Over the past few months, there has been much concern relating privacy and government interaction within our online activities. Data mining has made many Americans question how much the government actually knows about us personally. Information concerning what we like, where we go, and the people we associate with is forever recorded into a database. Yet in China, it is not a question of what the people want the government to know, but rather what the government allows it’s citizens to know.
Online information that is accessible to us everyday may not be available in China. Under the Golden Shield Project, the government is allowed to control what it’s citizen’s can and cannot view on the internet. Websites that seem distasteful to the government are censored from the public. If a Chinese citizen was to type a word like “democracy” into a search engine, the results would all read as an error. Below is a link to a website that allows you to type in a website address to see if that website is censored in China. It’s likely that you’ll find most websites to be blocked.
Last year, Harvard political science professor Gary King conducted a study of the Chinese government’s censorship through the creating of a fake social network. With the launch of this site (who’s URL he will not divulge) King hoped to catch a glimpse over the great wall of Chinese federal censorship. Surprisingly, the Chinese government relies on competitive system in which native companies bid on government issued contracts to censor their fellow citizens. In the past similar studies simply monitored social networks to see which posts ‘disappeared’. Creating a company and working with major Chinese internet and software providers allowed King and his team to witness firsthand the degree and methods of censorship used. “When we had a questions, we just called customer service. They were being paid to help us.” said King.
In managing their site, the software that King’s team purchased came with automated processes that could analyze, flag and hold back posts that matched cretin criteria. Using this software specific IP addresses could then be individually targeted for increased censorship and even surveillance. When his team contacted the softwares company’s customer service they learned that could pay for additional more focused features to filter content. Their inquires also shed light on the number of censors actively screening online content. “King was told that to keep the government happy a site should employ two or three censors for every 50,000 users. Based on that, he estimates that there are between 50,000 and 75,000 censors working at internet companies inside China.
In 2009, Chinese citizens came together in a protest known as the Doo Dah Protest. In the months following, social media was banned including sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It doesn’t seem that Chinese citizens are particularly excited about the Golden Shield Project. With no social media, political mobilization becomes much more difficult for those who want to take action against the censorship. It is unknown how long the censorship will be in effect, but until then the Chinese citizens will have to live a life many young Americans could never imagine: a life with no Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Would you rather have the government know all about you or have limited access to information?
