Google intolerant to Chinese limitations

How far will Google’s non-complying attitude towards the next world’s super power take them?

Currently, Google is actually threatening to pull out of China and stop censoring its search results which could actually end up closing operations as a result. The Head of the Human Right’s Watch, Arvind Ganesan declared that this is the first time the Chinese have actually targeted accounts overseas even though they’ve always censored the web.

The search giant is implicating that the Chinese government had something to do with the online hacking and ‘highly sophisticated and targeted attacks’ as an attempt to access the Gmail accounts of some Chinese and also international human rights activists. ‘Don’t be Evil’ anyone?

At least twenty other large companies from businesses including finance, technology and media have been similarly targeted and as a result, Google Gmail accounts will be set in an ‘https’ mode, which means email contents will be scrambled so they’re less likely to leak out to unauthorized users.

Google had stopped using this highly secure setting because it proved to be slower than the unprotected mode, which encrypted people’s log-in data only.

However, and despite all this, we know the issue of the attacks is not only about breaking the law, internet security and disobeying the Chinese government. It’s about proving a point and standing up to defend a nation’s right.

We’ve seen how the Chinese government has been quite successful at implementing some of the most restrictive internet regulations in the world, and banning its web users from visiting certain sites as well as controlling freedom of expression.

To some extent, Chinese citizens see Internet as a way to enhance freedom of speech and increase opportunities for political participation, while providing a window to the outside world.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 5:47 pm and is filed under Media News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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