So let me update this post on the-eleven.com being zapped by the HK government's internet filters.

On Twitter the The HK Govt CIO asked for suggestions about the future of HK's FreeGovWifi. I responded with my minimalist suggestions.

daaitoulaam Transparency about Network Filtering? Doesn't take a flop under the smallest crowd? ♺ @HKGCIO: Thinking about future of Gov WiFi

HKGCIO @daaitoulaam Gov WiFi filters porn everywhere and games in public libraries. On reliability, pl let me know details of probs - we have SLA

daaitoulaam @hkgcio Have you ever known a pr0n net filter that didn't kill legit content? Speaking as an owner of a non-pr0n domain censored by HK gov

HKGCIO @daaitoulaam No filter is perfect. Let me know the details of the domain u think is wrongly blocked on Gov WiFi and I'll get it sorted.

daaitoulaam @HKGCIO I appreciate the offer, but tweeting the HKGCIO for help is not a proper transparent appeals process worthy of HKers.

HKGCIO @daaitoulaam You're right. We'll post info about GovWiFi filtering policy and how to complain. BTW filters maintained by 3rd party not Gov

So there ya go, Hong Kong. My two-bits for freedom and transparency in government and fighting back against government censorship. I should probably follow up with transparency on the provision of the FreeGovWifi (?PCCW as the provider?) and the terms of the SLA though.

So the big twitter fest this morning was over news reporting on Google being blocked in the mainland. Google runs an automated network monitoring app that posts results here. Apparently the page has been updated in the last 16 hours or so to include some clarification on the monitoring schedule:

This dashboard receives updates at least once a day, generally in the evening Pacific Time.

Still no clarification on the exact methodology or ASNs being tested. Why is this important? Well network admins have jobs precisely because automated network monitoring apps at best can provide notifications of events which need further investigation. They report on what they're programmed for, in this case whether a service is available or not at the time of monitoring and nothing more.

Let's do a thought experiment. I set up two network monitoring apps: one in the PRC and one in Hong Kong. They are to monitor http service connections to twitter homepage and a designated twitter API url. If only PRC box says twitter is unavailable, does that tell us that twitter is blocked by the Great Firewall? No. It says that for some reason the packets from the PRC failed and that further investigation is required. It could be you've got intermittent failwhales at twitter and the packets from PRC just coincidentally failed. It could be that twitter is blocked by GFW. If the service appears unavailable on both, again it doesn't say that GFW isn't blocking twitter in the PRC. It could be that GFW is blocking twitter and HK faces a failwhale or a trans-Pacific cable cut or other possibilities. Again the network monitoring apps only provide a notice that further investigation in to why is needed and that almost anything is possible.

So even if you assumed that Google's PRC availability page was real time, it would be a huge leap of faith/ignorance to rush off and print a news report that says the PRC is blocking Google again. And looking at the various reports, I'm going to single out Reuters' report for praise, though the headline with "Google says China Web Search fully blocked" is poor due to the fact Google didn't say any such thing.

It was unclear whether access had been blocked by the Chinese government or if it was a temporary service disruption. A Google spokesman said he did not have any immediate information on change in service availability.

The NY Times has a Google spokesperson clarifying that the page isn't real time. This means there is no way to verify the network monitoring app's report of complete blockage since network monitoring is temporal. Google probably was unavailable from the checking IPs for unexplained reasons for the short time that day's monitoring was being conducted. Being available in the morning doesn't make the data from the network monitoring app any less true (even if Google walks back from reporting a full blockage).

The only ones that seemed intent on hyping the event were English-language China bloggers who were quick to claim Western media got the China story wrong again because Google was available when they woke up Beijing time and the AP who wrote "It's the latest twist in a high-profile showdown over Internet censorship pitting Google against China's communist government" and that they saw the event as "what initially looked like a dramatic development" as if news stories need to be pumped up like an episode of Desperate Housewives or some Wrestlemania jawing.

While checking some network issues with a netbook at a local neighbourhood library, I discovered something interesting. My domain is inaccessible from the FreeGovWiFi provided by the HK SAR government. I told you they weren't interested in free and open public debate on the issues concerning Hong Kong.

UPDATED: Here's what you'll see when you use the free gov wifi and surf to a site with possible improper material.

click on the image for a larger version

Censorship comes in many forms. There are the grand government censors that use control of the media to filter content to the masses. There is also the use of intimidation to try and force people in to silence.

First the HK Police arrested Christina Chan Hau-man in an effort to silence her dissent and to cast a deep chill across the HK youth protesting government efforts to railroad HK society.

