Green Dam filtering software scorned by many Chinese

Some Chinese geeks have been playing with the new government-mandated Green Dam censorship software over the past couple days. People are reporting their findings on Twitter and on blogs. Eisen blog posted the screenshot above, taken after the software blocked his efforts to visit a porn site on Internet Explorer. He points out, however, that he had no problem accessing the site when using Firefox, concluding that the tool might prevent the average kid from accessing porn but not the determined tech-savvy kid. Interestingly, @shizhao reported that the software transmits reports to Jinhui Corp. when the user tries to access dodgy websites. Not clear if that only applies when IE is used, as with the filtering.

Roland Soong of EastSouthWestNorth has translated feedback posted on the software manufacturer's user forum (since closed) by teachers and parents who've been using Green Dam. Here are three of the many comments:

Let me say something here. We were forced to install the software. So I have to come to this website and curse. After we installed the software, many normal websites are banned. For example, it is normal for students to like games like 4399, but no more ... many news reports have certain normal words but they are banned ... for example, when <Network News> reports that there is a campaign against pornographic websites, the software bans the story because of the term "pornographic websites." Don't tell me how great the software technology is, because this is a piece of junk. When we need to look up some course-related material, there is always some provocative advertisements so we can't access them anymore. Why doesn't the state just ban those advertisements directly? I want to curse someone out ...

And another:

Can I determine the content of the text filtering? Today, a teacher posted an exam question which talks about "students playing touch-ball game." The Word document was shut down. I spend a long time trying to determine the cause. This was really depressing. It will be a lot of work dealing these kinds of things in the future.

And another:

After testing, I found out that the software can record Internet usage data as well as being spyware with the ability to obtain periodic screen captures. When schools are compelled to install this software, there is the serious worry of computer security about the private information of teachers and students. There is no guarantee that personal information is not being secretly collected. It is a huge problem when teachers feel unsafe when they use the computers.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman may have defended Green Dam, but it's his job to defend everything any part of the Chinese government does unconditionally. Many others in China clearly don't agree with him and are publicly saying so. Even the state-approved Caijing magazine has a long critique of the government's Green Dam mandate, arguing that decisions and control over censorship to protect children should be left in the hands of parents and teachers - that centralized censorship even when well-intentioned "throws the baby out with the bathwater." I hope somebody translates the whole thing. It concludes: "The government can use all kinds of mechanisms to guide and urge parents to take responsibility [for their children], but it not become the omnipotent "great parent.""

As the week progresses I'm putting more of my money on the likelihood that the Green Dam filtering software edict will not get implemented, or efforts at enforcement will fade quickly. One thing Western observers need to remember is that China has a long history of edicts targeted at the tech, telecoms, and media sectors going un-enforced, quietly retracted, or morphed in practice into something very different. There was the failed attempt to ban encryption software back in 2000. There were multiple failed attempts to force Reuters, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, etc. to sell all their news exclusively through Xinhua. Both were defeated by strong lobbying by international industry groups. The effort to impose a real-name registration requirement on Chinese Internet companies died after fierce opposition from Chinese industry. And last year's new requirement that online video websites in China must have majority state ownership appears to have gone ignored. Etc.

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China's "Green Dam Youth Escort" Software

Today's Wall Street Journal has a provocative story headlined China Squeezes PC Makers: Beijing Is Set to Require Web Filter That Would Block Government-Censored Sites.

The picture above comes from the official website for "Green Dam Youth Escort,” the software which according to the Journal, PC makers will be required to distribute along with their products sold in China. You can download it here, read the latest news about it here, and participate in a user forum here. The picture shows children sitting at their computers, being sheilded by a screen labeled "Green Dam Youth Escort green web surfing filtering software," held up by arms labeled "government" and "finance." The nasty looking black globls say "harmful website" and "harmful information."

