China and Russia join to battle 'illegal internet content,' which means what you fear it does China and Russia will sign a joint treaty aimed to tackling “illegal internet content” later this month, the Russian telecoms regulator has announced. The signing will take place on October 20, the first day of annual internet governance conference that the Chinese government has run for several years in Wuzhen. Details are …
The BBC had a good programme recently, "Ian Hislop's Fake News: A True History".
At one point this short, dumpy, middle-aged man had his face 'Deepfake''d onto the body of a young athletic dancer. It was for comedic effect to highlight the danger since he obviously can't dance like that.
I showed that clip to my elderly mum who likes to think she is cynical and worldly, and she responded, "I can't believe he can dance like that!"
Except she obviously did believe he danced like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uut4rPAv_PQ
As I was reading the article, my brain kept replacing China and Russia with UK, EU and USA and was still making sense.
The US have been projecting their laws and internet rules across the world for some time, as are the EU with GDPR and "right to be forgotten" extended world-wide so I'm not seeing any reall difference here other than "us and them", where "us" point at "them" as being wrong (where "us" and "them" can be read from either point of view)
Lets make a simple comparison between China and the EU:
- China tries to combine all social media content, workplace, medical, financial details and government information to create a "social score" that will dictate your position in society and whether you need any special attention from the authorities.
- the EU tries to allow individuals to manage information held by third parties and remove unwanted information to avoid a "social score"-type system evolving past the currently independent financial/government/advertising/social/medical information towers
Which would you prefer?
Lets make a simple comparison between China and the EU
That looks like no such thing to me.
to create a "social score" ...
Here that's more sophisticated. We call the basic social score a "credit rating". But then we also have a lot of additional demographic classification, based on family, education, work, postcode, etc.
Re:China's social score
While "credit rating" in western countries approximates how the envisioned "social score" in China, it doesn't have anywhere near the potential reach into private and public information that China are looking to implement. I'm not disputing the additional data for credit ratings exist - I am disputing that the dangers present in Chinas system a significantly greater.
If we look at current trials, Alibaba/Tencent are combining their own data on social interactions and retail transactions with citizens financial details (via their associated banks) and signing contracts with regional governments to combine this information with existing government records about education, employment, health, criminal activities etc. Given the control that China likes to exert over its citizens lives, this data is likely to effect everything about a persons life, including their social interactions over time (i.e. associating with person X will result in a drop in your hard earned social score...)
GPDR controlling how this type of data can be exchanged and providing methods for individuals to limit this in the EU. I accept it won't prevent it, but it will form one part in the defence against a consolidation of financial/health/insurance/retail/government data.
Example ref: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit-system-explained
Sadly, both already have. China has blocked pretty much every communication app under the sun. What remains has a direct phone home to a Chinese government-controlled set of servers, and of course no encryption. Russia has mandated the same in law, but because they have less technical capabilities, they haven't gotten it yet. However, they are actively blocking Telegram after it refused to assist the Russian government in decrypting users' messages.
I know you were going for the "look at the west; they're bad too", but the western spy agencies are still trying to get the law to give them the power to demand companies assist them. Russia and China already have. I don't say this to support the surveillance systems supported by the west, but Russia and China are not being attacked by a hypocritical west; they're the disaster we are headed to.
Russia has now over 102 years of experience
By giving such an exact figure it's clear that you're thinking about the Russian Revolution as being some sort of turning point, but it wasn't. You can go back much further than the rise of Communism. The tsars also imposed political censorship, from at least Peter the Great's time, while in the centuries before that censorship was primarily a tool of religious orthodoxy.
The same can be said for China under the warlords and the emperors. Censorship has been going on far, far longer than the days since the Long March.
Well, I guess we'll have to dig out the hams with their short wave packet radio thingies and it's back to the good old days of Lord Haw-Haw vs. Radio Free Europe. Inter-continental-ballistic podcasts.
The cold war returns. Sheesh.
Mr. Putin, tear down this firewall!
Did it contain another wrapped sweet in the centre with Yeltsin on the wrapper? Or was is just hard on the outside, but lacking in internal substance?
Was it salty? I guess the wording is technically correct, but I wouldn't be drawing attention to the rump status of the RF vs. the former USSR.
It does seem like an odd thing to make a political souvenir. Usually it's mugs or spoons or letter-openers.
