OT: national control of internet

From: Lawrence Walker <lgwalker_at_mts.net>
Date: Fri Mar 8 11:55:34 2002

 Unfortunately too true. Control of info exchange is the priority of all
authoritarian governments. One of the reasons I lament the demise of FIDO,
NANET, local BBS's, and the like.

Lawrence

> Sellam said:
>
> >...governments want to try to control the
> >content, for various political and social reasons (political dissent,
> >porn, etc.) As we all know, try as they might, they won't be able to
> >control it, ....
>
> There is a scary article in last week's Weekly Standard that makes
> this a more shaky proposition. Basically the contention in the article is
> that the internet in China effectively *has* been placed under the control
> of the Chinese government. The key technology there has been developed by
> Cisco, AT&T, and other telecom giants given suitable financial inducement
> by the chinese government, and as I understood the article, it involves
> putting firewalls around the entire country, with enough power to sniff
> packets for subversive terms to effectively render the internet unusable to
> elements unfriendly to the government.
> The article does hold out hope, based on cryptography, "pirate"
> links from Hong Kong, etc.
> Anyway, I'm not currently convinced that internet access is
> currently synonomous with freedom of information exchange.
> - Mark
>
>


Reply to: lgwalker_at_mts.net

Love of the Goddess makes the poet go mad
he goes to his death and in death is made wise.
Robert Graves
Received on Fri Mar 08 2002 - 11:55:34 GMT