Re: [privacy] Blocked China Web users rage against Great Firewall

[Shyaam <shyaam () gmail com>]

Dear Mr.Richard, This email is NOT directed to you, but to the group overall
and people around.

LoL, like other governments give a lot of privacy. US has lots of cases
where NSA or some agency keeps tapping onto people's personal life in the
name of national security. How is that different from China's Great Firewall
or some "privacy" bullshit that you donot even happen to have these days.

Any government agency within US has lost tons of laptops or other portable
devices that contains information of civilians or cases or criminal records
that should not have been hone into public. How do you define that as
privacy?

In some countries there is no Social Security Number or in other words, the
Government never had any means/ways to tag a person with his identity other
than the Birth Certificate itself. People get passports only if essential.
License is an ID, but who doesn't get a fake one if they want to get it at
an early age. Only in such cases, where the government has no control over
an individual, you can see some privacy. But, if they have such a mechanism,
how will they have records of terrorists or anti-social members and so on.

So there is a huge gap between privacy in reality and privacy in the
papers/definition, and there is a huge tradeoff in privacy when it comes to
national security.

Whats your 2 cents???

Kind Regards,
Shyaam




On 6/19/07, Richard M. Smith <rms () computerbytesman com> wrote:
> http://www.reuters.com/article/inDepthNews/idUSPEK21813920070619?feedType=RS
> S&rpc=22&sp=true
>
> Blocked China Web users rage against Great Firewall
>
> Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:24AM EDT
>
> BEIJING (Reuters) - Yang Zhou is no cyberdissident, but recent curbs on
> his
> Web surfing habits by China's censors have him fomenting discontent about
> China's "Great Firewall".
> Yang's fury erupted a few days ago when he found he could not browse his
> friend's holiday snaps on Flickr.com, due to access restrictions by
> censors
> after images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre were posted on the
> photo-sharing Web site."
>
> "Once you've complained all you can to your friends, what more can you do?
> What else is there but anger and disillusionment?" Yang said after venting
> his anger with friends at a hot-pot restaurant in Beijing.
>
> The blocking of Flickr is the latest casualty of China's ongoing battle to
> control its sprawling Internet. Wikipedia, and a raft of other popular Web
> sites, discussion boards and blogs have already fallen victim to the
> country's censors.
>
> China employs a complex system of filters and an army of tens of thousands
> of human monitors to survey the country's 140 million Internet users'
> surfing habits and surgically clip sensitive content from in front of
> their
> eyes.
>
> Its stability-obsessed government says the surveillance machinery,
> commonly
> known as the "Great Firewall", is necessary to let Internet users enjoy a
> "healthy" online environment and build a "harmonious" society.
>
> Yang just thinks it's a pain.
>
> "I just want to look at some photos! What's wrong with that?" said the
> 24-year-old accountant, typical of millions of young urban-dwelling
> professionals who are increasingly aware of and fed up with state
> intrusions
> into their private life.
>
> Privacy, once regarded with suspicion in pre-reform China, has become a
> sought-after commodity among China's burgeoning middle class, according to
> Nicholas Bequelin from Hong Kong-based Human Rights Watch.
>
> ...
>
> _______________________________________________
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> privacy () whitestar linuxbox org
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--
Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.
Shyaam Sundhar R.S., GREM, GHTQ, GWAS

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