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.

David Murakami-Wood (of the Surveillance Studies Network) and Richard Thomas (the UK's Information Commissioner) have released a report (via BBC):

Fears that the UK would "sleep-walk into a surveillance society" have become a reality, the government's information commissioner has said.

Reuters

ranked the country alongside Russia and China as "endemic surveillance societies".

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.

I'm very excited by Praxis' soon-to-be published book on Cyberwar, Netwar, and RMA:

The end of the Cold War ushered in a new phase of global security in which new threats and challenges emanate from non-conventional sources, and in which the weapons and means to prosecute war harness new technology. By the mid-1990s terms such as cyberwar and netwar were being used to explain a new way of thinking about war. The intervening years have seen the development of new defence policies, such as the US military Vision for 2020 and the Revolution in Military Affairs, whilst the threat of terrorism has become a painful and sad reality. The period has also seen the development and deployment of a range of new technologies for military operations ranging from new smart mechanisms to deliver weapons to surveillance and communications technologies that can change the very nature of warfare and security. This book attempts to consider this balance between the technologies and policies deployed to respond to terror and the need for human and civil rights.

The editors are Dr Eddie Halpin, Dr Philippa Trevorrow, Professor David Webb & Dr Steve Wright

I'm in India, a country that has just joined the North Korea-Myanmar-Saudi Arabia-China-Zimbabwe net censorship club:

So, India has finally made it to a select club of nations. So far, we were only part of a wider group where the state could bar internet access. Now we’ve taken entry to the North Korea-Myanmar-Saudi Arabia-China-Zimbabwe club where even blog access is state-determined. There are two things to note here, and the first would have already struck even those who aren’t sure what a blog is: most newspapers have already carried, alongside the censorship reports, detailed pieces on how to use the internet to access the forbidden sites anyway. This isn’t due to a dissident mindset: newspapers solidly part of the establishment have done so. They had to, simply to remain relevant: an elementary query on Google will take you to website after website which tells you exactly how to evade such decrees and the information was on blog after blog within hours of last week’s order.

The Observer :: Blog:

Google's soul-searching reflects a growing dilemma for all companies operating in countries and contexts where human rights are abused.

Some companies are now beginning to realise that to avoid the risk to their reputation of being seen to aid and abet repressive governments, they need to have in place comprehensive human rights policies.

The mistake that companies such as Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft have made is to move into the lucrative Chinese market without understanding or addressing their impacts on human rights.

Civic Minded's Rolf Kleef:

Amnesty International started their "Irrepresible.Info" campaign, including a call to help circumvent censorship and filtering by adding controversial content to your own website or blog. You might then want to add your blog to the CiviBlog aggregator, an initiative of the CitizenLab in Toronto, Canada. It includes a concise handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents from Reporters Sans Frontiers, with tips and resources on for instance anonymous blogging.

Kleef goes on to compare Irrepresible.Info with the work of contrast.org in The Netherlands a decade ago. He reflects on the Internet's DNA:

The genes of the internet are encoded with a will to get the data from the sender to the receiver, regardless of barriers. Nature or nurture, will it be possible to "tame" the Net, or have we devised a technology to allign with our own desire to freely communicate with each other?

IFTF's Virtual China blog links to my post on the World Buddhist Forum & Internet Buddhism and highlights 'what is at stake in Virtual China'.

Human enhancement & bioethics conference at Stanford Law School next week:

Between the ideological extremes of absolute prohibition and total laissez-faire that dominate popular discussions of human enhancement there are many competing agendas, hopes and fears. How can the language of human rights guide us in framing the critical issues? How will enhancement technologies transform the demands we make of human rights?

With the Human Enhancement and Human Rights conference we seek to begin a conversation with the human rights community, bioethicists, legal scholars, and political activists about the relationship of enhancement technologies to human rights, cognitive liberty and bodily autonomy. It is time to begin the defense of human rights in the era of human enhancement.

®:

District Judge Evans has given the go ahead for the extradition of alleged Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon to the United States.

The Judge said he was satisfied that the extradition would be compatible with McKinnon’s convention rights. The case will now be considered by the Home Secretary.

via http://freegary.org.uk/

OpenDemocracy's Paul Rogers makes the case that the United States military is preparing for the "long war" by shifting its tactics and expanding its ambitions.

this tactical reorientation and the rapid evolution and newfound freedom of action of special-operations forces act as warning-signals of the manner in which the global war on terror – rebranded as the long war – will be fought.

