September 10, 2002. Copyright, 2002, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Chinese cyberpolice crack down on surfers
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, September 10, Graphic News:  WhoÕs afraid of the big bad Net? Everyone, it seems. And though repressive regimes have more to fear than most, ChinaÕs recent ban on access to search engines Google and AltaVista is just part of a cat-and-mouse game that has governments and technologists racing to carve up cyberspace. 

BeijingÕs hostility to the Internet is well documented: foreign news sites are routine targets of its cyber censors and in March 130 web portals, including Yahoo, were made to sign a self-censorship pact. But the bans on Google and AltaVista, coming weeks before a party convention, marks the first time that search engines have been blocked.

China found out years ago that the Net has altered the balance of power between governments and their citizens. For the same reason Cuba and Iraq have made it prohibitively expensive to use and Saudi Arabia has vainly poured millions into a unique filtering system to block offending sites. Malaysia, Tunisia and Vietnam are among those who routinely block sites.

Opting out of the Net is simply too costly to consider but controlling cyberspace is not cheap either. Previously users could turn to proxies, websites abroad that offer access to the banned sites. But governments caught on and now several are engaged in the high-cost game of  identifying and blocking proxies. For as long as governments are willing to pour in up to $400 million a year to trace them, proxy services such as Anonymizer and Megaproxy will push the boundaries of technology as they search for more dynamic methods to stay hidden.

Though sophisticated in technological terms, such policing methods are politically crude. Reporters Without Frontieres accuses western democracies of trying to censor the Internet more craftily, citing new EU telecoms laws and fines on Internet Service Providers in Australia as examples. Whatever the tactics, it seems the NetÕs Wild West days are numbered. 
/ENDS