Even with my current job as a systems analyst, a software developer/programmer, I felt a need to document my learning, so I have something to always look back to, especially with my advancing age. But no, I'm not that old yet...
Showing posts with label Golden Shield Project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Golden Shield Project. Show all posts
I thought, how can it be possible? if the servers are already in Hong Kong, how can it still be 'meddled with'?
Beats me. But with an international issue like this, it makes us step back to ask why. Why is China so keen to get Google block some search results? Is China wanting to keep a 'clean slate' facade to the world? Everybody already knows what happened. Is China trying to keep from its local citizens what really happened, or how those past events are seen from the eyes of those not living in China, not controlled by China?
Whatever, read the news article here, and do leave your comments. You are most welcome!
---------- Google has confirmed that the Chinese authorities have begun blocking certain terms from a local search engine, after the company said it would no longer censor results for those terms itself.
The Chinese government's Golden Shield, which uses Cisco routers to censor terms deemed inappropriate by the authorities, is filtering out sensitive search terms used on Google.co.hk, the search company told ZDNetUK on Tuesday.
"Certain terms seem to be being blocked by the firewall," said a Google spokesperson, referring to the 'Great Firewall of China', the popular nickname for Golden Shield.
The Chinese government has not made any comment on whether it is blocking search terms on Google.com.hk. However, it has reacted to Google's actions, saying on Tuesday that the company was "totally wrong" to stop censoring its Chinese language search results, according to Chinese government portal Xinhua.
Google to leave China on April 10: state media Posted: 19 March 2010 1211 hrs
SHANGHAI: US Internet giant Google will close its business in China next month and may announce its plans in the coming days, Chinese media reported on Friday, after rows over censorship and hacking.
The China Business News quoted an official with an unidentified Chinese advertising agency as saying Google would go through with its threatened withdrawal on April 10, but that Google had yet to confirm the pull-out.
The agency is a business partner of Google, the report said.
The report did not specify whether Google would close all or part of its operations in the country.
The newspaper quoted an unidentified Google staff member as saying the company may announce on Monday the details of its exit from China and compensation for its local staff.
Google China spokeswoman Marsha Wang declined to comment on the report, telling AFP only that there had been "no update" on the company's situation.
The report was the latest in a series of clues to emerge recently indicating Google planned to leave China, which has the world's largest population of online users, at 384 million.
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A Chinese Google user presents flowers in front of 'Google' sign outside Google China headquarters building in Beijing.
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Google has cried foul over what it said were cyberattacks aimed at its source code and the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
The Financial Times reported last week that Google was "99.9 per cent" certain to abandon google.cn, citing an unnamed source.
Chinese media said Wednesday that Google sent a notice to clients saying google.cn could close at the end of March.
The issue has sparked a simmering war of words between China and the administration of US President Barack Obama, which has called on Beijing to allow an unfettered Internet.
The dispute has exacerbated mounting tensions between the two over a range of trade and diplomatic issues.
Beijing tightly controls online content in a vast system dubbed the "Great Firewall of China", removing information it deems harmful such as pornography and violent content, but also politically sensitive material.
Google has continued to filter google.cn results to abide by Chinese censorship demands, but says it will eventually stop the screening.
Google confirmed earlier this week that it had received a letter purportedly from a group of 27 Chinese advertising agencies calling for the US company to open talks on compensation for possible business losses if it leaves China.
However, representatives of several of the firms subsequently told AFP they knew nothing of the letter and Chinese media reports have raised doubts about its authenticity.
Google's Wang told AFP the company is still "reviewing" the letter.
- AFP/yb
From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.
Between June 3 and June 11, Google.cn blocked Tiananmen Square results
Google.cn says it complies with Chinese laws
Google.cn's system of deciding what results to list, leave out not revealed
Google.cn blocked results near 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square
For eight days between June 3 and June 11, Google.cn blocked results for Tiananmen Square.
(CNET) -- Google was going to help democratize data in China. Instead, about three years after entering the Middle Kingdom, the search company still finds itself in an uncomfortable working relationship with government censors.
For about eight days between June 3 and June 11, Google.cn blocked all results that might come from searches for Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Not just politically sensitive results, not just historical accounts of the hundreds of deaths on June 4, 1989, but every single result -- including directions to the square -- with an error message that read "Search results cannot be displayed as they may contain contents that do not comply with related laws and policy."
