Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google, do not take Chinese netizens hostage

english.people.com.cn

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 47 posts

Re: Google, do not take Chinese netizens hostage

#21

Post by est »

padmanabhan01 wrote: post #11

Ok. A devil's advocate question. If US government can monitor US citizen's emails, why shouldn't Chinese govt monitor the emails of Chinese citizens? Of course, there is difference in what the monitoring will lead to in the 2 cases, but the ability to monitor is what it is. right?

> why shouldn't Chinese govt monitor the emails of Chinese citizens?

At least the US had a freaking law about the action. The prc government on the other hand, plays trinity in market: rule maker, judge, and player.

There's a joke on twitter, the government rape you, then sue you for prostitution

Re: Google, do not take Chinese netizens hostage

#22

Post by GiraffeNecktie »

padmanabhan01 wrote: post #11

Ok. A devil's advocate question. If US government can monitor US citizen's emails, why shouldn't Chinese govt monitor the emails of Chinese citizens? Of course, there is difference in what the monitoring will lead to in the 2 cases, but the ability to monitor is what it is. right?

In China you would not be able to report on or criticize the monitoring, nor could you take legal action against it. In fact you could be thrown in jail for years just for complaining. In the United States and many other countries you would be free to challenge the government in a court of law and the government would have to defend their actions. It doesn't necessarily mean that they would lose their case, but a citizen can confront the state.

Re: Google, do not take Chinese netizens hostage

#23

Post by netcan »

pyre wrote: post #6

I noticed that no where in the article is there any mention of the actual reason that Google came out with this announcement (i.e. they were (cyber) attacked by sources that were presumably linked with the Chinese government). It seems to only be talking about censorship and comparing China to other Western countries.

Google didn't explicitly say this is the reason. They talked about censorship and doing business in China.

Re: Google, do not take Chinese netizens hostage

#24

Post by est »

jhickner wrote: post #5

"The Chinese society has generally less information bearing capacity than developed countries such as the U.S., which is an objective reality that no one can deny." The concept of societal "information bearing capacity" blows my mind. What a fascinating and bizarre rationalization. So inside that mindset, preventing access to information is a a public service!

Chinese here.

This kind of BS derives from a more common theory: Chinese people don't deserve democracy because they are not well educated. It's stated on many official newspapers and comments. TFA is just a little elaboration. You can find even funnier nonsense everyday everywhere from Chinese politics news.

The CCP behavior is hilarious to watch, Internet users in China loving posting pre-1949 propaganda from CCP, something like Xinhua Daily says 'One-party rule is disastrous'.

Here's an example

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1946%20%E6%96%B0%E5%8D%8E%E...

Re: Google, do not take Chinese netizens hostage

#26

Post by affiliator »

lliiffee wrote: post #15
affiliator wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the author perhaps does allude indirectly to the attacks by trying to point out a perceived hypocrisy of Google being willing to operate under the patriot act: To combat terrorism after the "9/11" terrorist attack, the U.S. has permitted police to search civilian emails and even monitor their communications without permission A related post in the side-links does opine on the attacks directly though: Goog…

I'm not quite sure what it means to say the U.S. has "permitted police to monitor communications without permission". Was it permitted or not?

It's the author's way of explaining the Patriot act, that the FBI are allowed to monitor communications without seeking the permission of a court.

Re: Google, do not take Chinese netizens hostage

#27

Post by blasdel »

delackner wrote: post #13
affiliator wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to read their spin.

During historical conflicts between the US and nations that didn't have freedom of the press, there are countless stories of the other side's government believing that because their own media was a total sham, regardless of our statements to the contrary, our own media must therefore be full of lies. The common response to this sort of story is to laugh and say how little they understood the power of a truly free pre…

Our media has the tremendous courage to paraphrase Government and Corporate press releases in inverted-pyramid form instead of simply reprinting them. I'm sure you've noticed how unbelievably bad science reporting is, but I don't think you realize that most other subjects are even worse.

They're all stenographers, from the hungriest PR flack to Woodward and Bernstein (they were spoonfed everything by the fucking FBI!).

Re: Google, do not take Chinese netizens hostage

#28

Post by newhouseb »

This article equates censorship to surveillance. I don't want to say one is worse than the other, but it's kind of apples and oranges, and makes her argument about the US irrelevant - not to mention that she either wasn't aware or was ignoring the fact that GOOG is leaving because partly it is sick of being the target of gov't intel efforts.

Re: Google, do not take Chinese netizens hostage

#29

Post by [deleted] »

jhickner wrote: post #5

"The Chinese society has generally less information bearing capacity than developed countries such as the U.S., which is an objective reality that no one can deny." The concept of societal "information bearing capacity" blows my mind. What a fascinating and bizarre rationalization. So inside that mindset, preventing access to information is a a public service!

[deleted]

Re: Google, do not take Chinese netizens hostage

#30

Post by thwarted »

newhouseb wrote: post #28

This article equates censorship to surveillance. I don't want to say one is worse than the other, but it's kind of apples and oranges, and makes her argument about the US irrelevant - not to mention that she either wasn't aware or was ignoring the fact that GOOG is leaving because partly it is sick of being the target of gov't intel efforts.

Censorship isn't possible without surveillance, at the very least someone caring enough to act to censor when they observe something, and the only reason for surveillance is to control actions, which is censorship. Of course, these can be used for "good", surveillance like security cameras that document who approaches your house, and censorship like parents controlling what their kids watch on television, but I'm not so sure that you can have one without the other. If there is no censorship, there is no reason to survey, if there is no surveillance, attempts at censorship will be ineffective.
Post reply on HN