The University of Sunderland posted a blog post about my research:

A C&T [computing & technology] student, who has spent the last nine years using his computing skills to support Tibetan democracy, claims that the freedom fighters are now facing online espionage on an industrial scale.

I've posted a few pieces on Nortel's GSM-R system along the Qinghai-Tibet railway & located a new tele-geography of security that parallels China's Western Development Strategy.

Lobsang Yeshi, takes up the theme; [“The only thing rising faster than China is the hype about China.”] . . :

The most precise location-tracking system GSM-R digital wireless communication network and surveillance system acquired from Canadian Nortel Networks Corp for the railway is believed to be meant for other strategic purposes.

Phayul had an article at the weekend that helps develop this theory:
Sabotage angst along Tibet Railway

Along the entire railway line, the Military Area Commands of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and Qinghai Province have reportedly deployed a security safety net with a contingent of up to ten thousand soldiers and civilians patrolling day and night. The Head Quarters of Qinghai Armed Police Force has assigned several branches of its force to safeguard the train throughout its journey.

Communication for security forces along the railway has been stepped up so that conversations on walkie-talkie are now possible on long distance. To this effect, China Telecommunication Company and China Railway Communication Company installed adequate communication equipment and communication stations every 6 kilometres along the whole railway line.

The report suggests that Chinese paramilitary forces are directly benefitting from the GSM-R installation along the railway.

A PBS backgrounder on Ultrareach, a software program designed for Chinese citizens to circumvent their government's Internet censorship: transcript.

Claude Arpi has a guest column on Rediff that looks at the Qinghai-Tibet railway's impact on Sino-Indian security. Arpi discovers China's version of RMA, the strategic implications of the railway for China's Second Artillery (rail based tactical nukes), the relevance of the latest QDR to Sino-American-Indian relations, and the infamous strategy of Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. Interesting to see this in mainstream Indian publication, a wake-up call to South Block perhaps.

April 21 (Bloomberg):

The U.S. should export more high technology to China and stop making political judgments to improve relations between the two countries, China's President Hu Jintao said.

``Ideological obstacles and prejudices shouldn't impede'' relations between the two countries, Hu said in an address delivered today at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. China also ``won't simply copy the political models of other nations,'' Hu said in answer to a question about political freedom.

The U.S. restricts exports to China of some products with technology that can be used for military purposes. China's government blames these restrictions for a widening trade surplus with the U.S., which has prompted some lawmakers including Senator Chuck Grassley to call for trade sanctions against China.

Steven Mufson writes in the Wasington Post about the myopia of internet evangelists, a phrase coined by James Mulvenon

to describe those who cling to the belief that the Internet "leads to 'tulip' and 'orange' and every other possible color and flower of revolutions around the world."

Take China, for example. Sure, China is being gradually transformed by the Internet, although not in the way many the majority of observers would have predicted -

The Chinese Communist Party, long expected to be a victim of economic modernization and the transformative powers of technology, has instead been learning how to use those powers to its own ends. This isn'merely a matter of the widely publicized blocking of the Internet; the CCP has been learning how to use the Internet as a tool for surveillance.

In an interview with de Groene Amsterdammer's Richard de Boer [129(47) van 25 november 2005, pp.20-23.] I expressed frustration that media coverage of China's Internet experience focuses on state censorship (when it isn't breathless over the potential of 1 billion consumers logging on) at the expense of analysis of dataveillance:

"Westerse ngo's moeten begrijpen welke rol de staatssurveillance speelt in de onderdrukking van afwijkende meningen", zegt freelance onderzoeksconsultant Greg Walton: "De aan obsessie grenzende nadruk in het Westen op de Chinese internetcensuur leidt de aandacht af van complexere vraagstukken."

meanwhile China is itself transforming the Internet. China, the U.S., everyone is co-evolving within this framework. As I said in 2001,

The self-interested high-tech discourse promises that new information and telecommunication technologies are inherently democratic and will foster openness wherever they are used. China’s Golden Shield...debunks this myth. Technology is embedded in a social context and, in this report, it has been shown to bolster repression in a one-party state in the name of expanding markets and exponential profits.

U.S. corporate capitalism in the service of the security apparatus of Chinese communism ... baffled?!

Christopher R Hughes (reader in International Relations at the London School of Economics (LSE) in oD on China's “socialist spiritual civilisation”:

The overall result is a peculiar globalisation of nationalism that allows some sense to be made of oxymoronic concepts like the “socialist market economy”. It also provides an ideological justification for the emergence of an elitist techno-nationalism appropriate for the current generation of leaders. This was systematically formulated as party orthodoxy when the theory of the “Three Represents” – coined by then-CCP general secretary Jiang Zemim – was put alongside Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory as an element of the party line at the Sixteenth Party Congress in November 2002. The Resurgence of Chinese Nationalism in the Global Era

How can China's security apparatus keep track of people in a country as vast as China?

By using much the same methods that the United States uses to track terrorist cells. Although the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program has attracted a lot of attention here, in China listening-in is an old habit. It's the way the NSA most likely identified the thousands of people it chose to listen in on -- through a program called Novel Intelligence from Massive Data -- that is the source of real hope for China's communist mandarins.

Can you still draw a line between China and U.S. agencies applying data mining to social control? MSNBC:

Holding the line at privacy invasions that “makes sense” is the most subtle of standards, a fine line that police, governments, and citizens will now try to walk in the post Sept. 11 world. Libertarian cries of absolute privacy sound empty these days, with the knowledge that Khalid al-Midhar and other plane hijackers exploited America’s lax security measures. At the same time, what’s to keep overzealous investigators from using the Anti-terrorism Act to create America’s version of Golden Shield? Sullivan, the techno-savvy police investigator, says the Supreme Court will play the crucial role in picking through those issues.

