September 16, 2002

SECTION: Business; Pg. 3


THE SEPTEMBER 2 blocking of the Google and AltaVista search engines was startling proof that Beijing will employ draconian measures to hamper the Chinese from accessing freely flowing information.

By allowing e-mail and Web data transmissions only through government -authorized providers, Beijing has been filtering content since the beginning of Internet service in 1995. Web sites for groups such as Free Tibet, the Falun Gong and Human Rights Watch were blocked, as were many news information providers including The Washington Post and CNN.

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And so, while transparently named Web sites were easily found by government -controlled servers, countless search engines, in particular Google, would allow searches in both English and Chinese, pointing users to millions of more opaquely named sites with equally verboten content.

The Chinese were also becoming adept masters of augmenting language to foster freedom of expression, said Duncan Clark, managing director of communications consultancy BDA China.

'It's a big cat-and-mouse game. A person might not be able to post something clearly sensitive, but they could use an acronym or code words such as 'mango'.

'Is the government going to ban writing about mangoes? The question is: can you control language?' Mr Clark said.

Clearly, Beijing would like to try. In the interstice between Google's banning and apparent service resumption last Thursday, the government 'hijacked' access attempts by directing users to authorized domestic search engines.

But people have been fighting back by constantly developing new proxies and other means to evade 'dot communism', such as All Too Flat's elgooG, a site giving new meaning to mirror sites trying to chip away the Great Firewall of China.

There are also services such as Safeweb's legendary software Triangle Boy, which was designed to be censorship-proof by creating a constantly changing anonymous web of proxies impossible for Beijing to trace. Unfortunately, direct access to Triangle Boy is now hampered by a direct block on Safeweb.

While the international media attention assailing the Google block appears to have facilitated the ban's lifting, it has now been replaced with a new insidious filtering system that not only selectively blocks searches, but appears to penalize those looking for the wrong material.

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Civil libertarians are now expressing concern that the government will begin to monitor those who even try to access restricted information, moving from monitoring hard crime into more obscure definitions of wrongdoing.

As shown by Aids activist Wan Yanhai's apparent detention by the secret police for sending an e-mail they claim 'leaked state secrets', the authorities are actively monitoring seemingly private communications.

'At what point do you move from policing, to policing thought? At what point is passively browsing considered a pre-crime?' questioned Mr Clark, who estimates the new software will cost the government at least US$ 40 million annually.

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