Beijing Wants to Rewrite the Rules of the Internet

A supra-national level of organization is desirable, with open networks and a global community, but not the way we are doing it right now: currently a handful of companies are amassing all the power, benefitting a very small minority of workers (SV), collecting private information worldwide and providing that information to the US government. It is not even illegal, as Snowden thankfully revealed: US laws do not protect foreign nationals against eavesdropping.

What else can we, in the rest of the world, do? Since the behemoth is profitting from the global network but not contributing to its fairness, the only option left is to break it up, and take care of our piece of the network.

The other, better option, would be to regulate all this at the supra-national level. Sadly, we are entering a phase of nationalism, and that battle is already lost.

Today computers like imacs, ipads, mobile phones or tvs(not even talking about Alexa), clocks could spy on you in your house at every single time and give the data back to home at the other side of the globe.

Your pulse could be monitored, your movement could be monitored, who you talk with privately could be monitored, who you sleep with could be monitored.

Once this is possible it is a temptation so great for the US Government(or any other Govertment) and status quo to resist.

It is only a matter of time that Governments react. Of course the other powers of the wold want to do what the US Govertment already does.

Massive surveillance spying using technology created by companies of the same country? Already done by the US.

Protecting sensitive data from outside Governments? Already done by the US.

Restricting companies from working in strategic sectors and forcing them to provide source code? Already done by the US.

Perhaps we're just dealing with a natural cycle of trade expansion followed by protectionism.

Three objectives:

1. legitimate desire to address substantial cybersecurity challenges, like defending against cyber attacks and keeping stolen personal data off the black market

2. support domestic industry, in order to wean the government off its dependence on foreign technology components for certain IT products deemed essential to economic and national security

3. expand Beijing’s power to surveil and control the dissemination of economic, social, and political information online

Replace Beijing with <country's capital city> in #3 and all of those points sound like what Western countries are doing. There's nothing noteworthy in those three points. What's noteworthy is that #3 is becoming prevalent in countries that consider themselves 'free'.

Other things listed, such as employing people to manipulate content, is done elsewhere, but it's done by private companies rather than 'the state'. Not new, but the singular direction makes this stand out in a 1984 way. The Tanzania example is just a modernised version of the US' manifest destiny behaviour in Central America and other 'strategic' nations (cough Ukraine cough).

Where China is a leader, others are (often hypocritically) following. Where they're a follower, the leading has been done by the West.

"China’s control-driven model defies international openness, interoperability, and collaboration, the foundations of global internet governance and, ultimately, of the internet itself."

Replace China with "Facebook" or "Google" or even "Apple" or "Microsoft" and the sentence still rings true. Singularly calling China out smells like fairly blatant propaganda.

Openness, interoperability, and collaboration are utopian ideals of the Internet that were achieved when the Internet was a network of universities and scientific institutions back in the late 80's, up until "view your trolley / Checkout" was a thing. Profit is what's re-written the Rules of the Internet. Why else would it be so full of ads?

The nation states have just followed the money.

" Looks like you are offline

You'll need to check back here once you have restored your connection. Thanks for your patience. "

But you're clearly online if you can see the error message....

The problems with the internet isn't china. It's our media and our government but for some odd reason, all I hear is "china/beijing".

Is beijing the reason why there is so much censorship? Is beijing the reason why google search is so terrible? Is it beijing why there is so much censorship of the social media and the rest of the internet in the west? Of course not. The real reason is News Corp, NYTimes, WashingtonPost, The Atlantic along with corporate america and their stooges in the government.

Try googling anything. Half of the frontpage is now links to nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn and rest of the media.

I remember googling for yanny vs laurel not too long ago. Do you know what the top result was? A nytimes article. It wasn't the original instagram post. It wasn't the reddit post that made it go viral. It was a nytimes post. And almost all the results on the first page of google were links to news companies. I've been using google search since the late 90s. It's pathetic what google search has become. Youtube is going down the same path.

I'd take the atlantic a bit more seriously if they did an article about themselves or the rest of the media in regards to the rewriting of the rules of the internet. The biggest supporters of censorship and destruction of the internet is the media in the west.

That is the trend in the EU and US as well. Cyber protectionism, more or less.

To be crystal clear: a nation's critical infrastructure that is produced or designed in places which are neutral or quasi-hostile to that nation is suspect. It's perfectly reasonable for China to want its critical infrastructure supply chain local.

It's also perfectly reasonable to mandate that products sold in China be compliant with Chinese standards.

The open question is what constitutes "transfer of data". And, to again be crystal clear: China is notorious for abuse of human rights and for being at the forefront of applied digital surveillance of its citizens. Which is a shame.

> we cannot take for granted that the internet will remain a place of free expression where open markets can flourish.

The internet has not been a place of genuinely free expression for something like a decade now; platform operators set boundaries. Note that open markets are disjunct from free expression.

> . At a roundtable in Dar es Salaam sponsored by Beijing, Edwin Ngonyani, Tanzania’s deputy minister for transport and communications, explained, “Our Chinese friends have managed to block such media in their country and replaced them with their homegrown sites that are safe, constructive, and popular.” Among other countries where China invests heavily, Nigeria has adopted measures requiring that consumer data be hosted in Nigeria, while Egypt has pending legislation that would mandate ride-sharing companies to store data in-country while also making it more accessible to authorities. Chinese partners like Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt engage in aggressive online content control.

Notice that there are benefits here: citizens' data is being stored in a country where they have jurisdiction to sue over misuse. I consider that a Good Thing. But censorship, again, is problematic. The desire to be an individual entails being wanting to able to say and write what you desire, regardless of the government's censorship (and China does have people who want this- it is not special in this regard!)

> foundational principles of the internet in market-based democracies:

how disgusting a word choice! we're not liberal (free) democracies, we're market (to be bought and sold) democracies.

If protocols and services were designed instead to allow a measure of control at a high level, these nations could still do all the things they're going to do anyway, but allow the internet to remain open. For example, data wouldn't need to remain within a nation's borders if the nation still had control over it, at least within their own networks. They wouldn't have to create their own Facebook if they could manipulate Facebook inside their borders. You could still have cooperative compatible services, with controls where they were required.

I guess it's western ideals that make these suggestions sound horrible. But different countries are going to work differently - the fracturing of the internet and laws governing its use is the proof of that. You can choose your response: pick up your toys and go home, or make concessions so that everyone can use the same toys.