“The crux of the difference (between the U.S. and China) is the Supreme Court,” said Sullivan. “Ultimately they will decide what’s Constitutional and what’s not. We have the ability as U.S. citizens to cry foul. In China, citizens do not.”

Rebecca MacKinnon and John Palfrey If they're not careful, Western tech companies could break up the Web.

China has also proved that censorship pays: it has developed a successful model for how government and business can collaborate to censor a nation's Internet activities. This model could be applied in any country. If we're not careful, we may wake up one day to discover that what a person can see and do on the Web will be radically different depending on which country he or she lives in: the Internet will become "The Internets." And U.S. tech firms won't have much of value left to sell if the Internet ceases to be the wonderful, world-connecting thing it is today. They must find a way to make their money in China without checking their values at the border. Morality aside, the long-term survival of their industry depends on it.

Sarah Schafer, also in Newsweek International, looks deep into the Chinese blogosphere and reports that A proliferation of voices is slowly dismantling the status quo in China.

CRI via Xinhua

Canadian ambassador to China Robert Wright on Friday called for Canada and China to further expand their investment scale.

The ambassador noted that bilateral investment volume between the two countries is still too low as compared with the current rapid growing bilateral trade volume.

China is now the second largest trade partner of Canada after the United States. The China-Canada trade volume reached 35 billion Canadian dollars (approximately 25 billion US dollars) last year, while the bilateral investment volume was much lower.

Canadian investments in China in actual use were only 4.5 billion US dollars until 2004, and Chinese investments in Canada were less than 500 million US dollars.

However, the situation is improving, Wright said, noting that some Canadian financial, telecom and insurance companies are exploring the Chinese market at present.

Canadian telecom giant Nortel Networks set up a group of more than 1,000 researchers in south China's Guangdong Province.

In light of recent actions by major IT companies doing business in China (Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco, and Google), their impact on human rights, and widespread media and US government scrutiny, Human Rights In China has been monitoring and developing resources to promote a constructive and informed debate, including resources on the Yahoo/Shi Tao case and the censorship by Google in its new China search engine.


* Yahoo/Shi Tao Case Highlight
* Google.cn: Not too late for corporate leadership
* Open statement from Beijing investigative blogger Anti

Focused on the human rights consequences of the China business practices of Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco, and Google, the hearing was convened by the Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations and chaired by Christopher Smith (R-NJ).

HRIC’s written testimony can be viewed online. HRIC's oral testimony responded to claims given in the testimonies of the company respresentatives and also presented recommendations to both the Committee and the companies for moving forward. The Congressional Hearing can be viewed online.

Richard C. Morais, (Cover story for Forbes)

. . . with engineering help from half a dozen Western firms, the Chinese Communist Party has erected a huge apparatus to censor free speech. A ragtag crew of hacker dissidents may succeed in tearing it down.
In a windowless room in New York City a computer engineer with owlish glasses--call her “Jenny Chen”--peers at a color-coded bar graph on her PC screen. Her group is launching attacks on the Chinese wall of censorship that blocks access to sites discussing verboten topics like civil rights and democracy. The graph displays how many Chinese that month evaded the country’s censorship to condemn the Chinese Communist Party.

Chen, a Beijing-born woman of about 40, runs her own IT businesses. Her group, and like-minded “hacktivists” (as they call themselves) spread around the globe, are chipping away at the Golden Shield, the term that describes the filtering system that censors the Internet and e-mail of China’s 110 million Internet users. The invaders slip contraband words and ideas in and out of the country via such means as mass e-mails, proxy servers that aren’t yet blacked out and code words that aren’t yet on government blacklists.

openDemocracy hosted an evening of debate at the Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research,

China ruthlessly represses free speech online, and has developed the most
sophisticated Internet censorship practise in the world. What does this mean for
100 million Chinese Web surfers, and for the international technology companies
who court their custom? Can the West really persuade China to open up to the
World Wide Web, or will China teach the world how to lock down the Internet,
and its promise of global freedom of speech?

Speakers included, Isabel Hilton China expert and editor, openDemocracy.net, Kenneth Cukier, Technology and public policy correspondent, The Economist, Bill Thompson, Freelance writer and commentator, and Becky Hogge, Technology editor, openDemocracy.net

In a seperate article published today Isabel Hilton sums up the dilemna China's censors face Beijing's media chill

This series of incidents presents a sharp question for China's censors: what is the greater danger for China, to allow official corruption and abuse to continue unchecked, or to allow a free press to investigate such abuses? The current government in Beijing appears to have decided that the price of holding on to power is increased repression. The warnings that are now coming from inside as well as outside China say this policy is dangerously self-defeating.

EFF's Danny O'Brien has released a memo calling for A Code of Conduct for Internet Companies in Authoritarian Regimes that includes 'Support for Technologies that Innovate Around Censorship and Surveillance':

Censorship of foreign sites by oppressive regimes is a limitation of free trade and free expression. The Internet benefits from technology that lets communication pass unhindered from one end to end. And citizens everywhere deserve the right to privacy. Free governments benefit from sponsoring anti-censorship and anonymizing software, such as those supported by the United States' International Broadcasting Bureau. But companies, too, stand to gain from investing in development that might lead to an opening of previously closed societies. If U.S. companies find that oppressive governments block or impede their Internet services, they should not simply give in to the threat. By working together on ways to surmount Internet control they will not only be providing wanted new products to 1.3 billion new customers, they will help open trade and communications between all countries, and all citizens.

