Headed to Beijing ?
The " Golden Shield Project" is being routed around visitors to the Olympics, according to James Fallows disturbing expose' in The Atlantic
" In reality, what the Olympic-era visitors will be discovering is not the absence of China’s electronic control but its new refinement—and a special Potemkin-style unfettered access that will be set up just for them, and just for the length of their stay.
According to engineers I have spoken with... the government bodies in charge of censoring the Internet have told them to get ready to unblock access from ...certain Internet cafés, access jacks in hotel rooms and conference centers where foreigners are expected to work or stay during the Olympic Games... the very existence of Internet controls is almost never discussed in public here...
When American technologists write about the control system, they tend to emphasize its limits. When Chinese citizens discuss it—at least with me—they tend to emphasize its strength. All of them are right, which makes the government’s approach to the Internet a nice proxy for its larger attempt to control people’s daily lives.
In America, the Internet was originally designed to be free of choke points... In China, the Internet came with choke points built in...virtually all Internet contact between China and the rest of the world is routed through a very small number of fiber-optic cables that enter the country at one of three points..."
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