Of course they can. And will, should such access become troublesome. Authoritarian governments will do whatever it takes to keep control. A few really obvious options:
1) Blanket interference on the satellite bands. Collateral damage is inconsequential (to said gov's);
2) Simply outlaw such connections, monitor for outbound transmissions in the relevant bands and nick anyone found using them;
3) Show your loyalty to the supreme leader! Inform on your friends and family. Fabulous prizes to be won!
You may be interested in the recent activities of Turkmenistan. The general idea is that, because of urban beauty reasons and definitely not because they wanted to censor, satellite dishes are completely illegal. And that is enforced; if you have such a dish, the police will come by and confiscate it. You will be fined or imprisoned. This applies to every dish; it's clear they're primarily trying to prevent reception of satellite television, but they'll take anything. That wasn't particularly difficult for them to do. That can happen anywhere.
If you think the skies will be free, I'm going to need to see a receiver for satellite internet that can easily be used while remaining hidden and even more easily hidden should a censor come to call. So that will require the device to work indoors, without being obvious through a window, and collapse to a small enough device that it can be hidden inside something else. All existing dishes I've seen are quite expansive devices and need a very precise position, meaning that it wouldn't be all that easy to take it down and redeploy it twice a day. Can you show me such tech? If not, I believe you are badly mistaken in your optimism. Even if you can show me such tech, we've only solved the really obvious problems. Plenty more methods of censorship remain.
I just meant to reply to the thread, not a specific post. And while you could put a dish there, it probably won't have the ability to contact the satellite without a very permeable roof. I haven't tested this, but I doubt many houses will allow for it. Of course, the installation of equipment is just one problem that needs to be solved before satellite comms work as anti-censorship gear.
North America has sold off net neutrality, the EU and the UK both have fairly draconic plans/rules surrounding the internet and its usage (no anonymity, censorship of sites, backdoor encryption, mass surveillance programs) and Australasia is neither a state nor in the west.
….hmm...yes...mebbe Iceland. That country looks more tempting by the day.
I'm thinking ... Iceland, maybe? I live in the United States, where "dissident" sites, blogs, social media accounts, and streaming video channels -- foreign and domestic, right-wing and left-wing, sectarian and secular -- are being de-linked, de-recommended, downranked, demonetized, and taken down outright at an alarmingly accelerating pace, so I know they can't be referring to my country. (But let me guess: this soft and hard censorship is being done by private corporations, to whom government has ceded the "public forum" of yore, so it doesn't count. I mean, there's no way that that arrangement constitutes a cardinal element of fascism, right?)
oh, what a relief for us Brits, safe in the knowledge that our shepherd masters profess democracy rather than autocracy and protect us, and shear us with our full approval. Long live our shepherd masters! Long live democracy!
Now, where's me useful idiot paycheck gospadin president?! I want my roubles, and I want them NOW!
I wonder if the Chinese might start sharing their Great Firewall with others? Since they've got both the economic and technical capacity to run it. they could offer it to other countries. CaaS - or Censorship as a Service is the latest new buzzword in IT - you'll hear it from your management real soon now...
Obviously there's a nice side-order of massive data for the Chinese intelligence services that comes with it - which might make it a hard sell. But on the other hand, very useful for the dictator on a budget.
I'd not noticed this conference before. But it's the first logical outcome of countries getting together to cooperate in this way that came to mind. The Saudis have a firewall, I'm not sure how effective it is mind, but then they've got loadsamoney. Iran have the manpower, and possibly the knowhow, but I'm not sure they have the equipment budget. So I think they operate by disrupting domains they don't like at crucial times and playing games with routing. Russia have the knowhow but are short of cash - but it would probably be too embarrassing to take Chinese help.
It's not like it's easy, as it means routing via China or building outposts of the Great Firewall around the world - but I bet it's nor impossible either.
If they're going to filter what their citizens can do online I wish they could at least do better egress filtering on their "great firewall"! They don't want their people viewing certain sites, but if they want to try hacking into our servers they're clearly free to do so. Probably 90% of the LFD block notifications I get are from Chinese IPs trying to brute force their way into accounts on our servers (and that's even with many of their IP ranges already being permanently blocked).
Soon, these countries will once again go dark, much as they were dark up until about the late 1980's. Their people will again be locked out of knowing anything about the "West" and to us they will once again be like Mars. This movement MUST be condemned by us and fought against. Sadly, our current leadership (and even some of our citizens) is not only clueless, but beholden to Moscow, and likely would love to implement the same kind of censorship. We're screwed if we don't get rid of these people.
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