Now comes the cover of Oriental Sunday adorned with peeping tom shots of Ms Chan brushing her teeth in her panties and worse. When Donald Tsang Yam-kuen talks about Hong Kong's core values, obviously sexist attempts to ruin a woman's life in order to chill dissent is a core value of the HK SAR government. If Apple Daily pulled the same stunt with photos of Sec of Transportation Cheng in that state of undress on the cover of one of their weekly tabloids, the HK Police would have Jimmy Lai down for coffee before the morning papers hit the presses.

And of course in the world of HK blogs, there's ESWN at the front publishing the cover to further spread the intimidation. Stay classy, Roland Soong. You can always be counted on to spread the agitprop that is too scurrilous for the People's Daily. (Oh noes... maybe I should worry that you'll publish a story about me belonging to a group that's *insert scary mystery radio music* worse than Falun Gong as per ESWN's post about Zhou Yongjun (that also contained huge quantites of openly copyright infringed material).)

Jeremy Goldkorn's article in The Telegraph on the mainland's internet is just more fellation of censorship and one-party rule. (Mind you, if Goldkorn didn't fellate the Party his role as a China expert and his job would be in the crapper, so don't expect much else.)

Goldkorn tries to portray China's internet as the Wild Wild East and anarchic despite China's internet censorship and State-ownership or State-pwn3rship (where a company is so endebted to the services of Party members that it has to do what Party leadership wants even if the deed or business registartion isn't physically in the pocket of the Party).

A nationwide campaign by other Internet activists that included sending postcards to the jail where the bloggers were detained may have been responsible for their release.

As I've stated before the official Party line is that cadre corruption is bad. Eeeeeee-vil and must be eradicated. Unofficially all pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others. Embarrass the Party and you go to jail. Show the Party to be hypocritical about their beloved mantra of the rule of law and anti-corruption and the cadre is just some flunky, you may go free and the CCP has a fall guy proving that they are serious about corruption. If the cadre was Hu Jintao's son or some other princeling, you're barking at the moon and rotting in a jail cell.

In contrast to a small minority of liberal activists, however, there are millions of 'fen qing' or angry nationalist youth who comment on websites like the jingoistic Tiexue.net (Iron Blood) Internet forum and write about Western media bias against China on sites like Anti-CNN.com.

Does Goldkorn provide his readers with an explanation for this? Nah. That might show that far from a wild wild east, the mainland's internet culture is very well controlled by the State-authoritarian wing of the CCP.

Let me go to an article from the SCMP on 7 Aug 2009 p. A14 on border negotiations between China and India quoting an unnamed member of the CCP's delegation involved in the diplomacy.

Today's leaders are in position to enforce such a decision. [referencing Deng Xiaoping's offer some years to settle the border issue] China has changed a lot in 20 to 30 years. The new generation knows English, is internet savvy and very nationalistic. The majority of 400 million Chinese bloggers are hardliners. The leadership has no scope for compromises. They [leaders] have to be very careful.

By using web censorship and arrests of "liberal activists" (is anti-corruption and anti-nepotism really liberal or just pro-Chinese people?) and giving a free hand to the ultra-nationalists and paying the 50 cent gang to be ultra-nationalists, the State-authoritarian (neo-Stalinist) wing of the CCP can neutralise the Wen Jiabao's and any potential Hu Yaobang's that might crack open state control of the economy and media censorship and diminish the role of the PLA and PAP and Chinese imperialist ambitions in foreign affairs. This isn't some random result of the Chinese internet being a wild wild east, but really a well planned one to rein in the wing of the CCP that might reduce the centrality of the CCP and opportunities for cronyism and nepotism.

After reading this Reuters report on a China Daily story about Green Dam, it may be necessary to throw the yellow hankie and blow the whistle on the excessive celebration by those declaring a people power victory for stalling Green Dam coming to every computer on the mainland.

My original thought on the delay was less of people power than of WTO threats. The last item tossed out by the West in their attempts to stop the Green Dam installation fiasco was the threat of taking China to the WTO over the software. After China whined like a little baby about US proposals for US stimulus money 6-9 months ago to be earmarked as Buy American, the irony of Chinese government fiats to create a Buy Chinese monopoly for Green Dam were a bit amusing. There is almost no way that a government mandated monopoly could stand at the WTO. And that would have led to the possibility of computers in China being sold with mandatory filtering software that was designed by a foreign company and possibly influenced by the boogey man of "Foreign Powers". (Do I see a Chinese retake on "The Spy Who Shagged Me", where the evil genius is named "N.N.N.N. Powers"?)

So the pursuit of the policy will use the soft power shown to have such great influence on Google and Yahoo, where companies don't need an official decree to jump through the CCP's hoops, but do it quite willingly when provided the right "incentives". Or as the story reads:

But the English-language China Daily, citing an unidentified ministry official, said the plan would eventually come to pass.

"The government will definitely carry on the directive on Green Dam. It's just a matter of time," the official was quoted as saying.

