Dave Farber
2018-06-16 21:09:36 UTC
Date: June 17, 2018 at 5:55:03 AM GMT+9
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] How China censors the net: by making sure there's too much information
How China censors the net: by making sure thereâs too much information
A new book shows how the republicâs government has adapted to the challenge of a networked age
By John Naughton
Jun 16 2018
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/16/how-china-censors-internet-information>
One of the axioms of the early internet was an observation made by John Gilmore, a libertarian geek who was one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. âThe internet,â said Gilmore, âinterprets censorship as damage and routes around it.â To lay people this was probably unintelligible, but it spoke eloquently to geeks, to whom it meant that the architecture of the network would make it impossible to censor it. A forbidden message would always find a route through to its destination.
Gilmoreâs adage became a key part of the techno-utopian creed in the 1980s and early 1990s. It suggested that neither the state nor the corporate world would be able to censor cyberspace. The unmistakable inference was that the internet posed an existential threat to authoritarian regimes, for whom control of information is an essential requirement for holding on to power.
In the analogue world, censorship was relatively straightforward. It merely required state control of all the main communications media â print, radio and television â plus fear of draconian punishment for anyone daring to circumvent the resulting restrictions on information citizens were allowed to see. The 20th century provided numerous instances of how this worked â in fascist dictatorships, the Soviet empire and Maoâs China, for example â and how effective it could be in the pre-digital age.
Although much has changed since those dark days, it remains true that the internet (as distinct from the web) is still very difficult to censor. And yet â despite that â authoritarian regimes are flourishing. How come?
The answer, in a nutshell, is that they have sharpened up their act. In the process, some have displayed remarkable insights into the nature and affordances of network technology, insights that some democratic governments still donât seem to appreciate. And at the cutting edge of the new approach to censorship that has emerged is â surprise, surprise! â the Peopleâs Republic of China.
In 2015, commenting on the fact that Chinese internet users generated 30bn pieces of information a day, a former director of the countryâs state internet information office observed that âit is not possible to apply censorship to this enormous amount of data. Thus censorship is not the correct word choice. But no censorship does not mean no management.â
Note that last sentence. The quote comes from a remarkable new book â Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside Chinaâs Great Firewall â by Margaret Roberts, one of a number of dedicated scholars who have for some years being studying how the Chinese regime is âmanagingâ the internet. What these scholars have been unearthing is a detailed picture of ânetworked authoritarianismâ (to use the academic Rebecca MacKinnonâs term) in action. Robertsâs book is a magisterial summary of what we have learned so far.
In essence, the Chinese approach is a combination of technocratic realism and political nous. It accepts that, in the end, Gilmoreâs axiom still applies, but not the techno-utopian conclusion that effective censorship is therefore impossible. It just needs to be updated for a digital age.
Censorship 2.0 is based on the idea that there are three ways of achieving the governmentâs desire to keep information from the public â fear, friction and flooding. Fear is the traditional, analogue approach. It works, but itâs expensive, intrusive and risks triggering a backlash and/or the âStreisand effectâ â when an attempt to hide a piece of information winds up drawing public attention to what youâre trying to hide (after the singer tried to suppress photographs of her Malibu home in 2003).
Friction involves imposing a virtual âtaxâ (in terms of time, effort or money) on those trying to access censored information. If youâre dedicated or cussed enough you can find the information eventually, but most citizens wonât have the patience, ingenuity or stamina to persevere in the search. Friction is cheap and unobtrusive and enables plausible denial (was the information not available because of a technical glitch or user error?).
[snip]
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-------------------------------------------Subject: [Dewayne-Net] How China censors the net: by making sure there's too much information
How China censors the net: by making sure thereâs too much information
A new book shows how the republicâs government has adapted to the challenge of a networked age
By John Naughton
Jun 16 2018
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/16/how-china-censors-internet-information>
One of the axioms of the early internet was an observation made by John Gilmore, a libertarian geek who was one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. âThe internet,â said Gilmore, âinterprets censorship as damage and routes around it.â To lay people this was probably unintelligible, but it spoke eloquently to geeks, to whom it meant that the architecture of the network would make it impossible to censor it. A forbidden message would always find a route through to its destination.
Gilmoreâs adage became a key part of the techno-utopian creed in the 1980s and early 1990s. It suggested that neither the state nor the corporate world would be able to censor cyberspace. The unmistakable inference was that the internet posed an existential threat to authoritarian regimes, for whom control of information is an essential requirement for holding on to power.
In the analogue world, censorship was relatively straightforward. It merely required state control of all the main communications media â print, radio and television â plus fear of draconian punishment for anyone daring to circumvent the resulting restrictions on information citizens were allowed to see. The 20th century provided numerous instances of how this worked â in fascist dictatorships, the Soviet empire and Maoâs China, for example â and how effective it could be in the pre-digital age.
Although much has changed since those dark days, it remains true that the internet (as distinct from the web) is still very difficult to censor. And yet â despite that â authoritarian regimes are flourishing. How come?
The answer, in a nutshell, is that they have sharpened up their act. In the process, some have displayed remarkable insights into the nature and affordances of network technology, insights that some democratic governments still donât seem to appreciate. And at the cutting edge of the new approach to censorship that has emerged is â surprise, surprise! â the Peopleâs Republic of China.
In 2015, commenting on the fact that Chinese internet users generated 30bn pieces of information a day, a former director of the countryâs state internet information office observed that âit is not possible to apply censorship to this enormous amount of data. Thus censorship is not the correct word choice. But no censorship does not mean no management.â
Note that last sentence. The quote comes from a remarkable new book â Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside Chinaâs Great Firewall â by Margaret Roberts, one of a number of dedicated scholars who have for some years being studying how the Chinese regime is âmanagingâ the internet. What these scholars have been unearthing is a detailed picture of ânetworked authoritarianismâ (to use the academic Rebecca MacKinnonâs term) in action. Robertsâs book is a magisterial summary of what we have learned so far.
In essence, the Chinese approach is a combination of technocratic realism and political nous. It accepts that, in the end, Gilmoreâs axiom still applies, but not the techno-utopian conclusion that effective censorship is therefore impossible. It just needs to be updated for a digital age.
Censorship 2.0 is based on the idea that there are three ways of achieving the governmentâs desire to keep information from the public â fear, friction and flooding. Fear is the traditional, analogue approach. It works, but itâs expensive, intrusive and risks triggering a backlash and/or the âStreisand effectâ â when an attempt to hide a piece of information winds up drawing public attention to what youâre trying to hide (after the singer tried to suppress photographs of her Malibu home in 2003).
Friction involves imposing a virtual âtaxâ (in terms of time, effort or money) on those trying to access censored information. If youâre dedicated or cussed enough you can find the information eventually, but most citizens wonât have the patience, ingenuity or stamina to persevere in the search. Friction is cheap and unobtrusive and enables plausible denial (was the information not available because of a technical glitch or user error?).
[snip]
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