China and the Internet

Of these groups, students are the most likely to possess the know how and desire to circumvent the government controls which, according to western reporters based in Beijing, are “increasingly easy for knowledgeable Chinese web users to slip past the blockades by connecting to computers outside the country and visiting whatever Internet sites they want without being monitored. According to Gerald Kovacich, President of Information Security Management Associates and a specialist in information security, “the Internet has put the Chinese government in a real dilemma. CDC has planned a release of a tool called “Peekabooty” “which will be based on peer-to-peer network technology. These agendas lead to a form of hacking known as “hacktivism” in which Chinese government sites are defaced with political dialog contrary to the official government views and tools that allow uneducated Internet users to easily circumvent government controls are disseminated and publicized. ” (Knight, Hackers to Unleash Anti-Censorship Tool) Since there are no severs maintaining lists like the Napster file sharing model, the process is distributed and would be nearly impossible to shut down. In early 2001, China rolled out government developed filtering software dubbed Internet Police 110 (reportedly named for China’s emergency police telephone number) that “will not only block Web surfers from viewing offensive pornographic and violent online content – a not uncommon practice throughout the Internet world – but will also steer Internet users away from sites the government views as threatening to the Chinese Communist Party regime.

To filter and block content the Chinese government employs both software filtering and limited physical access to the Internet.

Without completely prohibiting Internet access, which the government has already acknowledged is crucial to Chinese development, the battle to control access to content appears to be a losing one. China is not immune to these exploits. This group released BackOrifice and BackOrifice2000 (play on words of Microsoft’s popular Back Office business suite) allowing novice users to take remote control of computers running popular Microsoft operating systems. An example of this phenomenon in action can be found with the hacking group known as the Cult of the Dead Cow. Furthermore, Internet users in China must register with the local police bureau within thirty days of signing up with an ISP. This allows data to be distributed directly between computer systems and has attained fame through the emergence of music sharing technologies such as Napster and Gnuttella.