Web 2.0 police - Chinese for "Open Privacy"

Submitted by Jonathan Hendler on August 28, 2007 - 10:34am

This article
via Yahoo provides a nice glimpse into how "user-friendly" a police state can be. The cartoon images are scary to me, not cute, since they could mean death.

I know that some programmer is happy to have some income and add that to his portfolio, and the Chinese are showing us that it's ok - no, really - it is ok ... OBEY. So, the Chinese police are being open about how they violate your privacy. That's nice.

This is especially interesting news, given that Yahoo and Microsoft recently (as of the 24th of August) were revealed to have new deals to co-operate with Chinese authorities in exchange for business. From the second article:


Microsoft and Yahoo! have signed a pact with the Chinese government that "encourages" the big name web players to record the identities of bloggers and censor content. So says Reporters Without Borders, an organization that fights for journalistic rights across the globe.


The French advocacy group reports that at least 20 blogging services, including Yahoo!.cn and MSN.cn, have agreed to the new "self-discipline pact" laid down by the Internet Society of China, a spin-off from the Information Industry Ministry. Under the pact, the services are encouraged to store the real names and contact details of Chinese bloggers and delete "illegal and bad" information from user comments.