Chinese Internet Users Forced to Reveal Real Names When Posting Online

[Matsuda]

 

Remaining anonymous while browsing the web in China is a concept that’s pretty much dead, as the country has just released new regulations that would require Internet users to reveal their real names when posting comments online.

Until now, users were forced to disclose their identity when connecting to a number of popular services like WeChat, Weibo, and use mobile phone numbers, but with this new set of rules, forums and smaller services would have to enforce the same requirement as well.
 

Quartz writes that according to the new regulations, websites and services would have to investigate any user who might be using a fake identity and store all the data for government inspection should it be required.
 

Users posting comments online are not allowed to oppose the principles of China’s constitution or damage the national honor and interests, the new rules state. Furthermore, spreading rumors or disrupting social order is also forbidden, and so is inciting national hatred and undermining national unity.
 

VPNs also banned in China
 

Chinese experts defend the country’s stricter rules, pointing out that despite the criticism, many other countries, including the United States, turned to increased control over the use of Internet for national security reasons.
 

“Not only China, but many other countries, including the US and many European countries, have been strengthening control over the Internet for national security reasons... The idea of sovereignty also applies to cyberspace, and countries have a right to implement policies to govern their own cyberspace. The West has no right to condemn China on cyberspace governance,” Shen Yi, professor at the Fudan University Cyberspace Research Center, was quoted as saying.
 

“China didn't have Internet censorship at the very beginning. China's Internet censorship is a defensive measure which is prompted by threats from hostile foreign forces on cyberspace, mainly from the US.”
 

Earlier this year, the Beijing government has ordered the three largest telecom companies in the country, namely China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom, to ban the use of VPNs starting February 2018, in a move supposed to given the Chinese Community Party better control over the local Internet.


Source

[steven36]

President Xi Nails Shut Chinese Internet's Coffin

 

In the months prior to the Communist Party of China’s 19th Congress, which begins on 18 October, President Xi Jinping has been deploying a major arsenal of repressive measures against online social networks with the aim of perfecting the “Great Firewall” that censors the Internet in China.

Just weeks ahead of the Congress, which is expected to renew Xi’s mandate for another five years, the U.S. encrypted messaging app WhatsApp suddenly began malfunctioning in China, in a sign that a new turning-point had been reached in the Party’s censorship. Use of WhatsApp had until then been tolerated.

In fact, control of the Chinese internet has grown day by day for more than a year. President Xi, who likes to call himself the New Helmsman in an allusion to Mao Zedong (known as The Great Helmsman), has established a very sophisticated system of information censorship and surveillance in recent years, one that has now gone to a whole new level.

Since becoming president, Xi has proved to be a determined enemy of press freedom, pursuing complete control of the media in order protect China against what he calls the influence of “hostile foreign powers.”

He began by “reorienting” journalists who had cautiously tried to contribute to the social debate under his predecessor. Now their duties are restricted to the thankless task of relaying Party propaganda. He then cracked down hard on bloggers who had taken up the torch of journalism.

Industrial-scale surveillance

Chat forums and social networks, on the other hand, had remained relatively free from interference. Sina Weibo, whose 340 million regular users exceed Twitter’s, as well as Tencent QQ and WeChat, which seem set to reach 1 billion accounts in the near future, had allowed space for relatively free discourse.

The Chinese appreciated being able to chat with relative anonymity, which also allowed them to exchange information that was missing from the media. Sina Weibo in particular had risen to prominence as an outlet for criticism and alternative to mainstream media, most notably over the Wenzhou high-speed rail crash in 2011. The evolving technology and inventiveness of its users limited the impact of censorship, which was mainly effectively in blocking foreign media and social networks such as Google and Facebook.

This era may already be over. Under Xi, internet censorship has reached industrial levels and has been combined with a formidable surveillance apparatus. According to official sources, China’s internet espionage apparatus employs two million people, one mole for every 374 Internet users.

The WeChat social network has rightly acquired a reputation for being a police Trojan horse. Since last year, information gathered from WeChat, including conversation detail, can officially be used as prosecution evidence in trials.

To make matters worse, the Cyberspace Administration of China, an entity personally supervised by the president, has in recent months deployed a range of chilling measures directly targeting China’s 750 million internet users.

