The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

China warns Google over uncensored search threat

China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology has warned Google that if it stops censoring search results in the country, it will "have to bear the consequences". In mid-January, after alleged Chinese hackers pilfered unspecified intellectual property from its internal systems, Google announced it had made the decision …

This topic is closed for new posts.
Mike Bell
Alert

"I hear you've been a naughty boy, Clement"

Oo-err. The prospect of Google having its head nailed to a coffee table springs to mind.

Desktop Mobile
Big Brother

Hi I'm in China and

Hi I in China and and love Google and ...

Hold on WTF the lights are flickering and who's that banging on the door...

Anyway as I was saying I love 网页、图片、新闻搜索，支持个性化搜索及本地搜索，提供论坛、邮箱、日历服务和桌面

Ah my house is full off.................

Baskitcaise
Reply Icon

Ah my house is full off.................

Eels?

Joe 3
Thumb Down

"Following local laws"

How about those in the China Communist Party learn about the Rule of Law first?

Pascal Monett
Reply Icon

They don't need to

They make it up as they go. You don't agree, you wind up in a camp. With luck, you might survive.

Allan George Dyer
Coat
Reply Icon

They know about it

The Rule of Law（依法治國）is even being discussed, but it's recognised that it would be a major change. Separation of powers was rejected in 1982, when the constitution was amended, the National People's Congress has the power to interpret the law.

It is not like the country is run by a ignoramuses, they probably know more about political power structures than you, or anyone except a Political Science professor. They have a working system, they aren't going to change it suddenly for another, any more than you would walk into a large multinational and say, "Right, we're changing to IPv6, by the end of the afternoon."

Mine's the one with the DNS ballot paper, and the "Vote Bind" campaign leaflets in the pocket...

Joe 3
FAIL
Reply Icon

依法治國

See, I can type Chinese characters too, but it doesn't make me any more of a smart arse than you!

Tell me why making the law apply to everyone would be such an upheaval? It does in theory anyway - even in China local party bosses are meant to abide by the law, though they largely do as they please.

Don't make excuses for the CPP behaving like the mafia.

Havin_it
Grenade

Be right back...

...gotta go make some popcorn. I watch Michael Bay films, so I'm more than able to suspend disbelief enough to think maybe Goog will stick to their guns. Bring it!

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

No single voice

It's tempting to believe that China is a single voice, that each official missive is a borg like collective response. But this is not true, they're just people, "Minister of Industry and Information Technology" Li Yizhong is trying to do what he *believes* is what his masters would ask, but he's guessing.

However if Google leaves China, then he would be in some dungeon somewhere he fears.

"Yizhong also said that his Ministry is only one of the government arms handling the Google situation"

Indeed, a scared little man in a big suit reaching out to see who'll back him. None will. If Google doesn't run in fear, he'll be abandoned as out-of-step and sidelined by the party.

I like Google, I have my doubts about the privacy thing, but ...

Eduard Coli
Unhappy

House of straw

Devious Google is, losing share to Baidu and their pirated, oops so sorry, free music and movies.

Make the communists pay for them to stay.

Anonymous Coward
Paris Hilton

Over hear

In dear old Blight I can choose to:

www.google.com

www.google.cn

and even

www.google.co.uk

Is there room for compromise?

Perhaps www.google.cn can be as strict as the authorities want it to be (after all they do form the government)

But google.com and google.co.uk or google.X does what google does and all it needs is a translate option (that google probably does very well anyway).

So why the brouhaha?

Lance 3
Reply Icon

Doesn't work that way

China has outright blocks on sites/IP's. They can block every single Google IP with relative ease.

Fred Flintstone
Reply Icon

The beautiful irony ..

.. is that all that blocking is apparently done with US sourced technology..

Funny that.

Peter Gathercole
Black Helicopters
Reply Icon

Collaborative Distributed Proxy

I have long thought that an Open Source, Collaborative Distributed Proxy (my term, and I don't think it has been used elsewhere), whereby any packet can be sent via any member of the collective, in a pseudo-random scatter basis, with encryption, is needed to defeat the country filters imposed by a number of countries.

I've not worked out all of the details, but the basis is that you run a client that acts as a html proxy on your on system, which joins the collective, and does not route any two packets the same way, using UDP stateless connections on randomized ports via other members of the collective. You would need to be able to re-assemble the packet stream, and enforce packet re-transmission (like TCP), and you would need a fixed endpoint for each TCP session.

I know that TOR does something similar, but is mainly for anonymity, I believe that my solution differs because the set of system participating would be constantly shifting, making it difficult to block at the country level.

There are problems with local firewalls on each of the member machines which I have not yet worked out (I suspect that at some point, you would need a broker), and initially joining the collective would be a potential point of weakness which could be trapped, but I think that these are all addressable.

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward
Reply Icon

not sure i'd trust

having packets of data from completely random people, with an interest in maintaining anonymity and bypassing restrictions.

Anything could be routed through your machine!

raving angry loony

only China?

Yeah, it's a good thing that only China censors the internet access of their citizens. Oh, wait, Australia too. Is Google fighting that? Hmm, I hear the UK is thinking of implementing something. Iran has too, I think. I know Saudi Arabia, UAE and I believe Qatar have as well. Quite the diverse group of countries, all of whom have governments that utterly abhor - to one extent or another - the concept of citizens not toeing the government line.