EFF's Cory Dotcorow commenting last year on Google's proxy accelerator in BoingBoing[links to post 'Harsh words for US tech firms from House at China 'net hearings']

It would be great to see Google setting up a Tor node with similar resources to this, though, and enabling some more robust anonymity.

EFF's memo is clear on where to draw the line on relevant export controls:

Don't Do Direct Business with Forces of State Oppression Companies should be prohibited from providing intentional ongoing support and assistance to those who abuse human rights in foreign countries. While many products such as filtering software, Internet monitoring programs and programs to unlock protected data can have multiple uses, American companies should not be actively and knowingly providing services that facilitate censorship or repression.

Live from the 'innaugural bloggers row' for this hearing are: Rebecca MacKinnon. Tim Chapman at Town Hall. Human Events Online The New York Times,

In a crowded House hearing room, Representative Christopher Smith, Republican of New Jersey, unleashed a scathing condemnation of four American Internet and technology companies — Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco — for a "sickening collaboration" with the Chinese government and for "decapitating the voice of the dissidents" there.

Prepared testimony: The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, The Honorable James A. Leach, Mr. James Keith, The Honorable David Gross, Mr. Michael Callahan, Mr. Jack Krumholtz, Mr. Elliot Schrage, Mr. Mark Chandler, Ms. Libby Liu, Mr. Xiao Qiang, Ms. Lucie Morillon, Mr. Harry Wu, Ms. Sharon Hom



Live: webcast.

1801(GMT): Google's testimony begins.

HRIC's Sharon Hom at the congressional hearings this afternoon

Preparations for the 2008 Olympics have attracted the participation of foreign
companies across diverse sectors, including construction, advertising,
architecture, legal services, surveillance and communications. The
beneficiaries of the Olympic Games, and as such of the contracts agreed to
between foreign companies and Beijing as the host city, have always been
presented as the people of Beijing, and more broadly, of China. This is
documented not only in China's numerous promises to the International
Olympics Committee before being granted the right to host the Games, and
also in its 2002 Olympic Action Plan. During the Olympics, security
equipment and infrastructure will be operated by the government. How will
the hardware and technical know-how be used after the Olympics? The post-
Olympics use of this equipment and these technologies must be transparent
and monitored. Given China’s human rights record, what are the impacts on
privacy rights if these technologies are exported to other countries?
Any industry-wide code of conduct or specific legislation should move beyond
the narrow conception that technologies are used in isolation of one another.
The lines between online technologies and offline actions have been blurred.
Technologies such as Internet Web browsing, VoIP, e-mail, instant messaging,
SMS, podcasting, and more, work in interrelated spheres, impacting
journalists, students, activists, organizations, and individuals in their access
to and dissemination of knowledge.

Any recommendations and guidelines should not ignore the challenges and
opportunities that lie ahead in the expansion into the collateral uses of
surveillance or the restrictive uses of a particular technology. For example,
SMS messages will not only be increasingly filtered, but could also be
integrated into database systems used to store and track required pre-paid
cell phone user information, with serious implications for users who may send
and receive politically-sensitive messages.

Harry Wu:

A friend of mine recently tried to access some politically sensitive websites while
at an Internet café in a remote, small city in Xinjiang Province. The police quickly
showed up to arrest him. I don’t know who supplied the technology enabling the police to
track my friend’s Internet surfing, but I am pretty sure that U.S. technology was involved.
The PRC’s Ministry of Public Security has been continually upgrading and expanding its
$800 million “Golden Shield” project- a government-sponsored surveillance system that
was begun in 1998. The Golden Shield’s advanced communication network was
supposedly aimed at improving police effectiveness and efficiency. However, China has
also used the “Golden Shield” as a way of monitoring Chinese civilians. The project will
help prolong Communist rule by denying China’s people the right to information. In
order to develop the “Golden Shield,” China has utilized the technologies of a number of
foreign companies, such as Intel, Yahoo, Nortel, Cisco Systems, Motorola, and Sun
Microsystems. The “Golden Shield Project” would not have been possible without the
technology and equipment from these companies.

Xiao Qiang, China Internet Project at the Graduate
School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley:

The challenge in front of us, Mr. Chairman, is to find a way to help these information
technology companies work in concert, perhaps with some of the world’s great research
universities, to establish a set of guiding principles for the entire information and
communication technology industry. These principles, or standards and practices, should
transcend individual companies’ own relationship to any given market. In other words,
to seek collective ways to find the ability to resist demands for information or technology
that violate fundamental human rights .

New York Times:

"If you study the main international practices in this regard you will find that China is basically in compliance with the international norm," he said. "The main purposes and methods of implementing our laws are basically the same."

The briefing was one of the few times any senior official has spoken in detail about China's management of the Internet. Officials assigned to enforce the government's media controls operate behind closed doors and rarely make public statements about their work.

The Internet policies of China have come under closer scrutiny abroad after Google and Microsoft acknowledged helping China censor information available through Web searches and blogs, and Yahoo has been accused of providing data that helped convict dissidents who used its e-mail accounts.

Mr. Liu said the major thrust of the Chinese effort to regulate content on the Web was aimed at preventing the spread of pornography or other content harmful to teenagers and children. He said that its concerns in this area differ minimally from those in developed countries.

Human rights and media watchdog groups maintain that Chinese Web censorship puts greater emphasis on helping the ruling party maintain political control over its increasingly restive society. Such groups have demonstrated that many hundreds of Web sites cannot be easily accessed inside mainland China mainly because they are operated by governments, religious groups or political organizations that are critical of Chinese government policies or its political leaders.