They indicate a likelihood of a number of small, "dirty" wars fought in a range of countries where US security is considered to be affected, combined with larger-scale actions using the overwhelming firepower advantage held by US forces. The experience of the past four years – including the problems the United States faces in Afghanistan, Iraq and with the al-Qaida movement – suggests that the probable result is increasingly embittered opposition to the US and intensified conflict rather than security and settlement.

Its interesting that this mode of warfighting was developed in the early 90s. Take this RAND document, for example:

The information revolution is leading to the rise of network forms of organization, with unusual implications for how societies are organized and conflicts are conducted. "Netwar" is an emerging consequence. The term refers to societal conflict and crime, short of war, in which the antagonists are organized more as sprawling "leaderless" networks than as tight-knit hierarchies. . . . traditional notions of war and low-intensity conflict as a sequential process based on massing, maneuvering, and fighting will likely prove inadequate to cope with nonlinear, swarm-like, information-age conflicts in which societal and military elements are closely intermingled.

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.”

Civiblog Central- Is there a possibility of an alternate internet source? Apparently yes.

Milton Mueller in Icannwatch:

This is being widely described as an "alternate root." Technically, this is true: it functions the same way as an alternate root. But in reality it is something more interesting (and dangerous?): it is a national root, a way of keeping the Internet bounded to a political jurisdiction so that it can be regulated more easily. China is not attempting to replace ICANN's root globally. It is not interested in adding TLDs for markets and users outside of China. It is interested in locking Chinese-speaking users within China into a DNS root under its own control.

Mass electronic dataveillance enters EU statute books:

EU legislation allowing telecoms and internet data surveillance by security agencies will enter into force by August 2007. Europe’s justice ministers have given final approval to controversial rules forcing telephone operators and internet service providers to store data. Information such as call logs, numbers called, email or web addresses can then be accessed by law enforcers investigating terrorism or serious crime. Surveillance of the content of calls or emails is not covered by the EU directive and remains under the scope of national security laws. The legislation was first tabled in the wake of the Madrid bombings in March 2004 and then fast-tracked under the British EU presidency after attacks on London last July.

Annalee Newitz in Alternet (in December):

EU member countries will begin implementing the first pan-national experiment in total communications logging over the next couple of years. Soon it will be impossible to go online or make a cell phone call anywhere in Europe without leaving a very detailed trail behind you. What's amusing and sad about all this is that citizens of the United States willingly gave up their right to online privacy long ago, without any fight at all. Everyone who stores email on Google or Yahoo! or Hotmail is creating the same kind of data reserve that the European Parliament created with the Directive on Data Retention. Maybe the EU should learn something from all those Americans happily building a surveillance gold mine without any inducement other than free email. Why pass laws when you can just work with Google?

& yesterday: What does Star Trek have to do with Google in China?

Alan T. Saracevic talks with Thomas Malinowski, former Clinton aide and the Washington director for Human Rights Watch

The consensus opinion is that the Yahoogles of the world deserve the double-standard label. They control information. And they're not supposed to do evil, right?

"I think there's a difference between buying products and actively participating in state repression," said Mila Rosenthal, director of the business and human rights program for Amnesty International USA. "The tech companies have a higher responsibility for being active participants."

Yeah, I'd buy that. But didn't we have an opportunity to address all this six years ago when Congress was debating China's admittance to the WTO?

Thomas Malinowski, the Washington director for Human Rights Watch, has a unique perspective on the matter. He testified before Lantos' committee last Wednesday. And back in 1990-2000, he was writing speeches for Bill Clinton in which the former president argued strenuously that doing business in China would be a democratizing force.

Clinton famously said: "If they try to control the Internet, good luck. It's like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall."

Apparently, Google's figured the Jell-O problem out. (Who else, right?) Their new Chinese site, google.cn, does a pretty good job at keeping news of democracy and the Falun Gong off the Chinese desktop.

"Are we holding the Internet companies to a higher standard? Yes. I think we are and I think that's right," said Malinowski. "If you look at how Google promotes itself -- they say they're in the business of transforming the world, making it a better place. They have a very idealistic message."

He continued: "Because they are the gatekeepers to this extraordinary medium, which has such political significance in places like China, their decisions have much greater capacity for good or harm than a company that provides financial services or manufactures something. The future of the Internet as a free medium has a great deal to do with the future of China."

So, what's the plan then?

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.

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.

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.

