China Cuts Mobile Service of Xinjiang Residents Evading Internet Filters | Hacker News Reader

China Cuts Mobile Service of Xinjiang Residents Evading Internet Filters

nytimes.com

78 pointswalterbell62 comments

This is the kind of censorship and control that becomes very difficult to escape once activated. It seems imperative to me that anyone living in China who isn't already well off aught to consider having a backup plan in the event that communication with the outside world is completely disrupted.

This isn't the kind of move anyone should be taking lightly, more so for those directly in the country being cut off.

I have Satcom and HAM Radio as the backup, but I'm afraid they could be useless when law enforcements involved. A visa and plane ticket may be more realistic in the case.

Both of them are legal, but

1) for HAM Radio you need to apply for a license, acquire a call sign, the process is not very painful, but takes some time. People in HAM circles are really very nice and quite friendly, btw.

2) SatCom and other one-way or two-way systems are under control by the "State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television", but they have no legislation, they need to ask local police nicely to intervene or to talk to you.

Using these techs as a harmless individual may be safe, but if things get worse, circumventing GFW could be criminalized.

>Satcom and HAM Radio

What is the punishment for being found owning/using that sort of equipment in China, if any?

I suspect that no one would care unless you do something evil (but nowadays people use the thing called internet). I found an active forum www.hellocq.net via a quick google search and there are >100 posts today.

For most of the people, there is no need to communicate "with the outside world".

That's something a censorship proponent would say. But if it was the case there would be no need for censorship.

There're quite a lot parts in Xinjiang has converted to Islam in last few decades. Also, there is an effective executive order making laws easier for minority[1]. For those who don't know, eastern Turkestan is always trying to take the land. It looks more like a wartime regulation than regular censorship in peace time to me.

[1] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/兩少一寬

> Converted to Islam in the last few decades.

Uyghurs have always been Muslim. Infact their genetic makeup is Turkic as opposed to Han/Hui Chinese.

I'm aware of the PRC's attempts to remove any sign of self-identity by force-feeding them during the Islamic month of Ramadan, and banning beards, etc.

First : can we stop conflating ethnic makeup and religion ? It is an ugly, racist ideology that muslims keep pushing. Race and religion have nothing to do with eachother.

Obviously Uighurs have not "always been muslim" (aside from the obvious: the ethnic group is far, far older than mohammedanism). They "converted" when they were conquered by a foreign state, who called themselves "the black Khans", supported by other foreign states. In practice, few doubt that it was the muslim way : convert, slavery or die.

Since muslims force people to convert, and have the death penalty for conversion out of islam, it seems extremely hypocritical to criticize the imposition of foreign culture. What is your argument against it ? It's not nice when others do it ?

Religious flamewars are not allowed on Hacker News. Please don't.

Well "the outside world" includes stuff like Wikipedia, Gmail and services that people want to use and have access to, even in Chinese but hosted outside of China.

The thing going on in Xinjiang that we're not supposed to know about is Tibet-style "internal colonisation" and almost certainly some "ethnic cleansing". However the censorship is good enough that it's hard to say accurately.

There has been two major attacks possibly related to Xinjiang lately. The 2014 Kunming attacks and the 2015 Bangkok bombings.

In Chinese perspective these are acts of international terrorism related to islamist jihad (ISIS, Al Queda etc.). And talk about Xinjiang seperation from China would be what we in the west call "hate speech" since it possibly would entail cleansing of Han-chinese from the region.

However this perspective is not shared by the west which is probably why the Chinese government cannot get the same services from Google and Facebook that countries like USA or France can when comes to censoring hate speech or get logs on suspected terrorist.

Hence they have to resort to more primitive ways.

this perspective is not shared by the west

True - because we can't see what's actually going on. Undoubtedly it's a complex situation like Israel or the Balkans. But since reporting is banned, we have to do the arithmetic of "police repression" + "reporting banned" and assume that it's cover for human rights violations like what happened in Tibet.

Edit: quite a lot of the comment here looks like a not-very-convincing propaganda operation.

Xinjiang isn't exactly North Korea: we actually can see what's going on pretty well, if not always in realtime and/or perfect fidelity. Anybody with a Chinese visa can go there and poke around without special permissions, and Urumqi is a city of three million people with a large international airport. For example, here's a detailed story in the Economist about the XPCC, the paramilitary state org responsible for a good deal of the exploitation of the region:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21578433-region-plagued-...

