China to Set Up ‘Security Offices’ Inside Internet Companies
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Edit: pre-preemptively editing because the original, though I believe correct, was too glib and snarky.
Three Letter Agencies in the U.S. have long had commercial "partnerships"[0] with private companies including internet and telecom companies. As has come to light in the past couple years, these partnerships were not "just" about securing national interests and infrastructure.
I don't think there's anything fundamentally different about the citizens of the respective countries. Both are loath to give up comfort and the status quo to challenge their governments surveillance states in meaningful ways.
The big difference as I see it is that the staus-quo, at least on the surface, is vastly different in the two countries so the governments go about their efforts in appropriately different ways.
The cultures are entirely different, and that includes the perspective of the people towards the government. You can find many sources to support the claim that in general, the Chinese people trust the Chinese government more than the American people trust the American government. In China, the attitude toward the state is akin to the attitude of a child toward a parent. The prevailing wisdom in China is that what's good for the state is good for the people. Obviously that's not the case in America, where polls show record levels of distrust toward the government from its citizens.
These political differences stem from fundamental cultural ones, which is why I take issue with your claim that there's nothig fundamentally different about American and Chinese citizens. On the contrary, most differences are fundamental ones.
That's not remotely obvious to me. In my experience, American citizens distrust specific politicians, but they strongly trust the state apparatus. As examples, American citizens gave/give broad support to the NSA, invasions of other countries, and police/soldiers/firefighters/anyone in a uniform.
To broadly generalize, liberals seem to trust the State to be able to provide equality to people, so they might appear to "trust the State apparatus." Conservatives tend to be patriotic, so they might also appear to "trust the State apparatus." But both those groups are also trying to limit the State, just in different ways. Conservatives try to limit the social creep of the liberals. Liberals try to limit the defense spending.
I think you overestimate the "broad support" of the NSA, invasions, and uniformed men. If you've been reading the news it should be apparent that there is a huge lack of trust in the police, for example.
I also believe there are reporting oddities in the role too, but I can't find the reference to it anymore.
The result is that same as China, the difference is who's paying the person's salary.
Edit [information below]:
[1] (13) Carriers shall comply with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), see 47 C.F.R. §§ 1.20000 et seq. Page 5 of 6 1.20000 et seq.
[2] (14) Every carrier must designate an agent for service in the District of Columbia. See 47 U.S.C. § 413, 47 C.F.R. §§ 1.47(h), 64.1195.
[3] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-15-348A1.pd...
Not that ominous, just normal legal intercept. The US has had this requirement for a long time.
[0] https://insidersurveillance.com/calea-solutions-should-you-b...
[1] http://www.cisco.com/web/about/security/intelligence/LI-3GPP...
I expect that the intent is different, although I don't know US law. The Chinese intent is to (forcibly?) prevent unwanted communication. I doubt that is the intent of the US law.
CALEA intercepts are implemented through automated systems, the judge signs a warrant, it's entered into a computer and the wiretaps are done automatically, with the traffic routed to the requesting agency's systems.
In China, they probably noticed that they don't have a legal intercept facility built in, and don't want to spend the time to negotiate with all of the interested parties. So, they put a person on site.
The threat and the outcome is the same. If you don't provide legal intercept, you're going to get locked up.
For an example of what level of access these systems provide, a Greek carrier was hacked through theirs - the hacker(s) turned it on and used it to listen in on the Prime Minister's phone calls[1].
I'm not saying that the Chinese are doing the right thing, just that it's largely equivalent to what happens here.
[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-affair
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
The enforcement that goes with the surveillance is much less intrusive, almost invisible, but that doesn't mean we should ignore it.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/government-wiretap_...
The government can make sure that the private sector information and communication is secure against nation states and industrial espionage while also using the partnership and the access it provides to further its surveillance efforts, even its efforts against its own citizens.
Something bad, from a ccp pov, being discussed on a forum? Quick, netops, now, cut the cord... now.
It's quite different. The CNG are willing to spite their companies to further the party's viability. The party always comes first, not law, not country, its the party and the pla.
It's still too glib and snarky.
There's a really big difference between controlling what is said and observing everything that is said. I think the NSA has gone too far, but it's way different from censorship. And even censorship is different than what Communism does, which as far as I can tell from the People's Daily, is that they simply say what they wish were true as if it were true. Apparently they also suppress statements to the contrary. This is very, very different than privacy violations from recording everything.