According to this press release dated June 8th China time, after a period of testing and evaluation, the "Green Dam Youth Escort" software received government blessing in April to be made available for free public download. The press release says that the software has been downloaded over 3 million times since the end of March and is being used by approximately 2279 schools, with installation in nearly 518 thousand computers. It also says that 6957 websites have installed the software. It says that the Ministry of Information Industry is working with the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, and the State Council Information Office to get the software installed in primary and middle schools across the country. The final sentence of the press release also announces the companies including Lenovo, Inspur, and Hedy have agreed to pre-install "Green Dam Youth Escort" in their products, with the software already installed in more than 52.7 million units. No foreign companies are mentioned.

According to the Journal:

The software was developed by Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., with input from Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology Academy Co.

Bryan Zhang, founder of Jinhui, said Green Dam operates similarly to software designed outside China to let parents block access to Web content inappropriate for children. Some computers sold in China already come with parental-control software, but it isn't government-mandated.

Mr. Zhang said his company compiles and maintains the list of blocked sites, which he says is limited to pornography sites. He said the software would allow the blocking of other types of content, as well as the collection of private user data, but that Jinhui would have no reason to do so. He also said the software can be turned off or uninstalled.

His company plans to transmit new banned addresses to users' PCs through an Internet update system similar to that used by operating-system software and antivirus programs.

The software requirement was outlined in a notice that was issued by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on May 19 but that hasn't yet been publicized by state media. The notice, a copy of which was seen by The Wall Street Journal, says PC makers must ship PCs to be sold in China as of July 1 with the Green Dam software "preloaded"—pre-installed or enclosed on a CD.

The notice says PC producers will be required to report to the government how many PCs they have shipped with the software. The notice doesn't mention any punitive action for noncompliance.

The Journal also reports that the software can be disabled. I hope the Citizenlab or somebody will do a thorough test to answer at least two questions: How extensive is the list of filtered terms and does it really contain no political content as Mr. Zhang claims? Furthermore, how is the user information being collected and where is it being stored? Is it similar to the TOM-Skype system?

The Journal has reported that PC makers have the option to provide the software on disk with the computer instead of providing it pre-installed. If companies really are going to be required by Chinese law to provide this software with their products, it would make sense to appeal and lobby for the right to provide their own equivalent products (Microsoft Windows, for instance, already offers extensive parental controls—why are more needed?) If that fails, based on what I know now, companies wanting to adhere to the Global Network Initiative principles on free expression and privacy should at very minimum do the following (NOTE: THIS REPRESENTS MY OWN OPINION ONLY):

• Provide the software on disk rather than pre-installed.
• Include clear information to the user about what the software does, the nature and range of content it filters, how the user's personal information is collected and transmitted, where it is stored and who has access to it.
• Explain what the software does differently from existing parental controls already included in the operating system.
• Include further information about any further vulnerabilities the software contains which could open the user's computer to attack or snooping.
• Provide clear instructions on how to deactivate or uninstall the software along with the installation guidelines.

The point is to give the user as much information as possible so that he or she can make informed decisions about how to use (or opt not to use) the technology which the PC manufacturers are required by the government to include with their product.

The information on the "Green Dam Youth Escort" focuses on youth and schools, and the need to protect China's children from all the inappropriate content, predators, and other bad things that abound on the Internet. Of course, the argument over how far we should go in censoring the Internet in school systems—along with who decides what gets censored and to whom they are accountable—is not limited to authoritarian countries. A speaker at the Computers Freedom and Privacy conference in Washington DC last week pointed out that the ACLU is suing two Tennessee school districts in federal court for "unconstitutionally blocking students from accessing online information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues." The case apparently came to light when a young man searching for information about college scholarships for lesbian and gay students discovered that the websites he wanted to access were blocked at his school.

The scale (national as opposed to certain school districts) as well as the extent to which Internet filtering is un-transparent and unaccountable is obviously several magnitudes greater in China. But the whole argument about civil liberties vs. "protecting our children" is universal—and very much unresolved around the globe, even in the most ostensibly liberal and democratic societies. Companies are going to need to come up with globally consistent strategies to deal with government demands for censorship, from China to Australia (which has been testing out its own government-mandated filtering) and everywhere in-between. Free expression and human rights advocates—not to mention policymakers—also need to have globally consistent positions. Otherwise it's just too easy for the Chinese [or insert another country name here] government to dismiss their criticisms and concerns as yet another predictable application of Western "double standards."

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