Press release for the hearing in U.S. congress tomorrow. References State department's launch of GIFTF:

Rep. Chris Smith -- chairman of the House panel that oversees Global Human Rights -- is preparing questions for representatives of four major US internet companies that operate in China, State Department officials and representatives of human rights NGO's. The hearing will mark the first time in the House of Representatives that live bloggers will be permitted to report on the hearing in real time.

Earlier today, Secretary Condoleezza Rice announced a Global Internet Freedom Task Force in order to ensure "a robust US foreign policy response" to the international issues and fundamental human rights concerns inherent in the expansion of the Internet including: "the use of technology to restrict access to political content and the impact of censorship efforts on US companies; the use of technology to track and repress dissidents; and efforts to modify Internet governance structures in order to restrict the free flow of information."

"The establishment of the Global Internet Freedom Task Force by Dr. Rice is a welcomed step and is a provision already included in legislation that I am currently drafting to address the issue of internet freedom," said Smith. "I am looking forward to an honest and straightforward dialogue about the operating processes and procedures of internet companies in China, the demands put forth by this communist regime and the continuing human rights abuses by the PRC."

The promise of e-government is a transparent, accessible, efficient state in a new partnership with its citizens. But, asks Giovanni Navarria, could it be the model of an invisible model of political control?

To comprehend this new environment of invisible power, George Orwell's Big Brother allegory is inadequate, as it rests upon the notion of the visibility of the control mechanism. A far better guide is Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality.
...
Citizens are learning to comply with the requests and the soft-diktats of the new environment, and – in the name of protection or in search of a better quality of life – giving up their right to privacy by allowing government to collect and retain data about every aspect of their lives. From their experience as consumers, they regard this as perfectly normal. As subjects always connected to the system, they become permanently surveyable and controllable: indeed, they become data shared on a computer's database that is always easily accessible and retrievable. In the words of Gilles Deleuze, their position and identity is always known.

....

The Italian political philosopher Norberto Bobbio, in his classical study The Future of Democracy, addresses the risks hidden beneath the surface of what he called a "computerocracy". "(The) ideal of the powerful has always been to see every gesture and to listen to every word of their subjects (if possible without being seen or heard)", Bobbio wrote; but nowadays, in the information age, the ideal is realised. Bobbio went on to argue that the old question running through the history of political thought ("who guards the guards?") can now be reformulated ("who controls the controllers?"). "(If) no adequate answer can be found to this question, democracy in the sense of visible government is lost."

It is far from my intention to advocate a romantic return to a pre-technological age in government's activities. That, in my view, is neither possible nor desirable. Yet, given the present and strong convergence between government and technological means of control, more than ever we should – at least – try not to forget Bobbio's warning.

Beijing blogger Anti (安替) is known as one of China's most prominent and influential investigative bloggers. Widely read both domestically and abroad, Anti's blog at MSN Spaces was abruptly shut down by Microsoft on December 31, 2005. Visitors were greeted with a "Space not available" error message.

Anti has since re-opened his blog at the US-hosted Blog City—although his domestic readers will no longer be able to visit it as access to Blog City is blocked for mainland Chinese Internet users. On January 14, 2006, Anti issued an open statement regarding his views on the unexpected closure of his MSN Spaces blog and the recent congressional briefings and hearings concerning human rights and the Internet in China.

HRIC has provided an unofficial translation of Anti's statement on a new website, IR2008. The original Chinese-language post can be found on Anti's blog:

. . . In addition, with globalization and politics increasingly bound together, I don't think treating the issue as a black-and-white matter will necessarily help expand the rights of Chinese people. On the one hand, Microsoft's shutting down of blogs impedes Chinese people's freedom of expression; on the other hand, in the past year MSN Spaces has expanded the ability and desire of Chinese to use blogs, and MSN Messenger also facilitates disseminating information through the Internet. These are the two-sided effects created by the blind pursuit of profit. How Americans judge and penalize this problem is really their own issue, but I myself believe that if companies compromise all of the principles for the sake of an opportunity to enter the Chinese market, at least in the short term, Chinese netizens will not have more freedom. Moreover, we must recognize that Yahoo's betrayal and Microsoft's compromise are completely different matters.

We are in a very complicated situation, just as with the problem of whether economic sanctions can improve democracy in a country, having seen that in the 1990s this kind of action had both positive and negative impact on China and Iraq. These types of awkward and complex circumstances are the shame of the Chinese, and something I hesitate to discuss outside of China. I can only quietly repeat this dream to friends: I hope that one day, on Chinese land, fairness will surge like water, justice like a torrential river. Even though our voice is weak, inside we remain steadfast as a rock.

Released this week the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defence Review identifies three countries as key to the global security environment in the 21st century - India, China, and Russia - with China being singled out as : "greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States." This is the first time the U.S. has specifically named China as a threat, in its QDR. (In the previous report - just prior to Sept 11, 2001, a broad swathe of territory stretching from the Middle East to north-east Asia was highlighted - these days, 'post'-Afghanistan, 'post'-Iraq, the U.S. military is preparing to accelerate transformation to meet the economic and strategic rise of China.

What's interesting to me about recent U.S. punditry surrounding China's breathtaking ascent is the ever denser linkages being identified between economic growth - facilitated by exponential increases in trans-national information flows, and the changing nature of the strategic environment between two increasingly interdependent continental economies. Last week I flagged up a Nortel--Huawei joint venture in research and development that has potentially serious implications for human security, (see this Rights & Democracy briefing paper, for example).

