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The Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure made it into the U.S. Constitution precisely because its drafters understood that the power to snoop is addictive. Even if we happen to trust in the good intentions of the snoopers, the nature of any government can change rapidly — which is why the Constitution places limits on the tools available to any regime. But the drafters could never have imagined the commercial pressures at play today. The global homeland-security business is now worth an estimated $200 billion — more than Hollywood and the music industry combined. Any sector of that size inevitably takes on its own momentum. New markets must be found — which, in the Big Brother business, means an endless procession of new enemies and new emergencies: crime, immigration, terrorism.

here is a large and powerful country that, when it comes to human rights and democracy, is so much worse than Bush's America. But during my time in Shenzhen, China's youngest and most modern city, I often have the feeling that I am witnessing not some rogue police state but a global middle ground, the place where more and more countries are converging. China is becoming more like us in very visible ways (Starbucks, Hooters, cellphones that are cooler than ours), and we are becoming more like China in less visible ones (torture, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, though not nearly on the Chinese scale).

据周二的一份管理层文档，谷歌的股东将提议该公司采取措施以确保网络连接的自由，并对其运营在人权上的影响建立评估机制。 　　提案将呈报公司在5月8日的年会，其中谷歌股东们要求，谷歌应承诺实施一定标准，包括不参与主动审查，在限制政治言论的国家里不收集用户信息等等。

the best way to know you have a mind is to change it

if you worry about what others think of you, you will be living their version of your life and not yours.

Copyright law has abandoned its reason for being: to encourage learning and the creation of new works

The firm’s founder, Yan “Jane” Wang Jia, is an IT legend and former beauty queen who has parlayed her business success into political power. Referred to as the “Mother of the Great Firewall of China” by several Chinese IT Web sites, she sits on the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which guides political policy in all areas of government and society.


Australia and Canada got up early to be at the front of the line, and both expressed concerns about the Chinese government's human rights record. The UK and other European governments expressed concern later on. But voices of praise for the Chinese government's human rights record predominated. Overall, the session was considered a victory for the Chinese government's position that it is on the right track when it comes to respecting the rights of its people. Where was the U.S. delegation in this line? U.S. diplomats made no attempt to stand in this line. Much to the outrage of human rights groups, the Obama administration chose to merely sit on the sidelines and quietly take notes.

When China joined the WTO, there was also an implicit attempt to use “opening-up” to accelerate “reform.” The saying “there is no way back for an arrow when the string is drawn” is particularly true today when the world is filled with goods “made in China.” It is impossible to allow the free flow of commodities but not information when China takes part in the division of labor in globalization. It is equally impossible to allow the free flow of only the “positive” information. There is no such bargain under heaven. The information age has descended upon us. New media like the Internet and cell phones are still developing rapidly. It will cost more and more to control the dissemination of news and will eventually become impossible.

The games have been billed as China's "coming out party" to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism -- central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance -- harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it "authoritarian capitalism," others "market Stalinism," personally I prefer "McCommunism."

By next year, the Chinese internal security market is set to be worth $33-billion. Several of the larger Chinese players in the field have recently taken their stocks public on U.S. exchanges, hoping to cash in the fact that, in volatile times, security and defense stocks are seen as the safe bets. China Information Security Technology, for instance, is now listed on the NASDAQ and China Security and Surveillance is on the NYSE. A small clique of U.S. hedge funds has been floating these ventures, investing more than $150-million in the past two years. The returns have been striking. Between October 2006 and October 2007, China Security and Surveillance's stock went up 306 percent.

Ever since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, U.S. companies have been barred from selling police equipment and technology to China, since lawmakers feared it would be directed, once again, at peaceful demonstrators. That law has been completely disregarded in the lead up to the Olympics, when, in the name of safety for athletes and VIPs (including George W. Bush), no new toy has been denied the Chinese state.

They announced: "We have immediately asked relevant government departments to investigate those that started the rumour." Relevant government departments? But how enchanting to find Nike speaking like the foreign office of an independent republic, almost as if the sportswear firm has an extradition treaty with the Chinese government. It hasn't, of course, so the rather more salient question is whether Nike has any qualms about getting the famously gossamer-touched Chinese government to leave no stone unturned in the hunt for - and let's keep stressing it - an anonymous internet poster."We want to act to protect our brand reputation in the same way as any corporation would want to if people were posting or writing false accusations," the Nike spokesman Charlie Brooks told the Guardian yesterday. "This isn't about a debate on freedom of speech. It's simply helping us to identify the person who posted it."

Needles in a haystackThe problem of sifting through vast amounts of data was highlighted by the US 9/11 Commission, which concluded that the American intelligence community knew in advance that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were in the offing, they just didn't know they knew it. The pieces were all there for anyone who knew to look for them, needles buried in a haystack of irrelevancies. The answer in both America and Britain has been to collect more haystacks: useless, indiscriminately acquired information onpeople who've done nothing to arouse suspicion. We even inveigle our citizens to become amateur curtain-twitchers and pecksniffs, demanding that they report "suspicious" activity to the authorities.

