John PescatoreThe Wall Street Journal reports that the Chinese government has told PC manufacturers that all PCs sold after July 1, 2009 must include web filtering software. The stated intent is to protect young people from “harmful” content. The stated aim is to block access to pornographic sites. The Chinese government even specified the product that must be used, called “Green Dam-Youth Escort” by Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., about which WSJ says:
Jinhui’s Web site said it has a long-term “strategic cooperative partnership” with a research institute of the Ministry of Public Security on image-recognition technology, as well as long-term “technical cooperation” with the People’s Liberation Army’s Information Engineering University.
What a fine kettle of fish this is! A few thoughts:
- There are many parts of the world where societal norms are absolutely against any display or viewing of nudity. The Internet tends to make censorship a difficult proposition but that does not mean there are not valid reasons for societies to attempt to implement their own social norms. One size does not have to fit all. I’ve seen huge demand in many countries for “parental control” filtering on mobile phone web access once parents see that their kids can access sites that the parents block at home.
- However, the definition of “harmful” can go way beyond pornography – that leaves this wide open to all kinds of abuse. Imagine if in the US that the Nixon administration had this capability back in the early 1970s!
- Doing this on the PC end is bound to fail, but this is currently being advertised as an “opt-in” kind of approach anyway.
The bottom line is that most ISPs already offer this type of capability as opt-in, so requiring client side software on all PCs raises all kinds of issues about why a government would want a particular brand of filtering software, developed by a vendor with strong government ties, to be on every citizen’s PC.Â
If government’s want to do something around web filtering that will actually improve security, they would facilitate international agreements on how to describe malware-ridden sites and provide means for all carriers to be absolved from any litigation that might arise from opt-in in the cloud filtering of any executables coming from those sites.
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Stiennon June 8, 2009 at 10:09 am
Ludicrous to demand filtering software on PC’s. That will open up a huge market for tools to remove the filtering software.
2 MM June 10, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I am concenred that software provided by the Chinese government may capture keystrokes or explore business intranets looking for corporate secrets.
3 MM June 27, 2009 at 10:37 am
I thought there would be a Gartner research note about “Green Dam” by now. Gartner customers want to know if we can legally remove “Green Dam” from computers in our China-based offices.
4 John Pescatore June 28, 2009 at 4:32 pm
We haven’t put out a research note yet, as the blog posting was sufficient prior to the real implementation of Green Dam. It will not be imposed until 1 July and on new computers only. Last week the US Government sent China a letter saying the regulation would violate trade laws – there is still maneuvering going on.
Plus, the Chinese Ministry has said “The notice to PC makers and sellers does not mean that the software’s installation as part of users’ operating systems is mandatory. Instead, the software package should be installed on either the hard drives or a compact disc with the computers,” and that “the software could be switched off and uninstalled by computer users.”
So, our standard recommendation would be to certainly uninstall the software – and make sure it has really been uninstalled.
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