AEI's Dan Blumenthal asks, What Does China's Economy Mean for U.S. Strategy?. Summarizing A New Direction for China’s Defense Industry, (Evan S. Medeiros, Roger Cliff, Keith Crane, and James C. Mulvenon -RAND) he notes,

The crown jewels of American industry--Motorola, Intel, Microsoft--are investing heavily in research and development (R&D) and co-production, helping Beijing to build a world-class communications infrastructure and information technology industry. And it is these commercial technologies, to a much greater extent than generally appreciated, that are being leveraged to form the backbone of China’s modern, networked military force.

While it might lack the journalistic verve of China, Inc., the 2005 report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission provides much-needed analysis of the linkages between China’s investments in science and technology and its geopolitical aspirations. The so-called National High Technology Research and Development Program, the report notes, "was initiated in 1986 as the guiding ideology to focus national policy on key scientific areas to develop technology and ultimately build national power and military strength." For Beijing, in other words, high-tech production has long been linked to its international strategic position.

While not exactly a revelation - (The PLA's desire to develop C4ISR capacity through state-sponsored commercial activity is well documented. Most recently Kathleen Rhem (American Forces Press Service) reports that China appears to be taking a leaf from U.S. RMA doctrine and working toimprove its information warfare capabilities, according to a DoD report on Chinese military power released July 19):

A senior defense official, speaking onbackground said the Chinese military has a long way to go in C4ISR -- -- but they're clearly doing researchand development into such capabilities. China is also usingadvances in C4ISR to project military power farther from its ownborders. Over the long term, the report states, China's advances inthese areas "could enable Beijing to identify, target, and trackforeign military activities deep into the western Pacific and provide, potentially, hemispheric coverage."

-- the Rand report highlights an acceleration in this trend:

According to the Rand researchers, the PLA is successfully executing "the wholesale shift to digital, secure communications via fiber optic cable, satellite, microwave, and encrypted high-frequency radio." The secret of its success, Rand argues, is an approach it terms "the digital triangle"--an alliance among China’s booming commercial information technology companies, the state R&D infrastructure and the military. Under the digital triangle, private Chinese companies such as Huawei are designated “national champions,” allowing them to receive lines of credit from state banks as well as funding and staff from the military and state research institutions. The military, in turn, benefits as a favored customer and research partner. National champions also enjoy "infusions of near state-of-the-art foreign technology, thanks to the irresistible siren song of China’s huge information technology (IT) market, which encourages foreign companies to transfer cutting edge technology for the promise of market access." Among the main foreign partners of Huawei, for instance, are Motorola, IBM, Intel, Altera, Agere, Sun, Microsoft, Texas Instruments and NEC.

The linchpin that companies such as Huawei form between foreign firms on the one hand and the Chinese military and state R&D institutes on the other is an example of what the Rand authors characterize as China’s new approach to weapons building: "civilianization," or the use of civilian entities to conduct military research. According to the Rand researchers, the tripartite arrangement has proved mutually beneficial to the PLA’s C4ISR program and the country’s commercial IT sector: "While it is true that the Chinese IT industry is commercially oriented, the research and financial apparatus underlying its success derives significantly from state research and development institutes, including those affiliated with the defense industry and military units. In this sense, the information-technology sector, particularly those firms supplying finished C4ISR and related products to the PLA could be seen as a new defense-industrial sector in China. . . ."

Following revelations concerning evolving U.S. Information operations doctrine, Andrew Koch Contributing Strategic Editor for Jane's forsees computer network attacks as tomorrow's WMD (subscription required).

Biogenetically engineered super viruses, deadly chemical agents specially designed to hang in the air for hours and armies of autonomously operated malicious software programmes called 'Cyber Bots', represent only a handful of potential threats that will be technologically possible within a decade, say US intelligence and defence officials.

While attacks by every type of tomorrow's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) may not kill hundreds of thousands of people, each has the ability to cause catastrophic damage and disruption, whether through the destruction of economies, infrastructure or human life.

Hacking

Cyber attacks are far from what has traditionally been considered a WMD, yet with both civilian and military infrastructures increasingly reliant on computer networks to perform even basic functions, defence experts warn that terrorist and enemy states alike will have the ability to cause massive disruption if they can hack these networks.

"I worry we are creating an Achilles heel in our military structure. As we move toward the Global Information Grid and network-centric combat, what vulnerabilities are we creating that we are not protected against?" one defence official asked.

By some accounts, the development of cyber warrior tools is already well under way, with government-sponsored hackers in countries like China and North Korea preparing for a 'digital Pearl Harbor' if push ever came to shove in a conflict with the US military.

Hackers, who many US officials believe work for the Chinese government, have launched numerous cyber attacks against US military, defence contractor and other sensitive facilities in the past few years, with the aim of pilfering information.

These attacks, called 'Titan Rain' by US investigators, are likely the product of cyber spying by the Chinese military, Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, an information security research and education organisation in the US, said in December. He noted that "we have a problem that our computer networks have been terribly and deeply penetrated throughout the US ... and we've been keeping it secret".

Reuters Canada is reporting that Nortel Networks, and its key competitor in China, Huawei are forming a joint venture research and development product house focused on what they are calling 'ultra' broadband - user-aware, content-aware broadband access platforms capable of delivering IPTV (TV over the Internet) and NGN Next Generation Netwoks) to the home. Nortel, North American largest telecom equipment supplier, will hold the majority stake in the joint venture, which will be run from Ottawa.

A joint venture with Huawei raises some serious and immediate concerns. Craig Simons, writing in Newsweek International last month asked of Huawei,

Is it a security menace bent on doing Beijing's bidding, a legitimate international telecom competitor, or a corporate house of cards, all market share and PR releases but no profits? It's hard to answer those questions. CEO Ren refuses to talk with journalists, and there are persistent rumors that the firm is actually run by the People's Liberation Army. The company denies that, and has long claimed it no longer has any ties to the government. Huawei's books are audited by a well-known accounting firm (KPMG), but few of its financial numbers are made public. Opaque bookkeeping has also frightened analysts: an August report by the Thailand-based consulting company MWL argues that Huawei may rely on "unsustainably low prices and government export assistance" to make sales.