The U.S. simply makes a far greater effort to make the movie/TV industry appear fundamentally different to and disconnected from the NSA.
That's another difference between the U.S. and China: the U.S. use elected politicians as media decoys in addition to foreign countries a lot more than China, leaving unexamined the real groups that run the countries, which in the U.S. includes the corporations that pay money to advertise on TV or in the news.
It's not censorship; it's purification.
I think 25 years ago, it seemed that choice existed. You could do liberal, capitalist democracy following the examples of Western Europe, Japan & the US. The other hand was a hodgepodge of failure, either state failure or economic failure. Most notably was the failed soviet bloc but also China, India & South America (right and left). All or nothing. Revolution or stagnation. Free your people or live in culturaly stagnant, poverty stricken destitute with .
The idea that political freedoms necessary for democracy are intertwined with the economic freedoms necessary for capitalism had a lot of traction. But, with the examples of the last generation (positive and negative) I think that is no longer conventional wisdom. China's been very successful at growing economically by hand selecting policies and freedoms they want and keeping other out. You could call it non-fundamentalist or you could call it unprincipled depending on your biases and judgements, but it's hard to ignore it.
China has been selectively liberalizing economically, socially and (to a lesser extent) politically. It doesn't see how you could argue that a sudden democratization in 1980 or 1990 would have gotten them further along.
The reality is that the choices are nowhere near black and white. There is such a thing as a soft authoritarian, single party, free market state. They are doing it.
Its nice to think that liberal democracy and prosperity are intertwined because I like democracy. But, I think democracy must be justified on its own merits. The conic advantages…. They're debatable.
While this doesn't justify China's actions, it does provide an explanation for them.
Capitalism scales just fine. So does democracy, ask India. Lets stop giving authoritarians more excuses.
That's why you get things like what the article discusses and why you get the great firewall. It's all about crowd control on a very large scale and it is driven by fear of what that crowd could do once it realizes there are no chains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Communist_Par...
Well, at the moment the economy is still growing and that makes a huge difference. Even in the west, people who feel that their lives are improving are much less interested in political reform.(+)
If the economy experiences a serious recession, then things could get much nastier.
(+) this does not apply to Tibet
You could literally be describing any country on earth with that.
For instance, NL has a 10/5 split m/f and the average age of the ministers is 52.
What I can't figure out is why they think they need to retain power. Is it because they are scared of what will happen to them if they don't? Do they feel that China without Communism will be chaos? Or is it just institutional momentum?
Even the worst leadership can make the jump from farming to industry. This is more or less the story of communism in the 50s and 60s. Suddenly, a lot of farmers went from backbreaking work just being able to feed themselves to making products. This is an economic force multiplier. The problem is autocratic states can't get past this stage very well. Compare N Korea and S Korea's GDP per capita over the decades, past the 1970s, the South led and had to liberalize a lot to continue growth. Now they're seen as a economic miracle at $26,000 GDP per capita compared to the North's $1,800. In the 50s and 60s we all sat stunned at how well the North was beating the South! Now they're an international laughingstock.
>The idea that political freedoms necessary for democracy are intertwined with the economic freedoms necessary for capitalism had a lot of traction
When everyone gets sick of factory work and realizes they own no property, can't give their children a better life, can't open their own businesses, have to bribe everyone to get even the basic services, etc they will have problems the same way N Korea, Cuba, and the USSR did. They just haven't hit that wall yet. That wall is coming. There's no avoiding it. They will either liberalize to stay competitive or pull a Putin and say "This is good enough, right here" and fall deeper into isolation, autocracy, corruption, economic stagnation, and more mindless jingoism/island annexation.
Still, China's been doing better than India and a lot of other more liberal places.
I think the general point is inconclusive, but it's the specific point that matters. China over the last generation got a lot richer and there is no reason to think it would have done better economically if it was more liberal politically.
I think that even with the Stasi, corruption and the appeal of western culture to East Germans, the regime would still exist had it not failed economically. And, like I said at the start I think it's a stretch to tell China that they're in the same boat as N Korea, Cuba, and the USSR.
Well have to see how things play out, but it does not seem very promising. On the other hand, it'll be interesting to see which system can provide a better life for its population. It's not a given democratic capitalism is the only or best solution. Perhaps a different mix will win out.
