole thing of threats!! 5/5 - instant best seller and surprisingly effective glute workout."
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The opposite is true for US travelers to China (Score:4, Interesting)
if you have T-Mobile. Everything goes through t-mo's vpn so you have full access to all US sites that are normally blocked for Chinese. Although strangely enough, Google blocks downloadable / offline maps for China so you can only navigate as long as you have a good cell signal and don't go too fast.
Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
That's how mobile roaming works. Data is carried back to the mobile provider who then connects it to the Internet locally. US SIM cards block sites that are censored in the US. Film at 11.
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That's how mobile roaming works. Data is carried back to the mobile provider who then connects it to the Internet locally. US SIM cards block sites that are censored in the US. Film at 11.
Yes, but that doesn't explain why a Chinese journalist in New York can't access Google : his data traffic is handled by the local mobile provider (say, AT&T), not by his Chinese "home" provider.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
While roaming, the Chinese user would connect to the to Chinese home network provider's packet gateway through a roaming interconnect which would connect the user out via Chinese Internet, not AT&T's network connection.
There isn't typically local breakout of Internet traffic to the roaming partner as operator specific services would break.
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exactly. and that's why for the same reason you can access Google, Facebook and Co inside China if you use a foreign SIM card - no VPN required.
XKCD (Score:3)
Ah! That explains today's XKCD [xkcd.com] comic.
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hehehe, is this technology now available to shill...
In America... (Score:5, Insightful)
... we prefer our censors and guardians of CorrectThink (tm) to be private corporations like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, not the State!
TOTALLY NORMAL for gsm/3g/4g data. (Score:5, Informative)
if they had started to route the traffic directly through wherever they're roaming, that would be news.
it works as if they were in china. that's how it's supposed to work. how on earth a journalist doesn't know this by now? they never travel?
this is literally not news at all since this is just how it works. their data gets routed back to china and out from there. THATS HOW IT WORKS, the ping times go to fuck of course.
also, it's usually prohibitely expensive anyways so.. eh. just look for wifi will you? or you want to pay thousands for 10 minutes of downloading updates? you wouldn't be doing that unless you had chinese government footing your mobile bill anyways.
Why bother doing it themselves? (Score:3)
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its more like and anal cavity / back door at best.
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or a more apt description would be, a paid for anal whore that will let some fuck its customers for a fee.
Shocking (Score:2)
Idiot article (Score:5, Insightful)
They are roaming. This means, the data goes from the phone, to the cellular network, and then to the Internet from the cellular network.
If you are on Verizon and roaming in China, your phone number is still your USA phone number, your IP is a USA based IP address, and your traffic goes from your phone, to Verizon, and then to facebook or google or whatever.
If you are from China, on China Mobile, the same fucking thing applies. You are roaming. You maintain your phone number from China. Your network traffic goes from your phone, over to China Mobile's network, and exits that network. From there, you can go to Facebook or whatever - unless it's blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
This is how fucking roaming works. WTF, people?!
How the fuck is this even an issue or discussion?!?!
Data Breakout (Score:2)
When roaming, all data goes to your country of origin and breaks out from that point of origin.
For China Mobile, the users will be restricted by the great firewall because its as if they are in China.
Gather data on US citizens. (Score:2)
Indeed, because China Mobile is an arm of the Chinese state, there are legitimate concerns that Beijing could use it to gather data on American citizens.
That's the NSA's job.
Oh oh (Score:2)
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See subject: Your MASSIVE FAIL in this life is you're nothing more than a chattering little do-nothing "ne'er-do-well" online & you know it...
There was a young man from Nantucket
Who carried his balls in a bucket
He saw a dead deer, and he said - "I'm no queer"
"But just the same I think I'll make some Venison Sausage."
What did you think I was going to write?
US Hypocrisy (Score:2)
"China Mobile is an arm of the Chinese state"
Snowden showed that US tech companies are also an arm of the state. It may be less willing, but it's no less intrusive.
Tell the people to rise up (Score:1)
China censors, US taxes (Score:2)
US collects taxes from the income US citizen have abroad. It seems that US thinks that pay taxes is the most important obligation citizen have to state. (all other contries typically don't do so, and let country where person made money tax him),
China apparenly thinks that right order of thoughts is the most important obligation to state. So it censors its citizens even abroad.
This is a consequence of how cell networks work. (Score:2)