An unclassified CSIS commentary published 2003 on global weapons proliferation and the military-industrial complex of the PRC, on Huawei

There are two distinct components to the production and sale of arms in China: military and former military enterprises such as Poly Group, and civilian defence enterprises, both state-owned and private, such as NORINCO and Huawei...Besides state-owned defence producers, China also has private companies involved in defence production, such as the telecom firm Huawei. With offices in Cuba, Iran, and Burma, Huawei has been a major supplier of dual-use telecom equipment. In 2001, its Indian subsidiary was accused of tailoring a commercial order for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Also in 2001, Huawei supplied Iraq with fibre optics to link its radar and anti-aircraft systems, triggering U.S. and U.K. bombings. Private defence firms often also enjoy the shielding of powerful patrons. Huawei was founded by a former PLA officer, and benefitted from early sales to the PLA. But it also receives state support in the form of tax privileges and state-sponsored credit because it has been designated a “national champion” of new technology. Its supporters have included top general Yang Shangkun and head of the China International Trade and Investment Corporation, Wang Jun (also president of Poly). Unlike state-owned defence producers, private firms are more likely to be profitable. A further level of complexity in their proliferation activity is that foreign firms seeking to do business with them may try to shield them from U.S. sanctions.

Mark Fiore's iRepress - Search & Repress!

According to John Stith U.S. Congressional Representative, Chris Smith (R-NJ), chairman of the International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee, plans to convene hearings on February 13th as part of an investigation into Chinese business dealings, and he has some interesting questions for the companies,

then there's always the national security issue. As charges of the Chinese government hacking into defense department computers and British parliament computers continue to surface where do these companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and all the others place their loyalties. If it becomes a matter of national security, would these companies get out? Would they assist their own country over China? I may be throwing a little gas on the fire, but this is certainly something to consider in today's environment.

Google's Answer to the China Question suggests T-Salon? I suggested this exact solution to Google PR people from my 'office' in Berkeley, Ca. in 2002 (old doors for office furniture, not included).

PetroChina, the state owned operators of China's controversial West-East Gas Pipeline have chosen Nortel Networks to supply communications, both wired and wireless, along its 4,200-kilometre route. The pipeline is the longest in China, spanning nine provinces to transport natural gas from the rich Lunnan gas fields of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region all the way to the economic hub of Shanghai and other regions of the Yangtze River Delta. Nortel has been winning critical infrastructure network supply contracts with Chinese utilities: water, electricity and notably with China's railway networks. . & - like the Qinghai-Tibet railway

"This pipeline is being built more for political reasons than for economic reasons," said Dinakar Sethuraman, an analyst with World Gas Intelligence in Singapore. "Its prospects for profit are cloudy."

..

China's leaders have staked their credibility on the pipeline. It is a central component of the government's "Go West" initiative, pressed by President Jiang Zemin as a way to lift China's impoverished western provinces by pumping billions of dollars into the region.

I'm sure I've been on about this for a while -- the more precise timekeeping system planned for Galileo could prove to be a major competitive advantage for the system over GPS:

the US must now recognize that it is in a “chronographical arms race” with the EU, and it cannot be passive.

SHEN ZHEN, China, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Golden Group Corporation (Shen
Zhen) Limited ("Golden"), the major subsidiary of China Security and
Surveillance Technology Inc. ("China Security"), has recently entered into 3
long-term contracts with police departments and major railways in the People's
Republic of China.

In 2006, a major milestone of Golden is going to begin the collaboration
with Police Departments in China. Golden has recently entered into 3 contracts
with police departments to share the traffic penalty on a pro-rata basis. The
contracts are on a long term basis with an average life of 10 years. The
company expects that the revenue from this segment will reach USD $12.2
million in 2006.

In addition, in 2005, Golden signed contracts with South Railway and Xi'an
Railway, the two major railways in China. These projects are expected to
generate a USD $1.3 million income for the company in 2006.

While RSF is calling for an ethical code for American Hi-tech companies doing business in China the EU is trying unsucessfully to engage China in a dialogue about its online censorship practices. This hasn't prevented China and the European Union signing a joint agreement to develop a high-speed, next-generation network. The project comes as both sides are working closely on the Galileo Project, an European alternative to the global positioning system developed by the United States. Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong explains how it all works, and he says U.S. companies need to take a stand against Beijing. Declan McCullagh notes new congresional intrest in the issue, Corporate America should not be "hand-in-glove with a dictatorship", while the Economist reports that there are signs that the concept of privacy is gaining currency in China...echoing the debates now common in western societies, many in China are beginning to bristle at the intrusiveness of nosy employers, data-mining marketers and ubiquitous security cameras.

Skype now filter phrases such as 'Falun Gong' and 'Dalai Lama' from the text instant messaging service bundled with their popular Video+VoIP service in China. Ben Elgin and Bruce Einhorn report in an article for Business Week (The Great Firewall of China) that despite a vast security appartus, technology may yet defeat the censors:

Despite the power and sophistication of China's censors, the march of technology may yet foil them. As more sites add podcasts and user-generated video, China's monitoring efforts will become far more complicated because it's harder to examine such material than it is to check text files.