The reason for the delay was because some computer makers needed more time to include the software, it said.

"What will happen is that some PC manufacturers will have it included with their PC packages sooner than the others," he said. "But there is no definite deadline at the moment."

If you didn't want people to talk, you wouldn't have to create a propaganda department to tell them the message and vocabulary to use when talking about your political system.

If you didn't want people to talk about your product, you would hire lawyers to file SLAPP suits rather than hire marketing agencies to develop the message and vocabulary that you want people to use when talking about your product.

So when sanctimonious pricks tell you that they've created companies helping people to communicate on the mainland, politely cover your mouth while laughing at life of self-denials and delusion. Do these companies register with the government as all companies on the mainland internet do? Do these companies therefore follow the law and facilitate the censorship and message management of the SARFT and Propaganda Dept?

Maybe they only helped people to regurgitate the Party Line, but but but but but... they aren't just another brick in the wall, because they helped people communicate. And for someone who makes a living from spinning the message and vocabulary, you can see why they might not see a problem from helping governments do exactly the same thing.

Media Must Be Objective About Tibet
objective - 1) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts 2) not dependent on the mind for existence; actual
In other words, being grounded in reality and able to be independently verified as opposed to some reporting dictate from a marketing spinmeister in the Propaganda Dept in Beijing.

When asked about the criticism from the West regarding Chinese media coverage of Tibet, Zhao stressed the need for objectivity.

"Reporting reality is the best way to be objective. If a reporter goes to Tibet and notices only the negative aspects and not the progress we've achieved there, is that objectivity?

Definitely no less objective than the reporting allowed by the CCP Censors and Propaganda Departments and probably more so, since the facts are able to be independently verified.

Furthermore notice the black and white exclusives use of "ONLY" and "NOT". Great marketing frame, huh? Probably no relation to reality, but the CCP Propaganda Dept isn't selling reality, but trying to use irrational verbal frames like this to get you to agree at how awful the foreign press is.

Of course it could be that the progress that the CCP wishes to see in Tibet is not notable as it's been repeated across almost all other SE and South Asian nations in the last 50 years, so it's just taken for granted that the Dalai Lama would have done the same for his people, while actually preventing the negatives, like the destruction caused by rampaging Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Ooops. Mentioning the Cultural Revolution probably isn't objective, because those 10 years have been erased from discussion by the Propaganda Dept because it cannot be properly aligned with "the New PRC" brand.

Independent verification of objective facts is important as we all remember the blocks on visits to Tibet both last Spring and this Spring, because the CCP knows their version of "objective facts" won't hold up to scrutiny. And who can forget the off-script outbursts from Tibetan monks on the "Mickey Mao Press Tours of Tibet" captured on objective video and broadcast on HK TV, that were supposed to "disneyfy" the military crackdown last Spring across Tibet.

So when the CCP whinges about people misunderstanding because they haven't been there, while simultaneously whinging about the misunderstanding by the people who have been there, you can see that the only understanding the CCP allows for is "the one objective truth" dictated by the marketing crew at the Propaganda Dept who are trying to sell the world "the New PRC" brand.

So if the Foreign Ministry wants to cast stones at foreign journalists like a chimp in a zoo, it might be better if they clean their own house first and have the CCP stop firing and demoting Chinese journalists who deviate from the Propaganda Dept's script for Tibet coverage.

There are those CCP shills who will repeatedly tell you that mainlanders don't mind the great internet nanny and that it's merely a cultural preference for anonymous posting on forums instead of blogging and shooting for the fame and glory of being the Chinese Drudge or InstaParrot. That there is no connection between mainland censorship and media control and the dominance of blogging by pre-CCP-certified media personalities, like pop singers and actors/actresses, instead of the thriving political bloggers in the U.S. (p.s. It's a good sign, that you've been away from the US political internet too long when you think Drudge or the InstaParrot are important figures. They are like so 2004. Only ones reading Drudge are reporters too lazy to write their own stories and some media spin artists waiting for the next piece of Rona Barrett jourmanalism.)

But with another dissenting voice taken in on charges of subversion of the state for wanting political accountability of government officials to the public, let's be clear, the reason that mainlanders aren't shooting to be the next Rachel Maddow or Jane Hamsher is that they are more likely to be the next Hu Jia or Guo Quan than become loved by millions.

Buried deep inside the SCMP today to hide the news from a population already souring on the Donald, there is a story about our local Publication Prudes wanting to force local ISPs to implement filtering of the internet in the name of "protecting the children".

So who didn't see that coming in the rush towards peaceful re-unification with the mainland? Yeah, so they MAY drop the proposal this time due to opposition, but you know that they'll get back to it, because it's much easier to have a dialogue when only one side has access to communications media. Isn't that right, Donald?