03 February 2011

The Pyramids Are Revolting

In response to the recent unrest in Egypt, the government in China has been closely monitoring the internet, specifically preventing netizens from searching for the term 'Egypt' on social networking sites, as well as keeping the news coverage in official channels to the bare minimum.

Censorship in China is no new practice, even when it comes the internet. Since 2003, they have operated what is known as the Great Firewall of China to be able to prevent their citizens from gaining access to certain sites, IP addresses, and keyword searches.

When it comes to technology, especially when using it to prevent people from doing something, there are always work-arounds. For the Great Firewall, proxy servers outside of China, virtual private networks and various free programs allow, to varying extents, access to information and websites not allowed by the Great Firewall.

As for the keyword searches, there is an even easier fix: different keyword. In order to better monitor their citizens, China has their own version of Twitter called Weibo. It is one of the sites which prevents users from searching for the 'Egypt.' As any high school student in the United States can tell you, when one word is disallowed, another more innocuous word takes its place. Where Chinese citizens cannot search for 'Egypt,' they might very well be looking around for posts and articles about 'pyramids,' 'Nile,' 'Cairo,' or countless other new keywords.

Short of killing the entire country's internet, dissident information will always leak to the people looking for it. Even without internet, people are able to coordinate well enough to disseminate information, and this Wired article tells you how.

That's the beauty of language for me; like Malcolm tells us in Jurassic Park, '[language] finds a way.' As literacy grows, so does knowledge. As knowledge grows, so do the possibilities. Language and literacy are doors that open to wider worlds, not smaller. I guess that's what makes it so scary to the Chinese government.

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