HRC:

In the 108th Congress, the provisions of the "Global Internet Freedom Act" (H.R. 48) were subsumed into the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2004-05 (H.R. 1950) and passed by the House on July 16, 2003. Christopher Cox reintroduced the bill (H.R. 2216) in the 109th Congress in May 2005. If passed, the act would authorize $50,000,000 for FY2006 and FY2007 to develop and implement a global Internet freedom policy. The act would also establish an office within the International Broadcasting Bureau with the sole mission of countering Internet jamming by repressive governments.

Update: Google's Human Rights Caucus briefing submitted via blog.

A secret Pentagon "roadmap" on information opeartions, personally approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but provides for no such limits and claims that as long as the American public is not "targeted," any leakage of PSYOP to the American public does not matter. Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and posted on the Web, the 74-page "Information Operations Roadmap" admits that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa," but argues that "the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of U.S. government intent rather than information dissemination practices." Several press accounts have referred to the 2003 Pentagon document but today's posting is the first time the text has been publicly available. Sections of the document relating to computer network attack (CNA) and "offensive cyber operations" remain classified under black highlighting.

Adam Brookes, BBC Pentagon correspondent comments,

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone. It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system. "Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads. The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap. The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for intelligence. "Networks are growing faster than we can defend them... Attack sophistication is increasing... Number of events is increasing."

And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum". US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum". Consider that for a moment. The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet. Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?

The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon. And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it.

Mark Fiore's iRepress - Search & Repress!

India, China and Google seemed to dominate the discussion yesterday at Microsoft's breakfast discussion in Davos. Bill Gates and Tom Friedman debated their flat-world theory, the Chindia effect, hi-tech education and development agendas. Comparing India and China, Gates argued that the challenge for India was to take the latest technology being developed to the villages in the country. Bangalore also came in for comment, as Friedman recalled his experiences there. He said that Bangalore had its islands of high technology, but a few hours out of the city took you back several centuries. Friedman spoke about the education crisis in the US. Elaborating on what the Bill Gates Foundation was doing in this sphere in the US and referring to the quality of higher education improving in China, he said we could expect Beijing or Shanghai to be part of the top 25 education destinations in the future. He also referred to India's IITs.

Gates surprised tech industry participants when he said the majority of Microsoft’s research and development will remain in the United States 10 years from now. When asked about Google's business practices in China, the richest man in the world said that he thought the internet "is contributing to Chinese political engagement" as "access to the outside world is preventing more censorship".

The latest stage of Google's move into China has proved controversial, but Bill Thompson believes it has made the right decision

But if we in the West, with our liberal political culture and our attempts to build open societies, do not engage with China then we lose the opportunity to influence them and convince them of the benefits that this brings. If the Chinese government fears instability then we should offer help and advice and support, not closed borders and locked doors. Different circumstances require different responses, and just because sanctions were the right way to put pressure on apartheid South Africa does not mean that a technology blockade is the way to influence China. Constructive engagement in a way that respects but also challenges local law seems a far better option, and that, for all its risks, is what Google is attempting to do. They may make some money out of it, but that's fine, because they may also show the Chinese leadership that openness can bring benefits as well as pose threats.

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.

The MacArthur Foundation has awarded $3 million to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and its partners to advance their collaborative study of state-sponsored Internet filtering worldwide through the OpenNet Initiative. In recent years the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a joint project among the University of Toronto, Cambridge University, Harvard Law School, and now, Oxford University, has produced a series of snapshots mapping internet censorship and surveillance practices on an international scale - a global MRI of the internet.

Statements from OpenNet Initiative Principals:

"Over the last several years, the OpenNet Initiative's careful and intensive research has put a spotlight on Internet filtering and surveillance practices worldwide, raising serious questions about the transparency and accountability of states and corporations who participate in them," said Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto. "The MacArthur Foundation's support for the Berkman Center and the OpenNet Initiative will help to sustain and broaden this research over the coming years."

"The contest between states, corporations, and individuals shaping the technology and rules that govern the Internet is at the core of the new geopolitical environment, and will define civil liberties in the coming decades," said Rafal Rohozinski, director of the Advanced Network Research Group, Cambridge Security Programme (Cambridge University). "The MacArthur Foundation's generous support to the OpenNet Initiative will ensure that the debate defining the appropriate balance between national security and civil liberties is supported by credible comparative research."

Prof. Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School and Oxford University, has brought the Oxford Internet Institute into ONI.