"How do you filter when everybody has the capability to be their own video blogger?" asks Ross O'Brien, managing director at Intercedent Hong Kong, an IT consulting and research firm. But don't underestimate China's ability to control the Net, just as it has done in the past. Although the battle is far from over, the formula of getting companies to do much of the fighting may keep on serving China well

DNA/India:

Microsoft started the year with a PR disaster, of having to admit that they did indeed take the blog down on the request of Chinese authorities. The company abides by local laws in all countries it operates in, a statement said.

After the incident hit headlines, a lot of focus is now on the role of American technology in abetting the internet censorship and on information control by the Chinese government.

Apart from ensuring that sensitive information does not show up in search results, which is done with the help of software filters, the government reportedly employs over 30,000 human filters or internet police who track all that is being said or written in chat rooms, blogs and message boards and delete ‘inappropriate content’. Bruno Gussiani’s Lunch over IP understands that “it may be hard for a single company to take a stand alone, when others operating in the same industry don’t and are willing to bend over to please the political demands”. But nevertheless, “Microsoft is a special company, a highly symbolic one”, he says.

China, with over 100 million web users, is the world’s second largest Internet market. Companies like MSN, Google and Yahoo are caught between a commitment towards human rights and freedom of speech and the lucrative Chinese internet market, the precondition of which is compliance with censorship.

Prof.Tom Plate for the Korea Times:

As powerful as economics is in American decision-making, even more powerful is the role of public opinion. The Times may not be what it used to be in this area, but it is still a key player, it is very influential, and it helps set the tone for the U.S. news media's “national narratives” about foreign countries. Beijing should not expect “peaceful rise” journalism from America’s most prestigious newspaper if it is going to arrest and harass its people.

Does the current leadership in China wish the States to still view it in light of the gravely unfortunate image of the tank and lone dissenter at Tiananmen? Or does it wish to be viewed as a modernizing, increasingly responsible global player that wishes well to all and harm to none?

If the later is the goal, then arresting journalists and co-opting American corporations to unplug websites and blogs is not going to work in China’s best overall interest. Beijing is not stupid, of course, but it probably doesn’t realize what is at stake: Because of the kind of media system China still has, there is nothing in China remotely as independently influential as The New York Times. Beijing of course can do what it wants and more or less when it wants it, but we know in the States that it is a big mistake to mess with this newspaper.

The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG or 'upholdjustice' / zhuichaguoji ) has conducted an investigation into Microsoft's role in the Golden Shield project. This article is one part of a systematic exposure of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners via Golden Shield System and Internet monitoring:

Investigation on Microsoft’s Involvement in the Chinese Communist Party’s Human Rights Abuses

MailSieve

According to the web site of Microsoft (China), HTMMS (Hi Team Mail Monitor and Management System), which was developed based on Microsoft platforms, is designed to monitor and manage all email communication on network in various enterprises and organizations,…including Outlook Web Access and major free WebMail. “The professional edition of HTMMS is used in the Public Security, the National Security, the military and other important information security departments…from one computer, one or a multitude of 1000Mbps can be monitored simultaneously”, and it is mainly installed at the gateway of MANs (Metropolitan Area Network) to “monitor email transmission” and “to automatically intercept emails”. “The professional edition of HTMMS is called MailSieve, which has currently been installed in the communication departments of many large cities.”

ISA + EIM

Heguang Software group says on its website introduction that “Microsoft (China) Ltd. and Haitian Software Co. jointly released an Internet regulation system based on Microsoft ISA Server 2000 to monitor the behavior of enterprise staff members who access the Internet. This system can effectively monitor Internet activities such as browsing the Web, downloading through FTP and the receiving and sending of e-mails, which demonstrates the “double-effect” Internet security solution by Microsoft and Haitian. Heguang is the sole certified national retailer for this “new package”.

Microsoft developed monitoring and filtering software for the Chinese education system

Excerpt from Document No. 49: “the CCP central committee and the provincial committee are very concerned with the battle on the Internet. In order to continue and deepen the battle against ‘Falun Gong’ evil cult organization; aside from achieving the three “zero” targets, the battle on the Internet is the criterion by which the performance of the local work units and schools is judged…To better conduct the battle over the Internet and especially block information on the Internet is an important part of the battle against Falun Gong evil cult organization. The Party committees of schools must solidly intensify the leadership over the Internet struggle, organize forces and increase input…school leaders, especially the leaders in charge should periodically check on the situation and listen to reports, analyze the situation of the battle, make work arrangements; “610 Offices” of the schools should fully cooperate with the school Internet control units…actively organize and block information online; the school network center should strengthen their awareness of the battle on the Internet,… effectively implement the work to block information from the Internet.” The Document No. 49 [8] requires the monitoring of online information on campus network must be “round the clock, …strictly forbid people in schools and especially ‘Falun Gong’ members to visit ‘Falun Gong’ websites through the campus network and schools’ computer system, search, read, download or upload ‘Falun Gong’ materials.” The same document also states the fundamental method to ensure the information blockade online is to “pay great attention to the technology of web blockade, increase financial and technological input, and upgrade and renew with the latest technology in a timely manner.”

The Third Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security of China and Microsoft's “united laboratory”

On July 7, 2003, Microsoft China and the Third Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security formed “The third Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security of China-Microsoft China Limited Information Security Technology United Laboratory.” [11] Zhang Xinfeng, an assistant to Minister of Public Security, deputy head and director of National Golden Shield Project Leadership Group; Li Runsen, the head for the Golden Shield Project Leadership Group and Head of the Commission of Science and Technology of the Ministry of Public Security; officials from Bureau 11 and Science and Technology Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security; and Huang Cunyi, President of Microsoft Greater China attended the opening ceremony held on the same day. Yan Ming, the head of the Third Research Institute said, “The founding of the information Security United Laboratory indicates that the Third Research Institute has taken another step forward in the cooperation of information security research.

