Golden Shield Project
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The Golden Shield Project (
The Golden Shield Project is one of the 12 important "golden" projects. The other "golden" projects are Golden Customs (also known as Golden Gate) (for customs), Golden Tax (for taxation), Golden Macro, Golden Finance (for financial management), Golden Auditing, Golden Security, Golden Agriculture (for agricultural information), Golden Quality (for quality supervision), Golden Water (for water conservancy information), Golden Credit, and Golden Discipline projects.
The Golden Shield Project also manages the Bureau of Public Information and Network Security Supervision,
History
The political and ideological background of the Golden Shield Project is considered to be one of Deng Xiaoping's favorite sayings in the early 1980s: "If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in."[e] The saying is related to a period of economic reform in China that became known as the "socialist market economy". Superseding the political ideologies of the Cultural Revolution, the reform led China towards a market economy and opened up the market for foreign investors. Nonetheless, despite the economic freedom, values and political ideas of the Chinese Communist Party have had to be protected by "swatting flies" of other unwanted ideologies.[7]
The Internet in China arrived in 1994,[8] as the inevitable consequence of and supporting tool for the "socialist market economy". As availability of the Internet has gradually increased, it has become a common communication platform and tool for trading information.
The Ministry of Public Security took initial steps to control Internet use in 1997, when it issued comprehensive regulations governing its use. The key sections, Articles 4–6, are the following:
Individuals are prohibited from using the Internet to: harm national security; disclose state secrets; or injure the interests of the state or society. Users are prohibited from using the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit information that incites resistance to the PRC Constitution, laws, or administrative regulations; promotes the overthrow of the government or socialist system; undermines national unification; distorts the truth, spreads rumors, or destroys social order; or provides sexually suggestive material or encourages gambling, violence, or murder. Users are prohibited from engaging in activities that harm the security of computer information networks and from using networks or changing network resources without prior approval.[9]
In 1998, the Chinese Communist Party feared that the
A subsystem of the Golden Shield has been nicknamed "
During the 2008 Summer Olympics, Chinese officials told Internet providers to prepare to unblock access from certain Internet cafés, access jacks in hotel rooms and conference centers where foreigners were expected to work or stay.[18]
Actions and purpose
The Golden Shield Project contains an integrated, multi-layered system, involving technical, administrative, public security, national security, publicity and many other departments. This project was planning to finish within five years, separated into two phases.
Phase I
The first phase of the project focused on the construction of the first-level, second-level, and the third-level information communication network, application database, shared platform, etc. The period was three years.
According to the
Members participated in the phase I project include
According to
Phase II
The phase II project started in 2006. The main task was to enhance the terminal construction, and the public security business application system, trying to informatize of the public security work. The period was two years.[23]
Based on the phase I project, phase II project expanded the information application types of public security business, and informationized further public security information. The key points of this project included application system construction, system integration, the expansion of information centre, and information construction in central and western provinces. The system of was planning to strengthen the integration, to share and analysis of information. It would greatly enhance the information for the public security work support.[23]
Censored content
Mainland Chinese Internet censorship programs have censored Web sites that include (among other things):
- Web sites belonging to "outlawed" or suppressed groups, such as pro-democracy activists and Falun Gong.
- News sources that often cover topics that are considered defamatory against China, such as Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy sites.[24] These sites include Voice of America and the Chinese edition of BBC News.
- Sites related to the Taiwanese government, media, or other organizations, including sites dedicated to religious content, and most large Taiwanese community websites or blogs.
- Web sites that contain anything the Chinese authorities regard as obscenity or pornography.
- Web sites relating to criminalactivity.
- Sites linked with the Dalai Lama, his teachings or the International Tibet Independence Movement.
- Most blogging sites experience frequent or permanent outages.
- Web sites deemed as subversive.