End of Internet anonymity

Since last week, the moderators of discussion groups on social networks such as WeChat have been held personally responsible for “unhealthy or illegal information” and any content that “distorts the history of China and the Party, misinterprets policy directives and promotes abnormal values.” The definitions are so broad that almost any discussion could fall under this umbrella.

Many discussion groups are expected to disband of their own accord. In those that continue, the moderators will undoubtedly be highly vigilant at all times to avoid problems.

This latest provision reinforces already harsh regulations that, since June, have criminalized the “illegal publishing” of content and, since 2013, have exposed anyone posting questionable content that is reposted more than 500 times or is viewed more than 5,000 times to the possibility of a three-year jail term.

So, whenever Chinese internet users are about to “like” or repost content, they will have to ask themselves whether it is compatible with Party doctrine or whether they want to run the risks involved.

Recent changes have also sounded the knell for anonymity on the Chinese internet. Since the start of the month, online communities are required to verify the identity of their users and to ban comments by unregistered visitors.

Tencent, Sina and Baidu, China’s Internet giants, were slow to comply with this requirement, which is costly and complicated to implement, so the Cyberspace Administration of China imposed heavy fines on them to show who is boss.

Suspended VPNs

There have been regular announcements of new internet restrictions for more than a year now: a ban on streaming video or audio content without a special license, closure of celebrity news sites regarded as frivolous and incompatible with the party line, a ban on foreign companies posting content online without a permit and a requirement that they store their data on servers in China that are easier to monitor.

The next, upcoming measure may be the most drastic. The government has ordered telecom operators to put a stop to all Virtual Private Network services (VPNs) by next February. Millions of Chinese, including many researchers and businessmen, and most of China’s foreign residents use VPNs to bypass website blocking. If the VPN ban proves to be effective, the Great Firewall beloved of Xi will become an enhanced reality.

The People’s Republic of China continues to be ranked 176th out of 180 countries in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index. Only Syria, Turkmenistan, Eritrea and North Korea have even more disgraceful scores.

Editor: David Gree

 

Source:

https://international.thenewslens.com/article/80924

 

[LeeSmithG]

This will happen in the U.K. soon I believe.

Then probably the rest of Europe, U.S.A., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the world.

My i.s.p. blocks a lot of normal sites as someone complains and the court allows it to be blocked.

I have nothing to hide, I don't do social media apart from here.

eBay and PayPal have my name and address, so that is the nearest I get to revealing who I am.

 

Just to add the U.K. has 10% of the worlds c.c.t.v. so would not put it past the ministers to draft a document forcing us to reveal our fulll names and then an address if so be it.

 

British people are the most spied upon.

[Agent 86]

Sadly I think one day people will need a license to surf the internet same as need license to drive car. 

[LeeSmithG]

3 hours ago, Agent 86 said:

Sadly I think one day people will need a license to surf the internet same as need license to drive car. 

That would be a great idea, the amount of abusive cretins that frequent it would then be dealt with.

I play at a games site and the same man constantly creates i.d. after i.d. over 1,000 as a female with stolen images to make racist comments, nasty sexual comments and is abusive.

I have been mentioning having a license for over twenety (20) years.

[steven36]

If you cant do anything on computers but work and shop they want be no need too use them any more 90% of the time you take some in my family they hardly even turn there PC on unless it's too pay bills or to buy something .  Most places were you have privacy in you're own home  if they take privacy away from the internet  people will  take themselves away from the internet  .

 

That's why sites like Facebook ,Google and other tech giants protest against it it's not they care about you're privacy at all it's because they have you brainwashed into thinking you have some privacy when you don't . They are doxxing everything you do. They know if USA government ever has  control of the internet in there country that they will lose most of there users  and it will be the end of using the internet for fun. 

 

If i can go rent or buy a movie, or listen too music  on devices not connected too the internet  or pay for cable or satellite  and not be spied on why would i pay for some service on the internet too do the same and be spied on by the government ? Or I can go to a house party down the road and socialize in private , why would i want too do it on the internet were i know i'm  being spied on?

 

The difference in what China is doing is a whole other ball game they don't  want there people to be influenced by the West. We are the people they don't want them having contact with. Our culture will still be the same regardless  of if we turn on  a spy box or not. If we were like China they would not even care . They don't  care at all if you have  the money  to build  a plant over there and send goods back too the west,  or go there too train workers over there, they will take you in with open arms as long as you follow there laws. Money talks ,BS walks.  Rich People from every town in the USA visit China many times a year .