Prying Eyes of Internet Filters in China

There are thousands of prying eyes on the Internet in China but it doesn’t seem to bother the average person in China that their human rights may be violated.  The Internet might seem like the ultimate free-speech medium. Not in China.  Internet filters in China are an example of how the filters can be used to an extreme.  Americans have the choice of using filters or not.  They can choose what kind of filter and how much they want filtered.

The Internet in China is very filtered. This fact is found nowhere in Chinese newspapers because the newspapers they read are filtered, too. Chinese citizens know about filtering only through gossip, or when they discover that certain sensitive Websites are consistently reported to be unavailable on the otherwise-functioning network. As part of a project documenting Internet filtering worldwide, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School explored and analyzed the situation in China. They found a range of sites covering dozens of topical categories to be filtered, including dissident and democracy sites, sites covering public health and HIV, sites about religion, Tibet, Taiwan and the home pages of many institutions of higher learning around the world. Within this expansive range, what stands out as perhaps the primary target of filtering in China, apart from pornography, are sites involving news. China regularly blocks the online homes of BBC, CNN, Times, PBS, The Miami Herald, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. A handful of activist hackers and others had already entered the cat-and-mouse game of helping users bypass government Internet filters through proxy services.

Internet Filters in China Have Internet Cops

When web surfers enter the Internet in China, they are first directed to a government Website.  Here, they are greeted by two adorable cartoon figures, a tiny policeman and policewoman with friendly smiles, no noses (for some reason) and huge dreamy blue anime eyes. These little rascals' names are Jingjing and Chacha (jingcha is Mandarin for police), and they are there to remind Web surfers to behave themselves because the Internet cops in China are always watching.

The authorities in Beijing have a more realistic take on the power of the Net. They realize that most people aren't going to use it to rally for democracy; they're going to do what Americans do: gossip about celebrities, check the weather, play games and look at porn. So the Internet police in China mostly leave that stuff alone. The Chinese Internet filters are even more ominous than total control: It feels almost normal, so people don't think about what it is they can't get. If anything, the Web has been a galvanizing force for Chinese nationalism. The anti-Japanese riots that broke out last year over a Japanese textbook that underplayed wartime atrocities in China were largely organized online--with government sanction.

The Big Internet Filter in China is Called, The Great Firewall of China

Internet filters in China attempts to keep its citizens from viewing certain Web sites. The government requires Internet providers to block these through a filter called "the great firewall of China." Rather than slow or block Google searches, the company struck a deal to edit objectionable content on its new search site, Google.cn. (The ".cn" stands for "China.")

Certain words are filtered, yet the vast majority of the world's sites are accessible. In a test with a Web surfer in Beijing, on a search term like "pornography," five of the top eight hits on Google in China are identical to those on the U.S. Google.

Internet Filters are Voluntary in USA

That brings us to one of Washington's fixations. Filters aren't required for individuals in the United States. In 1998, Congress attempted to ban pornographic Websites, but the law has never gone into effect. The Supreme Court said parents and others can avoid this stuff on their computers by voluntarily deploying software filters.

All Internet traffic entering or leaving China must pass through government-controlled gateways -- that is, banks of computers -- where e-mail and Website requests are monitored. E-mail with offending words such as "Taiwan independence" or "democracy" can be pulled aside and trashed. And when a mainland user tries to open a page that's blacklisted, the gateway will simply deny access. Search for "Tiananmen Massacre" in China, for example, and 90 of the top 100 sites that mention it are blocked, according to the OpenNet Initiative, an Internet watchdog group. The Net operators' response? "We are trying to provide as much information as possible," says Robin Li, chairman of Baidu.com Inc., China's top search engine. "But we need to obey Chinese law."

Despite the power and sophistication of China's Internet filters, the march of technology may yet foil them. As more sites add podcasts and user-generated video, China's monitoring efforts will become far more complicated because it's harder to examine such material than it is to check text files. How do you filter when everybody has the capability to be their own video blogger?  But don't underestimate China's ability to control the Net, just as it has done in the past.