[gnso-dow123] Fwd: China's Communist Party as surveillance entrepreneurs

["Milton Mueller" <Mueller@xxxxxxx>]

Based on this recent article, it seems that China would make an
interesting addition to the upcoming GAC Workshop on law enforcement
uses of IP address and domain name information in Luxembourg. I would
encourage Suzanne to include them in the program. Perhaps China's
"NightCrawler" technology might be of interest to those concerned about
the accuracy of Whois data. 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        CHINA : Authorities declare war on unregistered websites
and
blogs (+FR)
Date:   Mon, 6 Jun 2005 18:21:49 +0200
From:   RSF.Internet <internet@xxxxxxx>

The Internet under surveillance
6 June 2005

CHINA

*Authorities declare war on unregistered websites and blogs*
*
*Reporters Without Borders voiced alarm today at the Chinese
government's announced intention to close down all China-based
websites
and blogs that are not officially registered. The plan is all the more
worrying as the government has also revealed that it has a new system
for monitoring sites in real time and spotting those that fail to
comply.

Reporters Without Borders added: "Those who continue to publish under
their real names on sites hosted in China will either have to avoid
political subjects or just relay the Communist Party's propaganda.
This
decision will enable those in power to control online news and
information much more effectively."

The new initiative was announced in a decree issued by the ministry
for
the information industry (MII) on 20 March, which said all China-based
websites - commercial or otherwise - would have to register by 30
June,
giving the complete identity of the persons responsible for the sites.
According to the authorities, the aim is to control information that
"endanger the country."

According to official figures, about 75 per cent of Chinese sites have
already complied with the new procedure. The Russian news agency/
Interfax/ reported that the ministry subsequently announced that a new
system called "Night Crawler" (Pa Chong, in Chinese) that allows the
authorities to locate and block unregistered sites would get under
away
at the start of June.

At the request of the authorities, the Telecom operators that host the
biggest Chinese news portals informed their users that this procedure
is
obligatory. In May, many bloggers received e-mail messages telling
them
to register to avoid their blogs being declared illegal.

A China-based blogger told Reporters Without Borders on condition of
anonymity that the Shanghai police recently rendered his website
inaccessible because it had not been registered. He then phoned the
MII
to ask what he had to do in order to register, and was told that in
his
case it was "not worth bothering" because "there was no chance of an
independent blog getting permission to publish."
--------------------------------------------