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from the what-about-the-ones-you-did-NOT-catch? dept.
Chinese authorities have detained a software developer for selling computer services that allow internet users to evade China's "Great Firewall," which blocks access to thousands of websites, from Facebook to Twitter to some news outlets, a media report said Monday.
The software developer, who is from the coastal province of Jiangsu, near Shanghai, was arrested in late August and held for three days for building a small business to sell virtual private networks, the Global Times newspaper reported, citing the official Xinhua news agency. VPNs create encrypted links between computers and allow Chinese web users to see blocked sites by hiding the address from government filters.
Subscribers paid 10 yuan, or about $1.50, for one month of the developer's service. Authorities also seized the developer's earnings, which totaled 1,080 yuan, or about $165.
Some internet businessmen have faced far harsher punishments: Earlier this year, a 26-year-old entrepreneur who sold VPN services in Dongguan, near Hong Kong, was sentenced to nine months in prison.
How far away from having this happen in the West are we, really?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:44PM (8 children)
I'm inclined to agree with you in general. However, US internet is controlled almost exclusively by large corporations who are incestuously involved with US government. Is it really that far-fetched for yet another Executive Order in the wake of some inevitable crisis which demands that certain content on the Internet be blocked or filtered from equipment they control? Similar things have already occurred: Cogent Networks blocked access to The Pirate Bay earlier this year. [torrentfreak.com]
Yes, it is expected that there would be a large civilian outcry from the US government deciding to censor the Internet. That sort of outcry has already happened in the past and it's hard to see what came of it: during the bankster bailouts a few years ago, USians demanded that their elected representatives NOT bail the bankrupt bankers out by 300 to one. The "representatives" gave the banksters a blank check anyway, and while a bunch of self-proclaimed "Tea Party politicians" later got elected, they were all corrupt and nothing significant changed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:03PM (3 children)
Is it really that far-fetched for yet another Executive Order in the wake of some inevitable crisis which demands that certain content on the Internet be blocked or filtered from equipment they control? Similar things have already occurred: Cogent Networks blocked access to The Pirate Bay earlier this year.
Blocking TPB can be justified by claiming that the site only exists to support illegal activities (even though that isn't completely true, some torrents are perfectly legal like Linux ISOs). You can't really claim that about VPN use. And Executive Orders aren't sovereign; they can be challenged legally. The big thing to remember is that MANY large corporations rely on VPNs for their security; it's how employees away from corporate facilities do business-related work. One thing that US government simply *cannot* get away with is anything that all the corporations would be completely against.
USians demanded that their elected representatives NOT bail the bankrupt bankers out by 300 to one. The "representatives" gave the banksters a blank check anyway, and while a bunch of self-proclaimed "Tea Party politicians" later got elected, they were all corrupt and nothing significant changed.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. But what the voters wanted isn't really relevant; what did the *corporations* want? Well, they wanted blank checks, so that's what happened. What do the corporations want in regard to VPNs? They certainly don't want VPNs banned; that isn't going to help them in any way, and will actively hurt them.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:14PM
I don't think it can be justified at all, regardless of the arguments one uses. Where is the free speech in censorship?
Also, the US has free speech zones, obscenity laws, FCC censorship, NSLs, and several other forms of government censorship that are all unconstitutional (no matter of what the courts say). Better than other countries? I would say so. But good? Not at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @11:58PM (1 child)
Really starkly revealing that you're one of the 'nothing to fear, nothing to hide' crowd. I'm quite surprised to see that viewpoint promulgated here, given everything we know as fact about the .gov - not to mention large corporate players (or have I repeated myself?) - surveilling literally everything you do online.
You absolutely can, should, and must assert that VPN use is not synonymous with illegal activity. It is synonymous with a desire for privacy, nothing more. That could represent piracy, or it could represent a desire not to be tracked. Or someone in witness protection. Perhaps a security researcher. The list goes on.
Literally everyone should be using a VPN today, routinely. Just like literally everyone should be using Signal messaging, and HTTPS, routinely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @01:30AM
HTTPS as traditionally implemented is completely broken. Rogue Certificate Authorities that issue wildcard certs to enable you to be transparently man-in-the-middled are commonplace, and even if you take the trouble to nuke all Chinese CAs, etc., you still have to deal with US National Security Letters. Firefox devs are also fouling their product by soon breaking their own browser by not allowing it to use HTTP anymore.
The only real solution is a new technical one, and some details on work being done on it can be found at youbroketheinternet.org [youbroketheinternet.org].
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday September 19 2017, @10:47PM (3 children)
What was immediately necessary was preventing the money supply from collapsing. Making sure the banks had the cash to back peoples' deposits was the key mechanism for it. It was loaned to them, or provided in exchange for equity in the banks. To a substantial extent, much of this was repaid later and I keep hearing reports of the government actually making a profit on the deal, longterm.
When this was not done in the 1929 crash, it led directly to the depression.
The sad thing wasn't the bailout; it was that the criminal behaviour of the banks was never prosecuted.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 19 2017, @11:50PM
While I grant there is some truth to your first part, let's keep in mind the background to that alleged profit. It is alleged [washingtonpost.com] that the federal government made $15 billion on TARP by 2015. But it spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 trillion over the span of time between 2009 and 2015 inclusive. In addition, the Federal Reserve ran a multi-trillion dollar money printing operation. There was plenty of opportunity to run a shell game, particularly given the federal government's legendary shoddy accounting.
My take is that the federal government turned a profit on TARP by loaning the banks and other businesses in question money at cheap rates to pay off the TARP loans. It's book cooking at its finest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:15AM (1 child)
was immediately necessary
This would be a good point to mention that the reason the banks were in hot water was that that what the banksters were doing was CRIMINAL.
When this happened years before with the Savings & Loans, the feds moved in and took over the S&Ls.
S&L executives were sent to prison.
...and Iceland didn't bail out their banksters.
Again, the crooks were sent to prison (26 by my last count).
Iceland had to tighten their belts for a bit, but they're doing OK now.
What USA.gov did WRT banksters was Neoliberalism/Crony Capitalism.
The crooks and their enablers should all be in prison.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:43AM
I don't want to pay those scumbags' room and board.
I might be willing to cough up a couple of bucks for a bullet for each of them, tho.