Here was a report that really delivered a blow to the BBC’s solar plexus. Peacock began to foresee the possibility of digital diversity on an unimagined scale, it also put forward the ideas of a consumer-led, market driven broadcasting world, one in which the very principles of a licence fee funded public service broadcasting system would naturally be seen as obsolete. This suited the tenor of the times: deregulation, privatisation and a rigorous dismantling of the frontiers of the state – it was happening in the city and in industry and the utilities, why not broadcasting? The BBC, long seen as harbouring tendencies and personnel that were socialistic at best, Marxist at worst, was suddenly no longer a secure and unassailable acropolis. It was no secret that Norman Tebbit and some of the more fundamentalist free-marketeers and red-baiters of the administration would have been very happy indeed to dismantle the entire structure of the BBC. Peacock prevaricated and the charter appeared safe, but at a great price. Nothing would ever be the same again, the old certainties were dead and the harsh realities of capitalism arrived at Wood Lane and Portland Place. Whole departments were razed and working practices abolished, and something called an internal market was put in place. Radio Times was outsourced, the permanent make-up staff went, engineers, editors and set-designers were suddenly out of a job. Twenty-five percent of the BBC’s output was commanded to be produced from outside sources and a whole new independent sector was born. Companies like Hat Trick and Talk Back achieved almost instant success.

In July, 2001, after arriving in Beijing, Adelson and Weidner saw Olympic banners flying along the streets. They soon learned that the country was waiting to find out whether it would be selected as the site for the 2008 Summer Games. In addition to seeing the Vice-Premier, Adelson and Weidner met with the mayor of Beijing, who asked Adelson for help with a matter pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, which he believed was threatening China’s chance to host the Olympics. (In the United States, China was widely perceived as the frontrunner, and it is not clear that Congress’s position would have had any impact on its chances.) Adelson said in court that he immediately made calls on his cell phone to Republican friends in Congress—including Tom DeLay, then the majority whip—who had received generous support from Adelson. DeLay told him that there was indeed a resolution pending about China and the Olympics. (Representative Tom Lantos, then the highest-ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, had introduced a resolution opposing China’s Olympic bid, saying, “China’s abominable human rights record violates the spirit of the games and should disqualify Beijing from consideration.”)

I would suggest that China's January reserves data provides an equally compelling case for a reconsideration of the world's global monetary architecture. An international monetary system that requires this kind of official intervention - and likely will lead to more inflation in the emerging world than the emerging world wants and more government ownership of financial assets in the US and Europe than the US and European public wants -- strikes me as hard to sustain for much longer.

China added $55b to its reserves. Saudi Arabia added $18b to its foreign assets in January. Those two countries combined to add around $73b to their central banks portfolios. That means that those two countries alone could have supplied the $62.5b a month the US needs to sustain a $750b current account deficit and still had a bit left over to buy euros. Or they could have provided enough money to finance capital outflows from the US along with a current account deficit.It kind of makes you wonder why the US goes through the motions of selling Treasury and Agency bonds on the open market rather than doing direct placements with a few big central banks.

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- James Miles, of The Economist, has just returned from Lhasa, Tibet. The following is a transcript of an interview he gave to CNN. James Miles

So in effect what they did was sacrifice the livelihoods of many, many ethnic Han Chinese in the city for the sake of letting the rioters vent their anger. And then being able to move in gradually with troops with rifles that they occasionally let off with single shots, apparently warning shots, in order to scare everybody back into their homes and put an end to this.

Well the Chinese response to this was very interesting. B

我觉得这张图片应该入选2008年IT年度图片，它以典型的写实主义手法表现了中国IT业在2008年的境遇。

CNNIC发布了第二十一次互联网调查报告，这个报告里除了宣称中国有2亿网民外，还有两个数据引起了我的注意。 其一，中国网民的即时通信（IM软件，比如QQ）使用率达到81.4%，是仅次于网络音乐的第二大网络应用，超越了搜索引擎和电子邮件； 其二，询问网民上网做的第一件事，有39.7%的人选择了IM，是互联网第一落脚点中网民人数最多的一项。（均引自p.41） 参照国美国，即时通信使用率的情况是？ 39%！

The Worst Case Scenario, in which all the following happens:1) Tibetan monks or the FLG self-immolate during the opening ceremonies.2) Foreign tourists complain about secondhand smoke, "massage" phone calls to their hotel rooms, spitting, lack of queues and price gouging.3) Domestic tourists complain about even worse price gouging. Indignant domestic visitors get mad when their tickets are revealed to be fakes.4) Wiseacre tourists pose in front of the Olympics logo re-enacting this picture. Hilarity ensues when Chinese citizens/officials get wind of it.5) Athletes complain of racial profiling and repressive security measures at the Olympic Village, though in fairness its the Chinese security apparatus trying to do their best.6) A phalanx of visitors with protest t-shirts are detained.7) Japanese athletes get harassed.8) Triathletes succumb to pollution, or controversy erupts over the US and other teams sporting breathing masks.9) Nasty poor sportsmanship rears its head when Liu Xiang doesn't win the gold.10) Afghanistan's only competing athlete misses his event due to traffic.11) African athletes get harassed in Sanlitun.12) Al Qaeda or some other nutjobs pull a Munich.

