China Tightens Censorship of Electronic Communications
"A Beijing entrepreneur, discussing restaurant choices with his fiancée over their cellphones last week, quoted Queen Gertrude's response to Hamlet: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." The second time he said the word "protest," her phone cut off."Oh, ok. This suits Andrejevic's arguments in iSpy like a, uh, suit.
the example works on multiple levels--integration of state and (semi) private ISPs, the way the blame is distributed, the way it plays out for us/US--we know China is evil because they block the word freedom--, the way the hero in the clip is an entrepreneur, the displacement of interference such that it's not a prob in the US (or a deliberate move by guys working at a company trying to block folks for fun), etc
ReplyDeleteseveral years ago a Dutch research group noticed that Google's algorithm adjustments moved adjusted 9/11 searches so that 9/11 Truth didn't show up on the first page; the change was documented within a few hours as the site's placement plummeted from first 5 to lower 50 (roughly--I am so making up the numbers).
I dont buy the article from the NYT. Phones cut out all the time due to lack of signal strength and interference. They could not be sure, they would not know why. They assume they are being monitored. China has millions of people. Their intelligence I do not think sits and listens in on all of their conversations. I believe that NYT has written this article to arouse superstitions and induce fear.
ReplyDeleteJohn, I think you are right to be skeptical. It is technically possible (theoretically) but implementation would actually cost massive massive massive massive amounts of money that I doubt they would spend on making sure to police all phone conversations. On the other hand, this type of thing would be super easy with text messaging and is widespread on internet in China (I won't provide evidence, it's all over the place and well documented if you want to look into that...)
ReplyDeleteThe NYT posted an almost-backpedal at the end between when I posted it and when you responded pointing out that it was totally anecdotal evidence and you're right to point that out for sure, regardless if you saw the editor's note or not. China has BILLIONS, not millions of people, too. :P