> Anybody with a Chinese visa can go there and poke around without special permissions

This is not true. There are plenty of restrictions for foreigners travelling in Xinjiang, especially outside of the touristy areas in the main cities. Large areas are unreachable without special permits, allegedly due to "safety reasons".

Got link? Permits are required for various treks like K2 base camp, some archaeological sites, the Karakoram Highway to Pakistan etc, and as usual in China there are restrictions (varyingly enforced) on where foreigners are supposed to stay overnight, but the list below doesn't appear particularly sinister.

http://oldroadtours.com/index.php/preparing-for-your-tour/vi...

Overall it's not really that sinister, I guess.

Outside those it's mostly local gov/police not wanting foreigners walking around, not being allowed of the bus between the larger cities, them being sensitive when getting somewhat close to the border with Kazakhstan, and Bingtuan. Having "paperwork" is required then.

Plus, restrictions come and go on forcing foreigners to only travel with authorised tour agencies, or authorised guides, that won't take you to some places. And whose presence will make local people suspicious of talking to you.

Yes. It is not exactly North Korea and the perpetrators behind the Bangkok and Kunming attacks weren't exactly the Dalai Lama.

In the realpolitik of the west there is an interest in keeping China occupied with internal troubles regardless of whether the people we end up supporting are nice or not.

Han Chinese were implanted in there to prevent Uyghur homogenity. So, why do "Anti-Terror" efforts involve force feeding muslims during the Islamic month of Ramadan? They have a Chinese flag affixed inside Masjids, and a lot more, but I'm sure you get the drift that not many of us are ignorant about the atrocities inflicted upon them.

"Force feeding muslims during the Islamic month of Ramadan" --- Media Garbage. Only officers, teachers and students were disciplined, and I see no problems here. Religious practices are not allowed to paralyze public services. It's not new but had been a norm until extremists changed it.

Apparently, you're pro-Muslim and anti-Han. You may find a lot of brothers and sisters in Malaysia and Indonesia where the laws undisguisedly claim MALAY FIRST.

It's interesting that President Obama says nothing about this kind of extreme racist laws in his childhood residential country. Maybe he's pro-Muslim too?

You put a pair of quotes on "Anti-Terror" to show your anti-Han position given the facts that Han suffered most from the tension between the Government and Muslim Extremists. It's a clear sign that you're a media puppet.

China has a lot of "Affirmative Actions" against Han, including the birth control policy and Han people are furious about the situation.

Maybe some day, there will be a HAN FIRST government for you to criticize Han racists but not now.

I'm not anti-Han. I have family members who are Han. I'm only against oppression, be it in China, India or Pakistan.

I'm one of those that believes an individual should have the freedom to express themselves.

For what it matters, Han Chinese (urban) have historically been well-educated and get access to better jobs. If the Uyghurs (mostly rural) get decent education & opportunities, separatists' calls (and motivation) would die down.

There's a part of me that can't believe that I live in an era where the authors of the article were directed to "the local cyberpolice" for questions. Sounds almost dystopian when I read it aloud.

> Sounds almost dystopian when I read it aloud.

Sounds dystopian when read in any context. I can't imagine this is a sustainable strategy, but if they find out that it is, it would be 1984 realized.

http://www.bj.cyberpolice.cn looks hilarious, I don't know why. Maybe the potted plants.

Or the identical cartoon police men and women!

Xinjiang has been cut off from Internet for at least 11 months. It's seldom reported outside. Ppl even used dialups in landlines but soon get cut off again.

Another day, another story of an Asian nation that deeply feers the personal expression and curiosity of its citizens. Thailand, Singapore, China... how privileged so many of us are, taking for granted that we grew up in a culture where that particular level of explicit distrust does not exist.

Except it's even worse, because in this particular case they're targeting an area full of ethnic minorities in a Han dominated china: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang

The strong coercing the weak.

This is one area where China seems to be both the leader and trend setter. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't being discussed in Western governments within the next 5 years unless trend changes drastically.

> I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't being discussed in Western governments within the next 5 years unless trend changes drastically.

I would be. Despite the attacks on privacy, freedom of speech is still alive and well in the US. Actual censorship is incredibly unconstitutional and would create a gigantic shitstorm.

