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January 23, 2017 China's Communist party oversees a vast apparatus designed to censor online content deemed politically sensitive

China has announced a 14-month campaign to "clean up" internet service providers and crack down on devices such as virtual private networks (VPNs) used to evade strict censorship.

The ruling Communist party oversees a vast apparatus designed to censor online content deemed politically sensitive, while blocking some Western websites and the services of internet giants including Facebook, Twitter and Google.

It passed a controversial cybersecurity bill last November, tightening restrictions on online freedom of speech and imposing new rules on service providers.

But companies and individuals often use VPNs to access the unfettered internet beyond China's "Great Firewall".

Telecom and internet service providers will no longer be allowed to set up or rent special lines such as VPNs without official approval, the ministry of industry and information technology said Sunday.

Its "clean up" campaign would last through March 2018, it said in a statement on its website.

The announcement comes days after President Xi Jinping extolled globalisation and denounced protectionism in a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he insisted that China was committed to "opening up".

China's internet access services market has grown rapidly, and the "first signs of disorderly development are also appearing, creating an urgent need for regulation", the statement said.

The new rules were needed to "strengthen internet information security management", it added.

IT expert Li Yi told the Global Times newspaper, which often takes a nationalistic tone, the new regulations were "extremely important".

While some multinationals such as Microsoft needed VPNs to communicate with overseas headquarters, other companies and individuals "browse overseas internet pages out of illegal motivations", Li said.

A 2015 report by US think tank Freedom House found that China had the most restrictive Internet policies of 65 countries it studied, ranking below Iran and Syria.

China is home to the world's largest number of internet users, which totalled 731 million as of December, the government-linked China Internet Network Information Center said Sunday.

Explore further: China blocks VPN services that skirt online censorship

2017 AFP

China is blocking VPN services that let users skirt online censorship of popular websites such as Google and Facebook amid a wider crackdown on online information, tech companies and specialists said Friday.

A Chinese official says that "harmful information" must be managed following reports that China is blocking VPN services that let users access censored online content.

(AP)Iranian authorities have blocked many foreign-based virtual private networks, or VPNs, severely restricting access to many websites.

Chinese authorities who have long sought to limit access to information have reinforced the so-called Great Firewall of China, Internet firms say, frustrating businesses and raising activist concerns.

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An internet cafe in Guilin, Guangxi province, China. Photograph: Alamy

If you ever want to annoy western policymakers or politicians, then here is a surefire way to do it. Tell them that the only government in the world that really understands the internet is the Chinese communist regime. And if you want to add a killer punch, add the assertion that almost everything we think we know about Chinese management of the net is either banal (all that stuff about the great firewall, paranoia about keywords such as Falun Gong, democracy, etc) or just plain wrong. Having thus lit the fuse, retreat to a safe distance and enjoy the ensuing outburst of righteous indignation.

The underlying strategy is to avoid arguing with critics of the government and to not even discuss controversial issues

For the avoidance of doubt, this is not an apologia for the Chinese regime, which is as nasty and illiberal as they come. But its best to have a realistic view of ones adversaries. Chinas leaders have invented a new way of running society. Its been christened networked authoritarianism by Rebecca MacKinnon, a noted scholar of these things. President Xi Jinping and his colleagues are followers of Boris Johnson in at least one respect: they believe that it is possible to have ones cake and eat it too.

They want to modernise and energise China so that it can fulfil its destiny as a world power. For that, they need it to transform their country into a hyper-networked society. But on the other hand, they do not want democracy, with all its attendant nuisances such as human rights, governments bound by the rule of law, transparency, accountability and the like, and they fear that the internet may give citizens ideas above their station. So they are determined to have the net, but also to manage it effectively. And this they are doing with impressive success.

Most of what we know about how this networked authoritarianism works comes from a smallish group of scholars. The brightest star in this specialised firmament is Gary King, who is director of the institute for quantitative social science at Harvard. Two years ago, he and his colleagues published a groundbreaking study, published in the journal Science, which for the first time revealed how Chinese social media is censored by the government.

The study showed that, contrary to western conventional wisdom, Chinese social media is as raucous and chaotic as it is everywhere else, so the Daily Mails idea of a country full of timid, faceless people with only banal opinions is baloney.

The study also revealed, though, that these outlets are ruthlessly but astutely censored: what gets taken down, apart from the usual suspects such as Falun Gong, pornography, democracy etc, are any posts that could conceivably stimulate collective action, even when the posts are favourable towards the government. You can say more or less what you like in China, in other words, as long as nothing you say might have the effect of getting people out on to the streets.

An obvious implication of this research was that the Chinese regime, conscious of the difficulty of running a huge country without the feedback loops provided by democracy, is using the internet to provide that feedback. It enables it to keep a finger on the pulse of the society, as it were. If there is major public concern about the corruption of local officials in some godforsaken province, for example, then monitoring social media provides the centre with one kind of early-warning system.

There was, however, one aspect of Chinese internet management that Kings study did not touch, namely the widespread belief that, in addition to passive monitoring and censorship, the regime also employed legions of part-time bloggers and social media users (maybe as many as 2 million) to post stuff on the net that was favourable to the government or refuted its critics. This was the 50c army (these people are supposedly paid 50 cents or yuan equivalent per post). Now, in a new paper (forthcoming in the American Political Science Review), King and his colleagues have turned their searchlight on this phenomenon.

Once again, their research upends conventional wisdom. The 50c army does exist, they find, but its not a part-time operation and its more ingenious than most people thought. King and co estimate that the Chinese government fabricates and posts about 448m social media comments a year. But they also show that the underlying strategy is to avoid arguing with critics of the party and the government and to not even discuss controversial issues. They further argue that the goal of this massive secretive operation is, instead, to distract the public and change the subject, as most of the these posts involve cheerleading for China, the revolutionary history of the Communist party or other symbols of the regime.