I guess it's not just China.

Parsifal
Black Helicopters

Brin Backtracking

Its seems to me that Sergey Brin is backtracking,

I would guess that Google won't do a thing and their statement about removing censorship was all hot air designed to get them positive media coverage, by put an up to year statement out they give themselves plenty of time for people to forget what they said they were going to do in the first place.

Big-nosed Pengie
FAIL

Title

And we care why? Google's "be evil" policy, ably demonstrated by their willingness to censor themselves in order to rake in the Chinese bucks, lost them any sympathy they ever had from me.

Screw 'em.

gimbal
Pirate

If I was an employee of Google China, in China...

...I'd be starting my vacation plans, now. I'm just sayin', I don't think I'd want to be in the line of sight to a Chinese Government Scapegoat Hunt, on this issue.

I applaud Google's show of bravery, wholeheartedly, but I am honestly not sure if even they are sure of what consequences the Chinese Government would seek to enact, if Google stops filtering results, there.

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward
Reply Icon

what

What show of bravery?

Frozen Ghost

What is the point of Google indexing pages which people cant actually visit?

google.cn should run its spiders through the Chinese firewall and only index pages which people can actually visit. Then its not a case of actively filtering the results but building an index of the pages which the population has access to.

Keith T
Megaphone

Cut them off

China is a country that doesn't respect its employed people. Its bureaucracy insists ordinary employed people cannot think for themselves.

Countries that originate too much hacking and cracking and crime ware should be cut off from the internet.

Why should we give give them the tools to steal our state secrets, intellectual property, and money?

Keith T
Headmaster

@raving angry loony

Yes those other countries censor the internet.

However, those other countries don't force google to censor its results. It is China making google censor its results that google is right to fight.

That is why I gave you a thumbs down.

Doug Glass
Go

The China Way

Do a search, Google works just fine, on the phrase china executes and read a few of the hits. China has a habit of KILLING people who violate their laws. Laws that in other parts of the world would garner a light sentence or fine if any punishment at all.

Keep it up Google and pretty soon you'll likely seal your own fate in a not too pleasant manner. I assume China's Google employees "in-country" are loyal. But to lose your life or freedom over something so meaningless as an internet search engine dispute is, well Darwinian in it's reward. But then, maybe the gene pool needs to be cleansed of these morons.

It's their country folks and you'd better recognize and respect who you're dealing with. Western high minded ideas and ideologies are not going to work with China. Remember, this is the country that to this day KILLS female babies. And there is NO punishment for that. Think that's just a web rumor? Think again. Or better yet, get your doubting a$$ over there and live for a while and see first hand.

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

sooo

Google are a okay implementing and profiting from unethical censorship... until the entity for which they are performing the censorship pisses them off then they start making threats?

Any attempt Google makes to portray this decision as being based on ethical standards rather than unethical retaliation is pure and total bullshit.

Winkypop
Thumb Down

China eh?

Little men in bad suits keeping the hoards at bay with poorly engineered guns.

tempemeaty
Big Brother

The hand off is the real game...

Prediction. The whole conflict has been a smokescreen. The real plan is for Google to hand over it's technology to the Chinese via a "Chinese Firm" so that the filtering can go forward without Google being looking dirty. End of the deal is that Google can claim they're not doing it and China keeps it's control over it's portion of the internet blocking, filtering and tracking of the internet and it's citizens who use it.

Anonymous Coward
Thumb Up

Google are just a company

Let us not forget that Google are just a commercial company interested naturally in making money, They are not some sort of flag bearer for human rights. They will censor the web at the behest of whoever, to suit their bottom line. Remember the case of Lynndie England, of Abu Ghraib prison fame. Google censored its search results.

They seem to think that they are bigger than national governments and don't need to take into account national laws. Sock it to them Italy!

Google are too big for their boots. I do hope that China kicks them in the nuts. I know I would if I could. If the Chinese people are not happy with its government, then they can join the party and change it.

When an America company drives down my back lane with a camera stuck on a pole so it can see over my 8ft brick wall (erected to keep prying eyes out) I think I have something to worry about.

Fuck em.

Kevin Gurney
Reply Icon

Post anonymously?

"They will censor the web at the behest of whoever, to suit their bottom line"

"They seem to think that they are bigger than national governments and don't need to take into account national laws."

Surely those two statements contradict each other.

M man
FAIL

remove the burden of responsibilty..

tada...do no evil......

lglethal
Go

Just an idea...

Let google keep censoring the results but on every search simply state at the top of the page "X number of websites in your search category have been censored by the Chinese Government".

The major problem of censorship in China in my opinion (derived from talking to Chinese friends in university - usually highly intelligent engineering students) is that they do not have any idea just how much of their web based browsing is actually censored. When confronted with statistics they immediately reject them as being produced by anti-chinese biased western organisations (even those created within China by Chinese dissident organisations), and this is the response of the tertiary educated ones. What hope does the average Chinese have of realising how much his/her browsing is censored?

Letting the people know just how many sites are censored from each search might have the result of opening a few eyes and bringing the grass roots demand for change which is really the only way to cause the Chinese leadership to re-evaluate their actions...

This topic is closed for new posts.