Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2001 01:55:30 -0400 To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> Subject: U.S. Agencies Plan Battle With China's Web Censors Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ; format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by aztec.asu.edu id AAA24263U.S. Agencies Plan Battle With China's Web Censors
Jennifer Lee New York Times Service Friday, August 31, 2001 http://www.iht.com/articles/30966.html
NEW YORK The U.S. government agencies that once tried to breach the Iron Curtain with radio broadcasts are taking the information war to the Internet, hoping to finance an American-based computer network designed to thwart attempts by the Chinese government to censor the World Wide Web for users in China. . Government officials and private architects of the plan say the program would be financed by the International Broadcasting Bureau, parent agency of the Voice of America, which has been presenting the American view abroad - mostly by radio - for decades. It would mark a significant expansion of the long-running information war between China and the United States. . The agency is in advanced discussions with Safeweb, a small company based in Emeryville, California, which has received financing from the venture capital arm of the CIA, In-Q-Tel. The discussions were confirmed by parties on both sides. . Safeweb runs its own worldwide network of about 100 privacy servers - computers that help disguise what Web sites a user is seeking to view - which are popular with users in China. . The privacy servers have been a target for the Chinese government, which has blocked most of them in recent weeks. The bureau would provide money for new computers to run Safeweb software specifically tailored for the Chinese audience and intended to be more resistant to blocking by the government. It would also cover some of the costs of the network bandwidth needed to carry the Internet traffic, but the agency would not act as host for the computers itself. . "We recognized that we have an obligation to reach out to our audience in ways that are effective - that includes the Internet," said Tish King, a spokeswoman for the International Broadcasting Bureau. To that end, Voice of America also started www.VOANews.com. The Web site delivers audio news reports in 53 languages. Text is archived in almost all the languages. . Voice of America has been developing an Internet strategy to reach an audience in China with a daily newsletter in Chinese that is e-mailed to 180,000 people and a Chinese-language news Web site. . In addition to a Chinese-language Web site, Radio Free Asia also maintains Web sites aimed at ethnic minority groups in China like Tibetans and Uygurs, who are concentrated in the northwest region of Xinjiang. . Beijing has sporadically jammed VOA radio broadcasts since 1989 and Radio Free Asia broadcasts since 1997, a year after they were started, specifically programs in Mandarin and Tibetan. The government has also blocked Chinese-language VOA Web sites since 1997 and Radio Free Asia sites almost since they began in 1998. . Internet use in China is growing dramatically, seeping from urban universities and businesses to homes and affordable Internet cafes all over the country. Beijing estimates there were more than 26 million Chinese Internet users in July, compared with only 9 million at the end of 1999. . Periodically, the government tries new ways to tighten control, including police raids. Since April the government has waged a campaign to shut down thousands of unlicensed Internet cafés, and the government has publicized the arrests of more than a dozen "Internet dissidents" over the last three years. . The government maintains rules that require Internet service providers to electronically filter content that may be pornographic, anti-government, violent or unhealthy or may promoter superstition. . Among sites that are blocked for the vast majority of users are those of The Washington Post, Amnesty International and various sites identifying with the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which Beijing accuses of being a cult. But users can access other news sites including ABCnews.com, British Broadcasting Corp. and USA Today. . Until early this month, the Web site of The New York Times was blocked. The blocking was lifted after an interview with President Jiang Zemin by editors of The Times in which Mr. Jiang was questioned about the blocking of the site. . Chinese Web users have nevertheless found methods to get around the censorship. In a recent study by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, more than a quarter of Internet users admitted to occasionally using Internet proxy computers, which work similarly to those of Safeweb, while 10 percent admitted to frequent use. That was much higher than was expected, said Guo Liang, one of the researchers. . Safeweb remains among the most popular masquerade services. The technology can fool an electronic filter into thinking Web content is coming from a benign computer server instead of a blocked site like Human Rights Watch. . But the service has become a target for Beijing, which has engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the company, blacklisting the servers themselves. . "They are becoming increasingly aggressive," said Stephen Hsu, chief executive of Safeweb. "We get these frantic e-mails from users saying they are totally cut off now."
Copyright © 2001 the International Herald Tribune.
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