Blocked web sites are indexed to a lesser degree, if at all, by some Chinese
According to The New York Times, Google has set up computer systems inside China that try to access Web sites outside the country. If a site is inaccessible, then it is added to Google China's blacklist.[26] However, once unblocked, the Web sites will be reindexed. Referring to Google's first-hand experience of the great firewall, there is some hope in the international community that it will reveal some of its secrets. Simon Davies, founder of London-based pressure group Privacy International, is now challenging Google to reveal the technology it once used at China's behest. "That way, we can understand the nature of the beast and, perhaps, develop circumvention measures so there can be an opening up of communications." "That would be a dossier of extraordinary importance to human rights," Davies says. Google has yet to respond to his call.[27]
Bypass techniques
Because the Great Firewall blocks destination IP addresses and domain names and inspects the data being sent or received, a basic censorship circumvention strategy is to use proxy nodes and encrypt the data. Most circumvention tools combine these two mechanisms.[28]
- Proxy servers outside China can be used, although using just a simple open proxy (HTTP or SOCKS) without also using an encrypted tunnel (such as HTTPS) does little to circumvent the sophisticated censors.[28]
- Companies can establish regional Web sites within China. This prevents their content from going through the Great Firewall of China; however, it requires companies to apply for local ICP licenses.
- Tor, can be used.[28]
- open proxies, but still behave as though the user is in China.[28]
- VPNs (virtual private network) and SSH (secure shell) are the powerful and stable tools for bypassing surveillance technologies. They use the same basic approaches, proxies and encrypted channels, used by other circumvention tools, but depend on a private host, a virtual host, or an account outside of China, rather than open, free proxies.[28]
- Open application programming interface (API) used by Twitter which enables to post and retrieve tweets on sites other than Twitter. "The idea is that coders elsewhere get to Twitter, and offer up feeds at their own URLs—which the government has to chase down one by one." says Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.[29]
- Reconfiguration at the end points of communication, encryption, discarding reset packets according to the TTL value (time to live) by distinguishing those resets generated by the Firewall and those made by end user, not routing any further packets to sites that have triggered blocking behavior.[30]
Exporting technology
Since at least 2015, the Russian
Differences from the Great Firewall
The Golden Shield Project is distinct from the Great Firewall (GFW), which has a different mission. The differences are listed below:
Politically,
- The GFW is a tool for the propaganda system, whereas the Golden Shield Project is a tool for the public security system.
- The original requirements of the GFW are from the 610 office, whereas the original requirements of the Golden Shield Project are from the public security department.
- The GFW is a national gateway for filtering foreign websites, whereas the Golden Shield Project is for monitoring the domestic internet.
Technically,
- The GFW is attached to the three national internet exchange centres, and then spread to some of the ISPsto implement the blocking effect, whereas the Golden Shield Project stations in the most exchange centres and data centres.
- The GFW is very powerful in scientific research, including many information security scientists, such as people from Harbin Institute of Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, whereas the Golden Shield Project is less powerful in scientific research.
- The GFW is built by Fang Binxing, whereas the Golden Shield Project is built by Shen Changxiang.[39]
See also
- Blocking of Wikipedia by China
- Censorship in China
- Cypher
- Green Dam Youth Escort
- Human rights in China
- International Freedom of Expression Exchange – monitors Internet censorship in China
- Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
- Internet in China
- List of government surveillance projects
- Media of China
- Politics of China
- Splinternet
- Who Controls the Internet?
Notes
- ^ 全国公安工作信息化工程
- ^ 金质
- ^ 公共信息网络安全监察局, or 网监局 for short
- ^ Chinese: 防火 长城; pinyin: fánghuǒ chángchéng
- ^ Chinese: 打开窗户,新鲜空气和苍蝇就会一起进来。; pinyin: Dǎkāi chuānghù, xīnxiān kōngqì hé cāngying jiù huì yìqǐ jìnlái.
There are several variants of this saying in Chinese, including "如果你打开窗户换新鲜空气,就得想到苍蝇也会飞进来。" and "打开窗户,新鲜空气进来了,苍蝇也飞进来了。". Their meanings are the same.
References
- ^ "金盾工程". 中国网--网上中国.
- ^ "CIECC E-government". en.ciecc.com.cn. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
- ^ "何谓"两网一站四库十二金"?". 中国网--网上中国.
- ISBN 978-0-8213-8200-4. Retrieved 11 January 2011.
- ^ "How China's Internet Police Control Speech on the Internet". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 11 June 2013.
China's police authorities spent the three years between 2003 and 2006 completing the massive "Golden Shield Project". Not only did over 50 percent of China's policing agencies get on the Internet, there is also an agency called the Public Information Network Security and Monitoring Bureau, which oversees a large number network police. These are all the direct products of the Golden Shield Project.
