China Imprisons Journalist, Yahoo Helpfully Forwards His Emails

[sxotty]

Yes, China the bastion of freedom in our imperiled world.

 

First, French media conglomerates, then yahoo and google.

 

Well yahoo helped the Chinese authorities nab a dissident who now get to spend 10 years in the clink thanks to Yahoo helpfully forwarding his messages to the Chinese government.

 

Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist, is serving a ten-year prison sentence in China for sending an email to the USA. He was accused of “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities” by using his Yahoo email account.

 

According to the court transcript of the evidence that led to Shi Tao’s sentencing, the US internet company Yahoo provided account-holder information on him.

 

Shi Tao was accused of sending an email summarizing an internal Communist Party directive to a foreign source. The Communist Party directive had warned Chinese journalists of possible social unrest during the anniversary of the June 4 Movement (in memory of the Tiananmen crackdown), and directed them not to fuel it via media reports.

http://web.amnesty.org/pages/chn-310106-action-eng

 

It makes one feel all warm and fuzzy doesn't it

[Maximius]

Yes, China the bastion of freedom in our imperiled world.

 

First, French media conglomerates, then yahoo and google.

 

Well yahoo helped the Chinese authorities nab a dissident who now get to spend 10 years in the clink thanks to Yahoo helpfully forwarding his messages to the Chinese government.

http://web.amnesty.org/pages/chn-310106-action-eng

 

It makes one feel all warm and fuzzy doesn't it

 

 

Google is being told by the Department of Justice they will have to surrender their records of all their internet searches which they keep in a handy database. So far Google has demurred but they probably cant stop it for long. Sweet bleeding Christ on the Cross, all those porn searches I conducted.............

[sxotty]

Google is being told by the Department of Justice they will have to surrender their records of all their internet searches which they keep in a handy database. So far Google has demurred but they probably cant stop it for long. Sweet bleeding Christ on the Cross, all those porn searches I conducted.............

Yes we are all looking forward to this Hopefully google will continue to resist. Funny that, resisiting releasing records to the most powerful nation on earth, but they seem adept at giving into China. Ah well.

 

I actually think google will keep the records of US citizens private b/c otherwise they will loose a great deal of their users. I think perhaps they might give in a little though and provide stats that show searches related to national security issues or something, we will see. I hope they do nothing of the sort ever though.

[obscurus]

Google is being told by the Department of Justice they will have to surrender their records of all their internet searches which they keep in a handy database. So far Google has demurred but they probably cant stop it for long. Sweet bleeding Christ on the Cross, all those porn searches I conducted.............

 

 

I may be woefully wrong, but if you have cookies switched off, and you don't have a static IP address, there is no way Google or anyone else can link a particular search to a particular computer individual, and as I understand it, there are other ways of hiding your IP address and surfing the web anonymously. anyone with more expertise in the area know if I am right or not?

 

I can't imagine how much storage space Google would require to keep records of every search made. I'm sure they wouldn't keep such records for very long, the cost of keeping that info would be huge. Hundreds of millions of people making several google searches every day will add up to a collossal amount of data very quickly, and tagging that data with personal information adds more too it, and managing the systems to do this is likley to be an expense that google does not want to bear if they can avoid it. I'm sure they keep a limited amount of such data for their own use, but I doubt they are going to hang on to 50 million daily searches for 'naked babes', there is no value in keeping that information. If google is demurring on this, it probably has more to do with avoiding the expense involved, not any warm and fuzzy notion of protecting people's privacy.

[Maximius]

I may be woefully wrong, but if you have cookies switched off, and you don't have a static IP address, there is no way Google or anyone else can link a particular search to a particular computer individual, and as I understand it, there are other ways of hiding your IP address and surfing the web anonymously. anyone with more expertise in the area know if I am right or not?

 

I can't imagine how much storage space Google would require to keep records of every search made. I'm sure they wouldn't keep such records for very long, the cost of keeping that info would be huge. Hundreds of millions of people making several google searches every day will add up to a collossal amount of data very quickly, and tagging that data with personal information adds more too it, and managing the systems to do this is likley to be an expense that google does not want to bear if they can avoid it. I'm sure they keep a limited amount of such data for their own use, but I doubt they are going to hang on to 50 million daily searches for 'naked babes', there is no value in keeping that information. If google is demurring on this, it probably has more to do with avoiding the expense involved, not any warm and fuzzy notion of protecting people's privacy.

 

I keep everything switched off, I have ID blaster to change my computers id number, but I never have dealt with I.P. masks. I would love to learn of a good SHAREWARE one. BTW here is my security suite for internet

 

Spyware Guard

 

I.D. blaster

 

Geek Superhero

 

Zone Alert firewall

 

AntiVir for viruses

 

Spyware Blaster

 

Ad Aware

 

Security Suite 3.0

 

MRU blaster

 

Spy Bot search & destroy

 

Any suggestions from the tech heads?

[Napalm]

IP masks are more trouble then their worth, most freelance ones just string you through servers slicing your speed, and the only time I've ever heard of really decent scramblers is whisperings of ones, most of which are banned and disliked by government agencies

[sxotty]

IP masks are more trouble then their worth, most freelance ones just string you through servers slicing your speed, and the only time I've ever heard of really decent scramblers is whisperings of ones, most of which are banned and disliked by government agencies

This is true, but you can do it anyway.

