Learn from the mistakes of others

smh.com.au TECH
China to tighten internet controls
June 30, 2006 - 11:07AM

China's internet minders have vowed to step up controls of internet content, especially in the most active areas of blogs, bulletin boards and search engines, state media have said.

"As more and more illegal and unhealthy information spread through blogs and search engines, we will take effective measures to put the BBS (bulletin board service), blogs and search engines under control," Xinhua news agency quoted Cai Wu, a government spokesman as saying Thursday.

China was taking steps to make registration mandatory on millions of blog sites and BBSs, or sites where internet users can converse online, Cai said.

According to a report by Tsinghua University, quoted by Xinhua, China currently has up to 36.8 million blog sites, a figure that could grow to 60 million by the end of the year.

The number of search engine users had reached 97 million, or about 87 percent of all Internet users, the report said.

"We will speed up the technology development to safeguard the network management and do more research on the Internet security issues triggered by the new technologies in blogs and search engines," the report quoted Wang Xudong, Minister of Information Industry, as saying.

China has for years been waging an online battle to censor the internet of pornographic and violent content, while also stifling political and religious material that it believes could spark social unrest.

Two years ago all Chinese web portals were required to register with the government, while they also signed on to government issued regulations to self-police their sites for "unhealthy content".

Rules at the time also required all Chinese internet cafes to register web surfers and not allow them to download or upload any content onto or from personal devices.

Human and media rights groups say China's leaders are tightening their control over the internet and traditional press amid increasing social unrest and regularly jail journalists and Internet commentators who post anti-government material on the Web.

AFP

At some point the sheer number/volume of individual entities that have to be monitored may break this.

smh.com.au TECH
China to tighten internet controls
June 30, 2006 - 11:07AM

China's internet minders have vowed to step up controls of internet content, especially in the most active areas of blogs, bulletin boards and search engines, state media have said.

"As more and more illegal and unhealthy information spread through blogs and search engines, we will take effective measures to put the BBS (bulletin board service), blogs and search engines under control," Xinhua news agency quoted Cai Wu, a government spokesman as saying Thursday.

China was taking steps to make registration mandatory on millions of blog sites and BBSs, or sites where internet users can converse online, Cai said.

According to a report by Tsinghua University, quoted by Xinhua, China currently has up to 36.8 million blog sites, a figure that could grow to 60 million by the end of the year.

The number of search engine users had reached 97 million, or about 87 percent of all Internet users, the report said.

"We will speed up the technology development to safeguard the network management and do more research on the Internet security issues triggered by the new technologies in blogs and search engines," the report quoted Wang Xudong, Minister of Information Industry, as saying.

China has for years been waging an online battle to censor the internet of pornographic and violent content, while also stifling political and religious material that it believes could spark social unrest.

Two years ago all Chinese web portals were required to register with the government, while they also signed on to government issued regulations to self-police their sites for "unhealthy content".

Rules at the time also required all Chinese internet cafes to register web surfers and not allow them to download or upload any content onto or from personal devices.

Human and media rights groups say China's leaders are tightening their control over the internet and traditional press amid increasing social unrest and regularly jail journalists and Internet commentators who post anti-government material on the Web.

AFP

At some point the sheer number/volume of individual entities that have to be monitored may break this.

Bruce Schneier is well regarded in IT security circles. Reading one of his recent(ish) posts has helped crystalise a few thoughts I've been circling around lately.

He argues that there is a battle for ownership over your personal computer - between you, who paid for it, and organisations and people who'd like to control what you can do with it ...

He argues that the actions and efforts of a variety of vested interests are significantly undermining the security of our property in pursuit of their interests - in particular efforts such as DRM and similar technologies [A couple of his examples have been cogently criticised but his main argument is still sound]:

There is an inherent insecurity to technologies that try to own people's computers: They allow individuals other than the computers' legitimate owners to enforce policy on those machines. These systems invite attackers to assume the role of the third party and turn a user's device against him.

Remember the Sony story: The most insecure feature in that DRM system was a cloaking mechanism that gave the rootkit control over whether you could see it executing or spot its files on your hard disk. By taking ownership away from you, it reduced your security.

This short discussion piece, which was originally published in WIRED, has helped me formulate my thesis proposal. I agree with him, and perhaps might even go further - self-determination is a human right. I see nothing to suggest that abrogating that because "it is too hard to bother to produce informed, independent adults" has anything but ugly consequences - for us all.

Schneier is concerned that [in] the hacker sense of the term, your computer is "owned" by other people and that those other people are not interested in us at all. I'd go further and argue that they are interested in us - as sheeple.

Bruce Schneier is well regarded in IT security circles. Reading one of his recent(ish) posts has helped crystalise a few thoughts I've been circling around lately.

He argues that there is a battle for ownership over your personal computer - between you, who paid for it, and organisations and people who'd like to control what you can do with it ...

He argues that the actions and efforts of a variety of vested interests are significantly undermining the security of our property in pursuit of their interests - in particular efforts such as DRM and similar technologies [A couple of his examples have been cogently criticised but his main argument is still sound]:

There is an inherent insecurity to technologies that try to own people's computers: They allow individuals other than the computers' legitimate owners to enforce policy on those machines. These systems invite attackers to assume the role of the third party and turn a user's device against him.

Remember the Sony story: The most insecure feature in that DRM system was a cloaking mechanism that gave the rootkit control over whether you could see it executing or spot its files on your hard disk. By taking ownership away from you, it reduced your security.

This short discussion piece, which was originally published in WIRED, has helped me formulate my thesis proposal. I agree with him, and perhaps might even go further - self-determination is a human right. I see nothing to suggest that abrogating that because "it is too hard to bother to produce informed, independent adults" has anything but ugly consequences - for us all.

Schneier is concerned that [in] the hacker sense of the term, your computer is "owned" by other people and that those other people are not interested in us at all. I'd go further and argue that they are interested in us - as sheeple.