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.

The State Administration for Radio, Film and Television has already issued five licences for mobile television services to a privileged group of state-owned broadcasters, including China Central Television (CCTV), the Shanghai Media Group and the Southern Media Group. These will sell content to the mobile operators, ensuring political censorship over the free flow of multimedia content. Whatever the format, the Communist party has given no sign it intends to relax its vigilance over what Chinese viewers can watch.

China's Internet users are probably better off with a censored Google than none at all.

A new piece of information that I have to add at what I have already seen at the other sites, that no one else has covered, is that I recently was sitting in a clients office when their HR person gave us some bad news Anyone born after 1983 can no longer get a Z visa. What struck me about this was that if true this would represent the first real change in policy. After all, working on an F visa was always outside the rules, and even extending a Z visa to rep office employees was a poorly enforced rule… but but restricting Z visas to those older than 25… THAT IS NEW Surely, if true, we are going to see a bunc of China bashing, but where I would like to frame this is that when there were economic downturns in Asia circa 1997 and the US circa 2000, there was almost an immediate visa restriction that came along with it. Leadership looked to save jobs for citizens, and those firms who wanted to import labor had to jump a lot of hurdles to prove that doing so was a last report… .that they could not find someone locally.

Differences over a wide range of issues — from limits on live coverage in Tiananmen Square to allegations that freight shipments of TV broadcasting equipment are being held up in Chinese ports — surfaced in a contentious meeting late last month between Beijing organizers and high-ranking International Olympic Committee officials and TV executives — including those from NBC.In response to the complaints from broadcasters, Sun Weijia, head of media operations for the Beijing organizers, asked them to put it in writing, only to draw protests about mounting paperwork.

"I just wish to have a kind of document to help me identify the key points," he said, drawing immediate protest."How many times do we have to do that?" asked Manolo Romero, an Olympic broadcasting official.

他与中移动打过数百场不同的官司；中移动曾出台专门的文件来应对他的诉讼；他以一名普通消费者的身份在经济巨人面前获得尊重。他盯的是不法和垄断……

Reed Hundt also recalled that the initial plan — one he now thinks may have been naive — was that the U.S. would have total control of the Internet for “the first ten years of its existence,” so that the United States could “establish a paradigm that would win the war of ideas.” Europe, he hoped, would then follow the U.S. lead in Internet-related regulation.

Mr. Hundt, who now works for consultancy McKinsey and frequently contributes to the popular blog Talking Points Memo, is an ardent supporter of Barack Obama and has been advising the Senator and newly- annointed Democratic nominee,  on technology and telecommunications policy. He will be debating Bush 43’s FCC chair, Michael Powell, on June 10 — one of the early proxy battles between Obama and McCain, where the technology policies advocated by the two candidates will be on display.

Over the last 18 months, industry, academics and human rights groups have been working on a voluntary code of conduct for companies doing business in repressive countries. The code, when finished, would include an enforcement process and independent monitoring, an element some companies are fighting.Although a voluntary approach is a good start, Ganesan said, it likely won't go far enough. Human Rights Watch endorses a regulatory framework, including penalties to hold companies accountable.

Under the category "Cisco Opportunities," the document provides bullet point suggestions for how it might service China's censorship system called the "Golden Shield", and better known in the West as the Great Firewall of China. China's "Golden Shield" project was one of several government-run commercial opportunities for Cisco in 2002. Credit: Cisco The document is the first evidence that the networking giant has marketed its routers to China specifically as a tool of repression.

Both China and the Dalai Lama exaggerate, and the historical evidence about Tibet is contradictory. One can make a good case that Tibet has been a part of China at least since 1720. One can also make a good case that Tibet became independent around 1911. The evidence is simply mixed. A deal to resolve the Tibet question is still attainable. The Dalai Lama would have to put aside claims to vast areas outside the present “Tibet Autonomous Region,” and he would have to accept much less political autonomy than he wants. China would have to ease religious controls and allow the Dalai Lama to return as a spiritual leader. Most important, Beijing would have to end Han Chinese migration to all Tibetan areas, to preserve their Tibetan character.

Commerce has since 1997 repeatedly refused to incorporate freedom of expression as a principle guiding the ICANN regime, despite numerous calls for it to do so in public comment sessions. The earliest of these calls came in 1997, during the drafting of the Green Paper leading to ICANN's creation, when the principles guiding the regime were first being formulated. EFF, the Domain Name Rights Coalition and many individuals asked that free expression be written into ICANN's constitution. The most recent reiteration of this call came in 2006, from the Internet Governance Project during a review of ICANN’s status. In each case, Commerce has either ignored or in some cases explicitly rebuffed these calls for recognition of free speech as a part of ICANN’s mandate.

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).

Wu claims the Chinese support the games. Of course they do - Chinese who don't support them are arrested and sent off to prison as witnessed by the detention of anti-Olympics bloggers and activists.

China and the Internet:History, Economy and Human RightsBy Wolfgang Kleinwächter April 2008

China and the Internet:History, Economy and Human RightsBy Wolfgang Kleinwächter April 2008

ember 2007, ther

As we’ve written elsewhere, the CCP views media development as a critical factor in a global war for public opinion. Likewise, many CCP leaders have come to regard “Western” media as pawns working for the interests of Western governments in spreading their ideology and influence — hence the party’s obsession with “color revolutions” and the role of the press.

The number of Internet users in China hit 228.5 million in March -- for the first time surpassing the number of users in the United States, 217.1 million, according to the Beijing-based research firm BDA China.

But even Kulekhov noted that the Kremlin’s indifference to a possible military strike by China northward, something unlikely anytime soon but entirely possible in the middle range future, especially because, Volkov added, the United States might stand behind China in such an action.

In an essay in Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New China," I refer to this as a kind of public relations jujitsu. Small, seemingly powerless groups gain momentary attention and enduring strength by storming (literally or figuratively) a platform media event so as instantly to control the narrative (the Palestinian gunmen in the Munich Olympics).

For what it's worth, which may not be much, I think Mr Hu is unwise to stress the independence/unification issue. Generally speaking in the last few decades, once political debates have been framed in sovereignty terms, it's been a one-way ticket towards independence or autonomy, unless a referendum or election has confirmed the desire by the affected people to remain part of the motherland. This has descended into nasty conflicts, as we know, and while with regards to such places as Kosovo the evil hand of the American imperialist has been fashionably detected that line does not play well in East Timor or Estonia.