China makes internet shut-downs official with new security law China is able to shut off internet access during major 'social security incidents' and has granted its Cyberspace Administration agency wider decision making powers under a draft law published this month. The draft also appears to require critical infrastructure organisations including foreign entities to store "important" …
"Good to see China finally catching up with the western "democracies" and N Korea."
Unfortunately, your comments are a real dis-service to people living there, who might read this, and think it is actually like that.
China disabled internet access in the Xianjian region for 6 months starting in 2009. Only a handful of gov't websites were allowed. All SMS activity was blocked for the entire 6 months.
It is best to think of laws in China as a standardized procedure. Anything said or written by a party official, has the full weight of law already. Laws are just there to make sure the officials don't screw up.
For example, a party official can classify a street map you are carrying as a state secret, and you can be arrested trying to carry it onto a plane. Classification is entirely up to the discretion of the respective official. China is phasing out hard labour as punishment though, so big steps there.
That is why the trial of Bo Xilai for the murder of Neil Heywood was so bizarre. At the time, Bo was a senior party official. Bo could have declared any number of things that Neil had done, as illegal and imprisoned him indefinitely. Sure, Neil was a foreigner, and Beijing might want to look into it more, but he could just tell Beijing that Neil was offering bribes or something. Did your guests pay for your taxi ride from the airport? Yes? Bribe. See how easy that is?
I like to think that the Chinese leaders are like our leaders, they start with the right idea, a drive to serve their country and make it better.. Then over the years the good gets chipped away by corruption and cynicism. so by the time they are in power, they are corrupt and have lost their moral compass... Exactly like our politicians..
Except in China they are removing corrupt officials as fast as they can find them..
"Bo could have declared any number of things that Neil had done, as illegal and imprisoned him indefinitely."
Very much similar to the US then.
Agents provocateurs actively coerce innocent people into participating in entirely fictional terror plots, just to arrest and lock them away for extended periods of time. That's completely legal in the US. And it happens regularly to fuel the fear mongering and secure more funds for the various three-letter agencies and pass laws which would otherwise seem completely out of place.
People are tried and prosecuted under anti-terrorism laws, which remove due process, proper legal representation, public disclosure, but introduce feats like extended solitary confinement *before* trial and other "treats" that really should be alien to a democracy and proper separation of powers.
Bribes happen *a lot* in the western world, too. There's really not a lot of difference between bribery and lobbying.
I think "Good to see China finally catching up with the western "democracies" and N Korea" really bears a lot of truth. Sadly!
What makes you think that any major western democracy will have any qualms to shutdown access to let's say Facebook, Twitter or messaging services in the case of major social unrest or a major ongoing attack of let's say "Charlie Hebdo x 100" type?
None of these are utilities and none of them have any legal protection which ensures that they should be kept up and running in an emergency.
The police does not even need a court order to do that - they have enough powers under various existing pre-Internet era legislation to do that. Sure, they will be spending the next 2 years in court (and may need a retroactive law to allow this explicitly), but there is nothing preventing them from doing it under various Churchil/Petaine age regulations invented originally for the phone network around WW2. Those are still valid by the way.
"What makes you think that any major western democracy will have any qualms to shutdown access to let's say Facebook, Twitter or messaging services in the case of major social unrest or a major ongoing attack of let's say "Charlie Hebdo x 100" type?"
Europe, maybe, but North America is pretty unlikely. And under what grounds would you get a court order?
Already in place.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/06/big_4_isps_will_all_embrace_network_level_filtering_to_protect_children/
Or do you suppose the politicians ordered their network level filtering be carefully and meticulously designed to only be capable of filtering only "porn and terrorism" ...and certainly not whatever might happen to be their d-notice du jour whim?
Born yesterday?
They can shut off whatever they want whenever they want.
Even Bill 640k Gates has managed to realise this!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/02/egypt_internet_shutdown_gates/
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,,, IF all the attacks attributed China to were China's. That's a big if; proper attribution is extremely difficult (c.f. Bruce Schneier). Were it me conducting the attacks, I'd have at least two cutouts (hacked machines) between me and the target and I'd certainly incorporate elements in the code to at least match two of the (final) gateways. Toss in proper masking of the source machine(s), and good luck.
I've been tracking probes/attacks from sources within China since 2005, which was when I bothered to pay attention to their frequency, nature, and final source. Their sites are the most active that I can detect, totally ignoring those probes/attacks which my tools do not detect. I'm a wallflower in the security community but it's a frequent topic. Probably correct, but I do wonder about my known unknowns and unknown unknowns (thank you VP Cheney).
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