- ^ "China's Man-on-the-Side Attack on GitHub".
- ^ R. MacKinnon "Flatter world and thicker walls? Blogs, censorship and civic discourse in China" Public Choice (2008) 134: p. 31–46, Springer
- ^ "中国接入互联网". Chinanews.com. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
- ^ "China and the Internet.", International Debates, 15420345, Apr2010, Vol. 8, Issue 4
- ISBN 0415325978
- ISBN 0-19-515266-2.
- ^ 首屆「2002年中國大型機構信息化展覽會」全國31省市金盾工程領導雲集 (in Chinese)
- ^ "What is internet censorship?". Amnesty International Australia. 28 March 2008. Archived from the original on 27 April 2015. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
- ^ "The art of concealment". The Economist. 6 April 2013. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
- ^ "Web mystery: China Internet traffic winds up in Wyoming - NBC News.com". NBC News. Archived from the original on 23 January 2014. Retrieved 23 January 2014.
- ^ Watts, Jonathan (20 February 2006). "War of the words". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 May 2010.
- ^ "Costs and Benefits of Running a National ARD" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 July 2006.
- ^ Fallows, James (March 2008). "The Connection Has Been Reset". The Atlantic. Retrieved 22 May 2011.
- ^ 金盾工程数据库包括12亿多中国人的信息. 博讯 (in Chinese (China)). 9 April 2006. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016.
- ^ 中国“金盾工程”一期工程通过国家验收. Radio Free Asia (in Chinese (China)).[permanent dead link]
- ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
- ^ "首屆「2002年中國大型機構信息化展覽會」全國31省市金盾工程領導雲集". The Adsale Group. 19 December 2002. Archived from the original on 4 March 2010.
- ^ a b 金盾二期工程将以信息整合应用为建设重点. 计世资讯 (in Chinese (China)). Archived from the original on 31 May 2009.
- ^ Marquand, Robert (24 February 2006). "China's media censorship rattling world image". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 22 May 2011.
- ^ "controlling information: you can't get there from here -- filtering searches". Pbs.org.
- ^ Thompson, Clive (23 April 2006). "Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem)". The New York Times. p. 8. Retrieved 22 May 2011.
- ^ Will Google's help breach the great firewall of China? By: Marks, Paul, New Scientist, 02624079, 4/3/2010, Vol. 205, Issue 2754
- ^ a b c d e "Splinternet Behind the Great Firewall of China: The Fight Against GFW", Daniel Anderson, Queue, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Vol. 10, No. 11 (29 November 2012), doi:10.1145/2390756.2405036. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
- ^ "Leaping the Great Firewall of China ", Emily Parker, Wall Street Journal, 24 March 2010. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
- ISBN 3-540-68790-4, doi:10.1007/11957454_2. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
- ^ Kamenev, Marina (16 June 2010). "First, China. Next: the Great Firewall of... Australia?". Time. Retrieved 22 September 2022.
- ^ "Critics blast 'great firewall of Australia'". ABC News. 15 December 2009. Retrieved 22 September 2022.
- ^ "The company with Aussie roots that's helping build China's surveillance state". 26 August 2019. Retrieved 22 September 2022.
- ^ "Going online in Cuba: Internet under surveillance" (PDF). Reporters Without Borders. 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2009.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 4 July 2017.
- ^ "China: The architect of Putin's firewall". Eurozine. 21 February 2017. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
- ^ "Russia's chief internet censor enlists China's know-how". Financial Times. 29 April 2016. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
- ^ "War censorship exposes Putin's leaky internet controls". Associated Press. 14 March 2022.
- ^ 自曲主编 (30 August 2009). "阅后即焚:GFW". 自曲新闻 (in Chinese (China)). Archived from the original on 4 January 2010. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
External links
- China Digital Times: Internet Control
- Breaking Through the "Golden Shield"
- ViewDNS.info - Chinese Firewall Test - Tests if Golden Shield is performing DNS filtering/redirection on your domain within mainland China.
- Website Test behind the Great Firewall of China
- Lighthouse Metric Report for websites behind the Firewall of China