 

Google does keep track of alot of stuff, but mainly they use cookies on your computer that is true. Nevertheless the whole bit is slightly worrying and orwellian.

[Domarius]

What exactly would you be in danger of?

[sxotty]

What exactly would you be in danger of?

Me personally? Or society in general? Personally if I were to be in danger of anything I obviously wouldnt relate it to you now would I? Society in general? Well I think it puts to much power in the hands of to few. What were the dangers represented in 1984 anyway? A lack of a vibrant and enjoyable life seems to be the primary problem.

 

I can think of many things that many different indivduals might not like brought to light. For example when I was much younger (10 years ago) I went on the internet and viewed all kinds of pages on the anarchists handbook or something. Telling how to make thermite etc. If I happened to run for political office information such as that could be used to suggest I don't respect the foundations of our society or some such crap.

 

I admit this is a silly example, but I think that there are many more obvious examples to relate why tyranny is bad and why taking away our liberties leads to tyranny. So I would be in danger of losing the country I have grown up with and having it be replaced by a much worse place.

[Domarius]

It's just that there are so many people out there. Besides making examples of a few people (like that 12 year old girl that got taken to court for downloading and distributing MP3s), what would anyone get out of prosecuting average little people?

[Ishtvan]

Um, how about the advantage of maintaining their totalitarian state? You'd be a lot less likely to say anything negative about the government if you knew that some neighbors could mention it to some official and get you imprisoned, tortured, and maybe executed.

 

Even in the US, just joining some completely nonviolent NGO can get you investigated nowadays.

[obscurus]

Governemnts are very keen to get control of the internet. The unfettered access to information makes it very difficult for a governemt to limit the choices available to people in resisting unwelcome activity from the government. Governments can get away with a lot less in the internet age, simply because nearly everything anyone knows about anything is available via the internet (though you might need to be a very skilled hacker to get at some of it). Knowledge is one of the foundations of power, and the more knowledge is freely available to everyone and anyone, the less asymetricaly distributed power becomes. But this balance requires that individuals cannot be identified over the internet without their consent. Keeping track of individual's surfing habits is about collecting information that could be used to manipulate them by governments or large corporations. If google was really worried about protecting people's privacy, they simply wouldn't keep records that link to IP addresses.

[Domarius]

Am I the only one who thinks that Google, Gmail, and the up coming G-Chat (or whatever) could be a conspiricy to have one central point of worldwide communication that can be monitored and stored? And even if it's not, it could become that way.

2.5 gig free is just too good.

 

(But yes I use Gmail and Google all the same. It's just a thought.)

[Domarius]

*stunned silence from everyone else*

[sxotty]

*stunned silence from everyone else*

NO sorry I didn't see it.

 

Actually after the DOJ asked Google to turn over its records so they could peruse them and Google denied this has become a major issue.

 

Gmail encourages users to "never throw anything away" and many feel it is exactly for the reasons you outlined. Mainly gathering info to sell products. Such a scheme can be just as pernicious as what many fear from the government.

 

My personal opinion on these matters is that things are pretty scary about now

[Domarius]

Oh well, besides threatening to jail you if you say bad things about your government, what could they possible do with that info that any of us individuals would care about?

[Ishtvan]

I have some stuff on gmail for grad school work that I would not want anyone to see until we've gotten a significant start on building it, otherwise someone could steal the idea and the funding that would come along with it, not to mention patent rights if it turns out to be patentable. That would pretty much destroy any chances of me completing my project, so I'd say I care about that. I'd rather not put it up on gmail if they're not going to value people's privacy, but my university email is too unreliable to send big attachments

[Domarius]

I suppose, but what are the chances of someone finding it who would know what to do with it?

[OrbWeaver]

Oh well, besides threatening to jail you if you say bad things about your government, what could they possible do with that info that any of us individuals would care about?

 

Realistically they are unlikely to do anything significant.

 

Nevertheless, I wasn't aware that the US government has a unilateral right to demand whatever data it wants from private corporations without a warrant from a judge relating to an ongoing lawsuit. Would you want them to just demand your financial or personal information as well, because it might help them with some campaign to create yet another piece of religious-bullshit legislation?

[Maximius]

Oh well, besides threatening to jail you if you say bad things about your government, what could they possible do with that info that any of us individuals would care about?

 

Thats a good point, Dom, "they" already collect tons of data about you in the form of tax, medical, educational records. I guess its the fact that its so immediate, as you are surfing or emailing that info is being scooped up by someone, that bothers me.

[obscurus]

The irony is, that in spite of the huge amount of information governments collect on their citizens, this information is shuffled through so many layers of beuracracy that it is all but useless for governments to possess. I don't know about other people, but my experiences with dealing with government agencies have been exasperating, to say the least. You'd think with all the information they have about me that each government agency would be able to pull up any relevant infromation to make life easier for me to comply with government regulations, process taxes etc, but the reality is there is so much duplication of work, filling out of forms multiple times for multiple agencies that they might as well have a monkey sitting in a big room full of random files instead of a database.

 

Corporations are no better. In situations where the knowledge they have concerning you would be actually useful to you, they suddenly have dificulty knowing what is going on. All their data collection seems to achieve is sending me junk mail and spam occasionally, but when it comes to actually making my life easier, forget it...