As of Thursday, things had appeared to return to normal. A search for "Tiananmen Square" in either English or Chinese brought up links to shops in the area, historical documents about one of China's most storied places, and images of fun, happy times in downtown Beijing.
So how did Google know that it was supposed to drop the hammer on all results for Tiananmen Square for that brief period of time? And how did it know that it was once again safe to reapply the limited filter?
Google isn't saying, beyond pointing to previous interviews and statements it has given on its tricky balancing act in China. "Google.cn complies with Chinese laws."
The differences in search results over time in China are the result of a variety of factors, including the content that is available on the Internet and the regulations we follow in China," the company said in a statement last week.
But it has confirmed that Google has dropped a previous method of determining how to self-censor its search results -- pinging the so-called Great Firewall of China to see what sites are blocked --in favor of a new self-censorship method that the company refuses to disclose.
Difficult choices
Google's formal entry into China in 2006 with Google.cn forced the company to strike a difficult balance between its stated goal of making the world's information widely available and the requirement that all Internet companies doing business in China adhere to government regulations regarding censorship.
In some ways, Google has improved the flow of information in China. Upon entering the market, it made sure to include a disclaimer like the one above alongside search results for sensitive queries, something even Baidu does now. That decision allowed Chinese Internet searchers to know they weren't getting the full extent of what was available on the Internet for a given query.
In addition, a study published by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab in June 2008 found that Google is actually the least censored search engine in China. Google is the second-most widely used search engine in China, behind Baidu.
In the past, company executives have justified Google's censored presence in China with a glass-three-quarters-full analogy: it's better to offer Chinese Internet users access to a wealth of information they might be otherwise unable to find at the expense of "pulling a few books out of the library," so to speak.
They are also, of course, unwilling to miss out on perhaps the greatest Internet land rush of the 21st century as China's massive population continues to come online.
However, determining which books to leave and which books to pull is not an easy task. Google representatives over the past week pointed repeatedly to an article in "The New York Times" from 2006 that described Google's methodology for making those tough choices.
From the article: Brin's team had one more challenge to confront: how to determine which sites to block? The Chinese government wouldn't give them a list. So Google's engineers hit on a high-tech solution. They set up a computer inside China and programmed it to try to access Web sites outside the country, one after another. If a site was blocked by the firewall, it meant the government regarded it as illicit -- so it became part of Google's blacklist.
That system is no longer in place, Google representatives confirmed. Despite repeated inquiries, no information was made available about the new system: whether it involves taking direct cues from the government, self-selection by Google engineers, or something else.
In a way, Google's reluctance to talk about censorship and China is understandable. The Chinese government's regulations seem to be written in a deliberately vague way as to encourage Internet companies to censor more than the government would actually like to see pulled from the Internet.
In 2006, CNET's Declan McCullagh noted that Google.cn censored far more search results than seemed necessary, which was proven when Google restored access to Web sites like Budweiser.com following the article, with no apparent repercussions from the Chinese government.
The Times article from 2006 also noted the existence of weekly meetings between government officials and Internet companies known as the "wind-blowing" meetings; as in, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows in China, you need a bureaucrat.
During those meetings, government officials would discuss upcoming events and hint at the ones they'd prefer to go unnoticed, according to the article.
Relevance lost
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, it seems several such meetings took place. Web sites across China were forced to shut down for a brief period of time in the days surrounding June 4, which many of them sarcastically dubbed "Chinese Internet Maintenance Day."
Unlike Twitter, Google's YouTube, and Wordpress, Google.cn was not shut down during the days surrounding the anniversary. But it was certainly far more stingy with search results than it was before the first week of June, or at present.
Whatever filter Google is using is both flexible and imprecise. Searches for obvious terms like "Tiananmen Square" and "Tank Man" returned no results between approximately June 3 and June 10, but as of last Thursday once again returned generic results unrelated to the events of June 4, 1989.
However, during "Chinese Internet Maintenance Week," searches on Google.cn for "June 4 incident" (the Chinese term for the events of June 4, 1989), "Goddess of Democracy" and "Tiananmen Square massacre," all returned results that one might think would be frowned upon by the Chinese government, including images of the Goddess of Democracy -- a Statue of Liberty-like figure constructed by student protesters -- staring defiantly at a portrait of Chairman Mao above the Tiananmen Gate.
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