Sinobyte: China and technology

Something was going to give.

As Beijing prepares for the Olympics and the attending flood of foreigners, many of them reporters, expected to arrive this summer, the government's controls over the Internet have become increasingly sophisticated. But would the Olympic organizers really be OK with dozens of stories about reporters and athletes unable to reach Wikipedia and BBC?

Apparently, decision makers are indeed worried about press regarding censorship. AFP quotes an Olympic organizing committee representative as saying, "I believe you will be able to (access banned sites such as the BBC), but I can't give you a promise yet. The relevant government departments are still working on it."

The story is unrevealing, especially because of the parenthetical inserted in the above quote, which is attributed to Wang Hui. (Was she really referring to BBC? To all banned sites? To specific sites not including the BBC?) This also doesn't tell us anything about whether keyword filtration, another common censorship method, will continue.

I won't list the sensitive terms here, because I don't want this post (or on an unlucky day, CNET at large) to get blocked, but they include phrases about sensitive historical events such as the one in 1989. Too many mentions of two things that start with a T--an island with a U.S. security pact and a Himalayan region home to a famous form of Buddhism--can also get a site or individual page in trouble. Names of dissidents, especially when rendered in Chinese, often result in a block.

So if keyword filtering continues, but IP and domain blocking are turned off, browsers in China will be able to access Wikipedia, Blogspot blogs, Wordpress-hosted blogs, the BBC, and many other sites that I currently have to use proxies to access.

Keyword filtering is more directed and less likely to be detected by visitors not used to the restrictions. Here's how it works:

• A browser requests a page on an unrestricted IP address.
• In transit, one node in a network of checkpoints and filtering software (not a monolithic Great Firewall of China suggesting 100 percent coverage) detects filtered keywords.
• That node, through which data packets are being routed, sends a "reset connection" command to both the browser and the host.
• The transmission stops, and the browser displays a connection reset message, making it appear as if there may be a transmission or Web server glitch, not censorship, at work.

I doubt that the entire censorship regime will be shut down during the Olympics. Communications on the sensitive issues I noted above will likely be closely monitored for fear of demonstrations timed to distract attention from the national showcase in Beijing. But perhaps, if the government learns that it can handle things through keyword filtering alone, the irritating bans on Web sites central to my daily reading load will cease.

Just to be clear, though, I find the statement reported by AFP to be entirely inconclusive. We don't know what will happen yet. Perhaps the government will announce details, and it seems likely that some or all filtering will cease during the Olympics, but we'll just have to wait and see.

(Hat tip to Richard at The Peking Duck, where an alert commenter has noticed that while news.bbc.co.uk has been blocked for a long time, the identical site newsvote.bbc.co.uk is available. A small victory for my news-reading diet.)

It's hardly surprising that China Mobile can figure out about where its subscribers are when the phone is on (or when the battery's in). This sort of technology is standard in developed mobile networks, and it's fueling a wave of business innovation and "locative technology."

So why was it so shocking to an AFP reporter when China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou told an audience at the World Economic Forum that "we know who you are, but also where you are"? Will at Imagethief has already made the alarmist journalism argument, so I'll leave that to him. (The AFP headline ran under the unnecessary headline, "China's mobile network: a big brother surveillance tool?")

What struck me was U.S. Rep. Ed Markey's (D-Mass.) surprised reaction. Markey said the news was "bone chilling" and told AFP, "I have my eyebrows arched so high they're hitting the ceiling."

I just doubt this really could have been shocking to Markey, who is perhaps the U.S. Congress' most prominent name on telecommunications policy. Along with liberal members of the FCC board, he's been a friend to the "net neutrality" movement, and he was received warmly last year in Memphis at Free Press' National Conference on Media Reform.

Anecdotally, I would say the assumption among people involved with media and politics in Beijing is that it is trivially easy for the government to tap cell phones and gather location data based on which tower your phone is in touch with. E-mail also is often assumed not to be secure. Markey must know the U.S. government can do this too, especially in light of the illegal wiretaps by the Bush administration. (The secret monitoring of U.S. citizens would actually have been legal if they had bothered to get their warrants rubber-stamped by a secret court, so don't think due process is a defense in the United States.)

If Markey was really shocked, he was ignorant. If he was faking it, he was taking part in China alarmism on an issue that is news to practically no one in China. This is not the place to discuss the merits and demerits of government surveillance, but no one is surprised that it's a fact. I wish U.S. politicians wouldn't be so willing to make such statements about China just to grab the spotlight when journalists are unnecessarily aroused.