Sounds familiar? If you wanted a hashtag for the strategy, then #MCGA would do nicely. It stands for Make China Great Again. If Trump eventually falls out with Putin, he might find some kindred spirits in Beijing.

Continued here:
The real secret of Chinese internet censorship? Distraction | John ... - The Guardian

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With Trump entering office, Chinas propaganda officers ordered the press to report nothing but what was written for them by the official state media. According to a report seen by the Financial Times, it is forbidden for websites to carry out live streaming or picture reports of the inauguration.

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Theyve been told not to give the inauguration any special focus and to take care of news comments and negative and harmful speech. Not that this is anything new. China is internationally famous for their stringent censorship of major world news, and this is no exception.

According to English-language radio personality Elyse Ribbons, Chinese leadership still trying to figure [Trump] out, and has not allowed her to talk about him on her radio program. According to Beijing Foreign Studies Universitys Professor of International News Zhan Jiang, The government is still working out how to react to him, which is why in this case they are taking very close control of the media for this event. He also called the new President unpredictable, and said that he has a less friendly attitude than former President Barack Obama.

The one thing that Chinas state-controlled media did choose to emphasize was the cost of the inauguration event, at about $100 million. The Information Office of the State Council tweeted, How much does #Trumps #inauguration cost? The number must be staggering.

This marks one of the only direct statements made by China regarding the ascent of President Trump, after filing a complaint regarding his contact with Taiwan leaderTsai Ing-wen on the phone. Historically, China has portrayed America as a stumbling block on its road to greater world power. Time will tell how they choose to frame the countrys new leadership, but one thing is pretty certain: their medias words will be chosen carefully, and chosen for them by their leaders.

Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.

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China Tightens Censorship, Bans Livestreaming for Coverage of Trump's Inauguration - Breitbart News

A court hearing on press censorship unfolded over more than two hours on Friday, pitting a newspaper's right to publish sensitive information against the state's right to keep it secret.

Superior Court Judge Lawrence DeBello heard arguments in Trenton over a temporary court order barring The Trentonian newspaper from publishing articles based on a confidential child-abuse complaint obtained by one of its reporters.

DeBello said he held the hearing to weigh the propriety of the order, which was issued in October by another judge, Craig Corson. After hearing arguments privately and then in open court, DeBello said he would hand down a ruling at a later date.

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Judicial orders imposing a prior restraint on a news organization prohibiting it from publishing information on a specific topic are extremely rare in the United States. Attorneys for The Trentonian and one of its reporters argued Friday that Corson did not take into account some of the U.S. Supreme Courts most important rulings on the First Amendment, which guarantees the freedom of the press.

Eli Segal of the law firm Pepper Hamilton argued for the Trentonian that censoring the press is more serious than a criminal penalty because it doesnt just chill speech; it freezes it altogether.

Prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights, Segal said, quoting from the U.S. Supreme Courts 1976 decision in Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart.

New Jerseys child welfare agency, the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, asked Corson for a temporary injunction against The Trentonian last year after learning that one of its reporters, Isaac Avilucea, had gotten a copy of a child-abuse complaint it was filing against the parents and paternal grandmother of a 5-year-old boy in Trenton.

The complaint describes how the boy, identified as N.L., went to school carrying packets of heroin in his lunchbox one day and crack cocaine in his school folder six weeks later, among other sensitive details. He has since been removed to foster care.

On behalf of the agency, Assistant Attorney General Erin OLeary argued that the freedom of the press under the First Amendment is not an absolute right and that Corsons order prohibiting The Trentonian from publishing certain information was necessary to protect N.L.s privacy.

The more that the world learns of this intensely private situation, the more likely he is to be ostracized by his peers, OLeary argued. Allowing confidential documents to be publicly disseminated also could hurt the states ability to investigate child-abuse incidents, she argued.

In a landmark 1971 decision, New York Times Co. v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court declined a request from President Richard Nixons administration to prohibit The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing stories based on the Pentagon Papers, a classified study of the Vietnam War.

The governments interest in keeping that information secret could not overcome the freedom of the press to choose what to publish, the justices said. That ruling followed a 1931 decision, Near v. Minnesota, in which the Supreme Court said nearly all forms of prior restraint are unconstitutional.

Segal cited the Pentagon Papers case during the hearing and argued that the Trenton child-abuse case continued to be worth the publics attention. New Jersey state officials had not cleared the very high bar required by the U.S. Supreme Court for censorship of the press, he said.

School officials at the International Academy Charter School in Trenton reported to authorities in September that they had found 30 packets of heroin in N.L.s lunchbox. The boy was allowed to remain with his family. Six weeks later, school officials reported that he had been found with crack cocaine in his school folder, and state officials then took action to remove the boy to foster care.

There is still a story to be hold here, Segal said.

Courts have allowed prior restraints on news organizations to prevent the publication of troop movements during wartime and when a magazine attempted to publish the secret to building a hydrogen bomb. OLeary argued that details about N.L.s case and other child-abuse investigations are similarly sensitive.

One of the questions in the case is whether Avilucea broke the law when he obtained the child-abuse complaint from N.L.s mother, Tashawn Ford. The state Attorney Generals Office has accused the reporter of stealing the document, although it has not filed any related charges.

Segal and Bruce Rosen, Aviluceas attorney at the law firm McCusker, Anselmi, Rosen and Carvelli, said the reporter did not obtain the complaint illegally.

Theres been no real case brought by the state here to set up an unlawful obtaining of these documents, Rosen said. What we have is a series of certifications that reek of innuendo because no formal accusation has been made.

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