Return-Path: <sentto-279987-2177-1001123113-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com> Delivered-To: fc@all.net Received: from 204.181.12.215 by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.1.0) for fc@localhost (single-drop); Fri, 21 Sep 2001 18:55:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 905 invoked by uid 510); 22 Sep 2001 01:53:29 -0000 Received: from n2.groups.yahoo.com (216.115.96.52) by 204.181.12.215 with SMTP; 22 Sep 2001 01:53:29 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-279987-2177-1001123113-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.1.223] by hi.egroups.com with NNFMP; 22 Sep 2001 01:45:27 -0000 X-Sender: fc@big.all.net X-Apparently-To: iwar@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_2); 22 Sep 2001 01:45:13 -0000 Received: (qmail 98493 invoked from network); 22 Sep 2001 01:45:13 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by 10.1.1.223 with QMQP; 22 Sep 2001 01:45:13 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO big.all.net) (65.0.156.78) by mta2 with SMTP; 22 Sep 2001 01:45:27 -0000 Received: (from fc@localhost) by big.all.net (8.9.3/8.7.3) id SAA31278 for iwar@onelist.com; Fri, 21 Sep 2001 18:45:26 -0700 Message-Id: <200109220145.SAA31278@big.all.net> To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List) Organization: I'm not allowed to say X-Mailer: don't even ask X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL1] From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net> Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list iwar@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:iwar-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com> Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 18:45:26 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com Subject: [iwar] [fc:China.Quietly.Unblocks.U.S..Sites] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit China Quietly Unblocks U.S. Sites By Steve Friess 2:00 a.m. Sep. 21, 2001 PDT BEIJING -- Chinese Internet censors quietly unblocked several major U.S. media websites this week in a surprise move that one Chinese expert said may have been prompted by a demand for news about the U.S. terrorist attacks. The change grants China's Web-using public access to the previously unviewable sites of The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Boston Globe, which were blocked as recently as Sunday. It was unclear exactly what day the unblocking occurred. Among those still blocked are the sites of CNN, Voice of America, Time magazine and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, as well as a slew of Western human rights groups including Amnesty International. China unblocked The New York Times site in August. While the government has not stated why, the Times itself reported in passing in a story on proxy servers that the change happened as a result of the paper's top editors and reporters raising the issue during a July interview with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. An official at the Ministry of Public Security, which oversees Internet control, refused to discuss why it blocks or unblocks any sites. Yet one key Chinese expert said the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the United States may have provided the impetus. "Opening such websites is a statement that the Chinese government wants to allow people to get true access to the information about this," said Zhu Feng, director of the international security program at Peking University in Beijing. "It is a constructive action my government took at this critical time because they feel people have a right to know what is going on around the terror attacks." Western observers were skeptical, though, noting that most Chinese people can't read English anyway. "I wonder how many people really look for news in English on the Internet in China," said Sophia Woodman, research director for the New York-based group Human Rights in China. "The point of opening these sites may not have anything to do with domestic expression so much as getting China better press internationally." Bureau chiefs for the affected sites were unaware of the change, because most have been consumed in recent weeks by news of the Sept. 11 suicide attacks. Despite the switch, it remains impossible on even the unblocked media sites to search terms such as Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement targeted by the government here as a cult, or Taiwan, the breakaway province China insists is still a part of its territory. Additionally, searching such terms on engines such as Yahoo and Google yield errors either during the search or in attempts to access the sites that are found. Yet critical articles about China are easy to locate on those websites if they are top news of the day or if other search words are entered. A search for "Jiang Zemin" on the San Francisco Chronicle's site, for example, found a biting satire by columnist Jon Carroll on Aug. 14 mocking the Chinese president's answers in the July Times interview. The United States has taken an increasing interest in helping the Chinese people overcome the censors. California's Safeweb, which creates technology to circumvent such blocks, received $1 million from the CIA via a venture capital firm it uses to fund startups working with intelligence-related technology. And Congress last year allocated $800,000 for Voice of America's Internet news operations in an effort to boost VOA's ability to reach the Chinese people. The Chinese censors are savvy, though, blocking proxy servers when necessary and keeping on top of new ways to get to blocked sites. Earlier this year, for instance, users could read CNN.com by going to Europe.CNN.com, but that was halted in February. The continued blocking of the Atlanta news service may reflect the unevenness of the government's site-blocking efforts. Even before the Times was unblocked, for example, Internet users could read much of the paper -- including stories on China -- through Yahoo's New York Times section. And the International Herald Tribune, an overseas collaboration that chiefly reprints New York Times and Washington Post stories, was accessible. Furthermore, a lot of syndicated content from the blocked sites, including anti-China commentaries, could be found on a host of other Western media sites that were never blocked. Among those outlets were the United States' two largest dailies, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, as well as the Chicago Tribune and ABCNews.com. Reporters from those publications often joke that their goal, in fact, is to get blocked. "In The New York Times case, it takes the top leaders to unblock it, which makes me wonder whether it's a totally thought-out censorship system," said CNN's Beijing bureau chief Jaime FlorCruz. "It has a very erratic nature. Sometimes I attribute that to an ad hoc approach to censorship. It's almost a bungling erratic approach. There's no rhyme or reason." ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Pinpoint the right security solution for your company- Learn how to add 128- bit encryption and to authenticate your web site with VeriSign's FREE guide! http://us.click.yahoo.com/JNm9_D/33_CAA/yigFAA/kgFolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ------------------ http://all.net/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-09-29 21:08:46 PDT