然 而，从更严肃的层面上说，我们看“艳照门”，不是要做意淫的看客，而是应该努力透过这个事件讨论一些对网络社会的发展起到重大作用的东西，比如言论自由， 比如隐私权，比如互联网的监管，这些东西全部都是极为复杂的，其解决之道应该通过一个充分的沟通过程来达成。关于如何监管，我的观点很鲜明：第一，应该尽 可能使用现有的法律，而不是匆忙通过新法律，因为法律面对新技术的发展存在一个致命的滞后期；第二，政 府如果犯错误的话，也应该犯规范过少的错误，相信互联网会逐渐更清晰地成形。在互联网提出了那么多难以解答的问题的情况下，政府未见得有最好的解决办法， 即使有，也不见得是最好的解决办法。最终，互联网也许会催生出一种新的规范方式，不那么具有强制性，而更多地相信市场的力量。

Message on the Twentieth Anniversary of Tiananmen SquareHillary Rodham Clinton Secretary of State Washington, DC June 3, 2009On this the 20th anniversary of the violent suppression of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square by Chinese authorities, we should remember the tragic loss of hundreds of innocent lives and reflect upon the meaning of the events that preceded that day. Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets for weeks, in Beijing and around the country, first to honor the late reformist leader Hu Yaobang and then to demand basic rights denied to them.A China that has made enormous progress economically, and that is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership, should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal. This anniversary provides an opportunity for Chinese authorities to release from prison all those still serving sentences in connection with the events surrounding June 4, 1989. We urge China to cease the harassment of participants in the demonstrations and begin dialogue with the family members of victims, including the Tiananmen Mothers. China can honor the memory of that day by moving to give the rule of law, protection of internationally-recognized human rights, and democratic development the same priority as it has given to economic reform.

At 4AM this morning I received an email inviting me to an IRC chatroom where someone would explain to me exactly how the Time.com 100 Poll was precision hacked. Naturally, I was a bit suspicious. Anyone could claim to be responsible for the hack - but I ventured onto the IRC channel (feeling a bit like a Woodward or Bernstein meeting Deep Throat in a parking garage). After talking to ‘Zombocom’ (not his real nick) for a few minutes, it was clear that Zombocom was a key player in the hack. He explained how it all works. The Beginning Zombocom told me that it all started out when the folks that hang out on the random board of 4chan (sometimes known as /b/) became aware that Time.com had enlisted moot (the founder of 4chan) as one of the candidates in the Time.com 100 poll. A little investigation showed that a poll vote could be submitted just by doing an HTTP get on the URL:        http://www.timepolls.com/contentpolls/Vote.do ?pollName=time100_2009&id=1883924&rating=1 where ID is a number associated with the person being voted for (in this case 1883924 is Rain’s ID). Soon afterward, several people crafted ‘autovoters’ that would use the simple voting URL protocol to vote for moot. These simple autovoters could be triggered by an easily embeddable ’spam URL’. The autovoters were very flexible allowing the rating to be set for any poll candidate. For example, the URL           http://fun.qinip.com/gen.php?id=1883924 &rating=1&amount=160 could be used to push 160 ratings of 1 (the worst rating) for the artist Rain to the Time.com poll.

“Needless to say, we were enraged” says Zombocom. /b/ responded by getting organized - they created an IRC channel (#time_vote) devoted to the hack, and started to recruit. Shortly afterward, one of the members discovered that the ’salt’, the key to authenticating requests, was poorly hidden in Time.com’s voting flash application and could be extracted. With the salt in hand - the autovoters were back online, rocking the vote.

What can Facebook and Western social networks learn, if anything? If monetizing a social network is so easy, then why hasn’t Facebook opened up its payment API to third party developers? While the aggressive and intrusive hyper-viral aspects of the apps in China may not be replicable in a Western Market, the problems for creating a more viable business model run deeper. Western companies cannot innovate in the same way due to institutional problems stemming from their own struggle for an identity and revenue. Facebook has just recently announced a “credits” system, but it seems to miss the mark. The new system demonstrates little incentive for users to shell over money, and does not speak to the same need as paying for a social application that all your friends are already on and talking about. Facebook may be afraid to become a marketplace for applications, because they are reluctant to be labeled as a social gaming network or a social app store. Instead, they are a self-styled guru of dynamic human interaction. If they opened up their platform to become an apps store, their major revenue streams would put them into a pigeonhole, calling their $15 billion valuation into question. They obviously don’t want to be labeled as a “gaming platform” either, and don’t want to fully depend on selling digital trinkets. Like during the American gold rush in 1849, where Chinese merchants prospered while most prospectors went bust in search of striking gold, it appears that building viable, scalable businesses for Social Networking sites may still be an ancient Chinese secret for Westerners.

China seems to have lost its stomach for these tiffs lately.