Like when they took down wikileaks and blocked their access to money through paypal and amazon... yeah total shitstorm that it seems you forgot... :-(

That supports my point. They took down WikiLeaks by directly attacking the servers, not by deploying a blocklist. Taking down servers is expensive and ineffective (another server will just pop back up).

Elements in the US federal government are envious to be sure. They're probably in the process of figuring out how to pitch their own US National Freedomwall as protection from terrorists.

Generally these sorts of draconian measures seem to filter down from China, to the UK, then to Australia and New Zealand, Canada, and then the United States. From end to end it takes about 10 years.

If I remember correctly, the foundation of the Great Firewall came from Cisco both the hardware and expertise so it's no surprise that this would try to make its way into the US.

curious of an example. Do you have one?

The list of blocked websites would be one such measure. It always starts with terrorists or some such and eventually filters down to local politics and whatnot.

Except there aren't blocklists in the US...

If you look at the progression, the US was listed after the rest. UK, Australia, etc. have all had big controversies over block lists and I think they're still working on implementing them in Canada.

Yep, the blocklist is just being implemented now in Australia.

There are in UK, and MPAA already had some very nasty attacks on some of the file lockers and torrent sites funding. Just wait.

I think it's a lot further away than you assume. The US has much stronger free speech protections than most countries and really doesn't take kindly to censorship.

The MPAA has gone after torrent sites, but that's very different from blocklists. For one thing, it involves actually shutting down the site so isn't really a viable vector for mass censorship.

> For one thing, it involves actually shutting down the site so isn't really a viable vector for mass censorship.

automatic DMCA abuses showed perfectly well how with cooperating partners we are all screwed.

Shutting down the site actually censors it in all countries, not just one. I'd say that's more dangerous than blocklists.

Pedos are also another scare tactic.

This isn't a new tactic. When visiting Beijing several years ago, I discovered that searches for sensitive terms would result in a dropped connection, with progressively longer reconnect delays for each additional action.

I imagine the permanent cutoff is a few steps up the scale of punishment.

> The action also shows that despite spending billions of dollars to create one of the world’s most sophisticated Internet censorship and surveillance systems, blind spots abound.

Does anyone here have a source that compares the reach of Chinese surveillance with the NSA and GCHQ?

Given how infamous US intelligence agencies are for being infiltrated by foreign agents, it's almost certainly a strict superset.

Infiltration gives you the ability to get to any bit of information you want. Not to all bits you need. Exfiltrating sizable amounts of data from US agencies is not so easy task, I would guess.

What actions do I take as someone outside of China by a hemisphere or so?

Reading this just blows my mind. I've gotten my family and a few friends on Signal[0], but these types of things only help if you have basic access to the Internet.

What type of infrastructure future proofing can you do when it's such a centralized technology? I've been thinking about renewing my ham radio license again (no more Morse code!)

[0]: https://whispersystems.org/

What actions do I take as someone outside of China by a hemisphere or so?

Absolutely none. But bear it in mind for the future.

If there is no action, then why even "bear it in mind"? Seems like you do think there is some preparatory action to take.

The internet may be the least they worry about. Xinjiang is big hot dense mess since a few years ago, terrorists and extremists are not rare in Xinjiang. The current state is more likely in a war against terrorism.

Nice to term separatists as Terrorists. Uyghurs' have always wanted self-determination and are culturally different from the Han Chinese, hence the resettled Hans in Xinjiang to prevent ethnic homogenity in the region.

Aren't all "Terrorists" separatists. Like the terrorism is a means to an end (separation). I don't think there are any terrorists who exist soley to cause terror as their end goal.

Their are a fair few cultural differences in China (even just within the "han race" let alone the other "races"[0].

But I often play the thought experiment in my head: How would the US govt react to the Latinos or the African Americans wishing to create a seperate state within the US?

I don't really see it playing out that differently to what China are doing.

Is this just a case of "China has a problem that we (the US) don't, and look at them struggle with it!" kind of thing?

The US has quite a lot of practical political freedom at the state and even down to county level. Texas is politically different from California, Alabama different from New York. So pretty much the only remaining domestic terrorism is from white supremacists. The key question is "how would the US react to white people trying to create a separate state within the US?

The US period of herding minorities into sub-states called "reservations" ended a long time ago.

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