Facebook Creator Eyes China?

FT Tech Hub reports on the visit Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, made to China. Zuckerberg, who founded the social networking site along with fellow students while at Harvard University, was named Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2010. He is known for working long hours and FT Tech Hub speculates that Zuckerberg was more than just holidaying in China, where Facebook has been banned.

He was seen rubbing shoulders with the chief executive of Robin Li, Baidu's CEO and one of China's wealthiest men. Baidu is the Google of China, being their largest search engine. At the Cannes Lion advertising festival last summer, Zuckerberg stated that China was a key target for Facebook's growth. The article speculates that creating a local partnership could be the first step in having China allow Facebook to be established.

What will be interesting is to see if Facebook can be any more successful at avoiding government-sponsored censorship on its site and breaking through the "great firewall of China."

Map created by Facebook intern Paul Butler using data on its members. It provides a visual of where people live relative to their Facebook friends and where there are obvious gaps. The most obvious gap is China, where Facebook is banned.

China Google War

The Official Google Blog has an update on Google's approach to the cyber attack Google exposed. The announcement made by Google on January 12, 2010 to stop censoring search results has been covered in a previous blog entry. Follow-up entries can be found here and here.

On March 22, 2010, Google stopped censoring search results in mainland China. Searches conducted through Google.cn are being redirected to Hong Kong servers which will deliver uncensored results. According to the Google blog, "the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement." Google believes they have found a legal solution but one that is precarious since China could decide to block access to Google at any time. Google has created a web site to report daily on which Google services are available in China.

Sify News reports that AP reporters have been testing different search words and findings vary widely.

Thenextweb.com describes Google's move to use Hong Kong servers as a "subversive move" which may be damaging to the company. China has reacted to Google's move by blasting it through the state-run People's Daily. The Chinese government stated that Google's

...collusion with the U.S. intelligence and security agencies is well-known…All this makes one wonder. Thinking about the United States’ big efforts in recent years to engage in Internet war, perhaps this could be an exploratory pre-dawn battle.

Meanwhile, support for Google continues to be shown through the numbers of Chinese people leaving flowers on the sign outside of Google China's headquarters.

For Chad Catacchio’s take on the situation, check out the video.



You have the freedom to read, so take the Banned Book Challenge. Register the number of books you have set for your goal between now and June 30 on the online form. I will publish any reviews that are sent in the near future.

China Denies Involvement in Attacks on Google

China has finally spoken out regarding the cyber attacks alleged to have originated in China, the BBC reported yesterday. China denies state involvement. An unnamed spokesperson from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China stated, "The accusation that the Chinese government participated in [any] cyber attack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless." He added, "China's policy on internet safety is transparent and consistent."

The US is being accused of hypocrisy since China believes "certain government agencies" illegally checked a massive number of personal e-mail accounts.


Cox and Forkum Political Cartoon

Google China Saga Continues

Illustration Bezinga.com

Google CEO Eric Schmidt remains committed to stay in China, according to statements made yesterday. As reported in a previous post, there was a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" on a number of high profile computer companies in China and Google threatened to pull out of China unless it could provide uncensored results. According to today's Telegraph, Schmidt has confirmed that that Google and China have been "in conversation." Schmidt added that they wish to remain in China but that they would like to be there "on somewhat different terms" than they have in the past. Although Google has continued to censor searches according to Chinese law, sources within Google said there are no plans to revoke their earlier stand on censorship. Stated Schmitd, "We continue to follow their laws, we continue to offer censored results. But in a reasonably short time from now we will be making some changes there."

PC World offers a timeline of the Google/China incident.

The Financial Post reports that Microsoft has released a patch for Explorer to secure the breach through which someone was able to target Google and other companies. Instead of releasing it on Tuesdays, as they have done with other patches, this patch was made available as soon as it was ready.

As expected, Google's presence in China and their threat to pull out continues to be addressed in the political arena. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made unrestricted Internet access a top foreign-policy priority and urged China to investigate cyber intrusions that led Google Inc. to threaten to pull out of that country, the Wall Street Journal reports which also reported on China's reaction to Clinton's statements.

It will be interesting to see how all of this unfolds.

Google No Longer Willing to Filter in China

Photo: China Hush








Google's official blog reports that a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" on Google's infrastructure has the company rethinking its involvement in China. Google faced criticism from a number of human rights organization for moving into China and agreeing to self censor. Read more in a previous post -- Google Censors Itself for China.

In Google's very candid post, David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, explains that what appeared to be a security incident, now appears to be a widespread attack on a number of large companies, the goal of which appears to be to access information on Chinese human rights activists. Google believes someone has tried to access the Gmail accounts of activists but has been successful only in getting to the subject headings of the email, not to content. They believe that the accounts were not accessed through a breach in Googles' security but through phishing scams or malware that has been placed on users' computers.

Google is working with the appropriate U.S. authorities and has reported the breaches to the other large corporations.

States Drummond,

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech.

Although they believe China has benefited from the launch of Google.cn in January 2006, they are following up on their promise to carefully monitor conditions in China.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

This could have far-reaching consequences for China and for free speech and perhaps even Chinese - Western relationships.

Don't forget that the Banned Book Challenge begins in February.

China Sees Value in Wikipedia

According to author Cory Doctorow in a post at Boing Boing, Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone has been unblocked in China. Unlike Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, Wikipedia refused to censor itself for use in China. It seems that China has seen more value than potential harm in allowing it to be unblocked. However, readers in China report problems getting to the Chinese language version and into articles on certain subjects.

Says, Doctorow:

That's predictable enough -- but it means that Beijing is now stuck playing cat-and-mouse with Wikipedia, having to ferret out every potentially sensitive page and update its filters accordingly. If MSFT, Yahoo and Google followed Wikipedia's lead, we could force Beijing to devote ever-escalating resources to this effort, a denial-of-service attack on its censors.

Strange Bedfellows?

Google and the ALA (American Library Association have teamed up to give people a look inside many banned books. To search the full text of a book, use Google Books. You may find the banned book itself or books that mention that particular book. Give it a try during the last week of September which is Banned Book Week.