I think it is a bit early to call that. They avoided all-out revolution by letting go of the reins a bit, but in the slightly longer term things could very well still go pear shaped or result in a re-assertion of power.
You seem to acknowledge that in the rest of your comment but that's inconsistent with claiming it is a success already, it's mostly early days in a pretty risky experiment.
Long term, it's hard to say what political-economic systems will look like. However, it appears China has so far achieved economic success via capitalistic economics without democracy. It does not seem that China is in any hurry to democratize. In its history, there has been at least weak centralization, never the less, centralization and strong central gov't is embedded in their collective psyche.
Those bottom 500 million have seen zero improvement in 50 years inflation adjusted. They're also mostly peasant farmers, and it's illegal for them to own farm land - they're land slaves accordingly. They have no prospects, and have seen no real benefit from the labor utilization system, it has completely failed them.
The only meaningful thing China's system accomplished, was absorbing some of the vast, slack labor capacity for manufacturing. That would have happened by default minus the economic controls they previously had in place. China didn't have to do anything but take their boot off the throat of manufacturing. And now the manufacturing party is over, so they've turned to extreme debt acquisition and forced asset bubbles to fake growth.
There may not have been a greater economic myth than the story of China's rise, in the last century.
Firstly, dollar figures are useless in China as the USD/CNY exchange rate has varied significantly, the domestic economy is very dynamic (high inflation) and has surprisingly little to do with the international economy. The quoted figures, probably dodgy in the first place, are likely 15 years old.
Rapid evidence: I live in a 85% agricultural zone (5% concrete factories, 5% tourism to a nearby lake, 5% military) where people spend easily $1 each on breakfast, $2 each per dish at lunch or dinner, and up to $13 per dish if meat or seasonal mushrooms. Beers are $1-2 and people drink every day. Non-showy cigarettes are $2-$4/pack and the whole male population smokes, often easily 1/2 to a pack a day. Almost everyone has flat screen TVs (with a huge VoD library plus tens of cable TV channels), mobile phones, electric scooters (or cars, or motorbikes, or electric tractors), literacy and internet access (albeit with Chinese characteristics). Most people can afford to eat out almost every day. Looking west, all I can see are four storey private houses. Looking east, I see a small factory or two and more four storey private houses in a neighbouring village, beyond rich agricultural fields. A few year old major airport lies an hour to the northeast, and a city of six million to the northwest, currently building an extension of its subway line and a new highway here. People are materially doing very well - better than many part of the US - and this is a relatively poor province.
If you want to wax lyrical about China's rise being false, come and live here before doing so. I am currently putting together a documentary on the foreign community in the nearest city, which should dispel many of these myths. (TLDW; people from everywhere, lots of art, music, short working hours, safe, pluralistic society. Way comfier than the US. To quote a Californian I interviewed on the US, who has lived in Tokyo, SF, SoCal and Thailand but chooses to live in this part of China: "not my circus, not my monkeys")
Room 641A, etc.
Most of those Internet companies would not exist if it weren't for the free and open source software that they run on. Instead of 'liberating' people and bringing them 'freedom', the free sofware has the undesired effect of creating the Supreme Big Brother.
We are "Hacker news" here, we should be very worried about this - the early hacker's visions are being killed by the hour.
How can we win back the dream ?
The point I was trying to make is that GPL and free software in general is the manifestation of a deeper idealistic dream - a society in which collaboration and sharing makes people free and everyone wins.
Free to make their own choices, to do what they want, free from any form of control.
That dream is what created most of the Internet, but now it's being hijacked by people who've contributed nothing... And that is the sad part.
If governments choose to use GPL code to spy on and oppress their people, that's perfectly within the spirit of free software, as long as they respect the users' freedoms regarding the source code while doing so.
It's the idea that sharing and collaboration will bring us more freedom - freedom from opressors or owners of any kind, who can control our lives for their benefit.
I believe this to be the deeper philosophical implication of free and open source software. It's the dream of a better, freer, smarter society.
So I don't think government spying is perfectly in the spirit of free software, it's exactly opposite to it.
We should airdrop millions of copies of a Chinese translation of "Fahrenheit 451" all over China...
I think I'm going to have that put on t-shirt.
They are there to enforce regulation on the companies, not on “cybercriminals.” Or to put it another way, operating an Internet company that fails to acts as a de-facto arm of the state’s surveillance and culture-control policy is itself a cyber-crime.