China's Golden Shield

In his presentation at the Fourth Plenary Conference of the Science and Technology Committee of the Ministry of Public Security, Li Runsen, the Director of Science and Technology Committee said, “The goals of the ‘Golden Shield Project’ include six major aspects. They are the construction of the information network, the construction of applied system, the construction of Internet standards, the construction of security system, the construction of management system and the construction of monitoring system for public network information security. In addition, the ‘Golden Shield Project’ has one more major task, which is, to construct the ‘national information network security monitoring center.’ Upon completion, the project would be independently managed and run by Bureau 11, which would be in charge of the work on information network security nationwide.

WOIPFG finds a direct link between western telecom corporations' complicity in the construction of Golden Shield and the imprisonment, torture - and in three cases - the death of Falun Gong practicioners:

According to incomplete statistics, WOIPFG has found that as of the end of April 2004, as a result of Internet-related activities, 108 Falun Gong practitioners have been incarcerated, illegally sent to labor camps, and tortured. Three identified Falun Gong practitioners arrested for Internet-related activities were tortured to death. Among the Falun Gong practitioners who have been arrested and persecuted as a result of Internet surveillance, those with advanced degrees constitute a relatively high percentage.

It has been confirmed that among these 108 practitioners, at least eight are university professors and teachers from Qinghua University, Southwest University, Southwest College of Petroleum, Shenyang University of University Industry, Beijing University of Chemical Engineering, and the China Academy of Science.

In addition, more than 20 other victims of Internet surveillance have bachelor’s degrees or more advanced degrees. More than 12 have master’s degrees and Ph.D. degrees. Around 90% of these 108 Falun Gong practitioners are under 40 years old. The majority had good and stable jobs such as bank employees, company professionals, and governmental staff. Some of them were college students. These statistics are provided to show that the people who are being persecuted, vilified, and tortured by China’s suppression of freedom of information and belief are exemplary and law-abiding citizens.

For more information, please take note of WOIPFG's latest report at www.upholdjustice.org. If you would like to supply WOIPFG with more information, please email it to media@upholdjustice.org.

"… it’s a little strange to tie free trade to human rights issues, it is basically getting down to interference in internal affairs."

Bill Gates, then CEO of Microsoft, standing shoulder to shoulder with Jiang Zemin during a photo-op in Beijing, 1994.


Microsoft Corp. has acquiesed to a request of the Chinese government and shut down the internet journal of a blogger and NYT researcher who discussed 'politically sensitive' issues.

"When we operate in markets around the world, we have to ensure that our service complies with global laws as well as local laws and norms," said Brooke Richardson, of Microsoft's MSN online division.

Investigative journalist and blogger, Rebecca MacKinnon broke the story:

On New Years Eve, MSN Spaces took down the popular blog written by Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti. Now all you get when you attempt to visit his blog at: http://spaces.msn.com/members/mranti/ is the error message pictured above. (You can see the Google cache of his blog up until Dec.22nd here.)

Note, his blog was TAKEN DOWN by MSN people. Not blocked by the Chinese government.

Anti is one of China’s edgiest journalistic bloggers, often pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptable. (See a recent profile of him here, and an interview with Anti here.) His old blog at the U.S.-hosted Blog-city is believed to have caused the Chinese authorities to block all Blog-city blogs. In the final days of December, Anti became a vocal supporter of journalists at the Beijing Daily News who walked off the job after the top editors were fired for their increasingly daring investigative coverage, including some recent reporting on the recent police shootings of village protestors in the Southern China.

MacKinnon picks up on Article 19's latest position paper (produced with UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the OSCE Representative on
Freedom of the Media and the OAS Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression
) : Joint Declaration: International Mechanisms for Freedom of Expression. The declaration calls for companies and governments to adhere to the following global standards:

· No one should be required to register with or obtain permission from any public body to operate an Internet service provider, website, blog or other online information dissemination system, including Internet broadcasting. This does not apply to registration with a domain name authority for purely technical reasons or rules of general application which apply without distinction to any kind of commercial operation.

· The Internet, at both the global and national levels, should be overseen only by bodies which are protected against government, political and commercial interference, just as freedom from such interference is already universally acknowledged in the area of the print and broadcast media. National regulation of Internet domain names should never be used as a means to control content.

· The right to freedom of expression imposes an obligation on all States to devote adequate resources to promote universal access to the Internet, including via public access points. The international community should make it a priority within assistance programmes to assist poorer States in fulfilling this obligation.

· Filtering systems which are not end-user controlled – whether imposed by a government or commercial service provider – are a form of prior-censorship and cannot be justified. The distribution of filtering system products designed for end-users should be allowed only where these products provide clear information to end-users about how they work and their potential pitfalls in terms of over-inclusive filtering.

· No one should be liable for content on the Internet of which they are not the author, unless they have either adopted that content as their own or refused to obey a court order to remove that content. Jurisdiction in legal cases relating to Internet content should be restricted to States in which the author is established or to which the content is specifically directed; jurisdiction should not be established simply because the content has been downloaded in a certain State.

· Restrictions on Internet content, whether they apply to the dissemination or to the receipt of information, should only be imposed in strict conformity with the guarantee of freedom of expression, taking into account the special nature of the Internet.

· Corporations which provide Internet searching, chat, publishing or other services should make an effort to ensure that they respect the rights of their clients to use the Internet without interference. While this may pose difficulties in relation to operations in certain countries, these corporations are encouraged to work together, with the support of other stakeholders, to resist official attempts to control or restrict use of the Internet, contrary to the principles set out herein.