“The pornography filtering system praised by David Cameron is controlled by the controversial Chinese company Huawei, the BBC has learned. UK-based employees at the firm are able to decide which sites TalkTalk’s net filtering service blocks.” The irony. It hurts.
Well, I guess Huawei has the experience.
Still, we’ve always been painted a picture of how evil some parts of the world are. Spying on citizens, censorship, freedom of speech suppression, Internet filtering, non-democratic behavior by the government, etc… little did we know it’s just the same on our side of the fence.
Impossibru !
We are the good ! It is known since the 1000’s that the evil are at far East ! And don’t forget, -WE- are the only people blessed by the “One True God” (c)(TM)
Kochise
Edited 2013-07-26 11:58 UTC
Please don’t mention God,because I’m quite happy we haven’t had any visitations from TempleOS lately, although after those Snowden revelations all those CIA/FBI claims of TempleOS may not be so far fetched after all.
MOS6510,
It all makes sense now, TempleOS is Snowden, and now he’s in hiding. He was probably speaking in code all along
Edited 2013-07-26 15:57 UTC
Oh yeah, that really makes sense, the Da Vinci Code provided some informations about the descendant of Jesus, while obviously the Bible contained the proofs of the upcoming NSA/FBI manipulations since 2000 years !
Scary…
Dan Brown ? Ron Howard ? Anyone ?
Kochise
Edited 2013-07-26 16:33 UTC
Sure nuff. West was always so democratic and social. All unicorns and ice cream for every democrat.
Well, China only started blocking VPN connections since the middle of last year, while the major Canadian ISPs have been applying the same technology (DPI) to throttle Internet Traffic (downgrading all encrypted traffic) since at least 2006
Edited 2013-07-26 18:35 UTC
Fight a war so you can force opium on us, will you? Well, we’ll see about that, in 150 years!
Why criticize Cameron for choosing a Chinese firm? I mean, assuming one is on board with implementing a net censorship regime in the first place, then he might as well go to the world experts, no?
I despise the whole thing with a passion, but really would this have been any less controversial with a system developed elsewhere? I would hope people find this appalling for what it is rather than where it came from.
But don’t you see? Surveillance programs developed in the West are good because they’re protecting you freedom and rights and cute little kittens (and no, not the profits of big business. Not that. At all).
All this foreign stuff is just evil, horrible foreign stuff. You can tell because it’s not from the West. Fu-manchu rises again!
Yes it would.
See, censorship in a democracy is already VERY controversial. Then the fact that they use tax payer money to fund a Chinese supplied system makes the already VERY controversial into a holy-fuck controversial.
See, people aren’t saying that it’s only controversial because Huawei is selling the system. You would have noticed that there’s already discontent with the plan.
And now they’re complaining that an already bad plan is revealed to be worse.
Except the situation wouldn’t have been any better if they had decided on Cisco, Juniper, Websense or whatever.
Censorship + Huawei/CCP is not worse than
Censorship + Cisco or
Censorship + Juniper or
Censorship + Websense?
It doesn’t matter WHO restricts your freedom, it matters that it is done. You think it will magically be less restrictive with Cisco or Juniper?
Did you not understand the equations?
Have you not heard of the phrase “adding insult to injury”?
You seem to have a misapprehension here. I’m not saying the fact of Huawei increases the “Censorship” variable in the equation.
See, the “Censorship” variable is the same in all of the equations. Unless all the mentioned and unmentioned companies are the same, given that the “Censorship” variable is constant, it is logical that some results of the equation, of which the “Censorship” variable is constant, will be less than other equations with the same constant “Censorship” variable*.
To look at it another way, let’s say someone ran over your dog and it happened in front of you. In one scenario, the person gets out of the car and kicks your dog’s limp body to the side. In another scenario, the person backs over your dog and goes over it again once or twice.
In both cases, the dog’s dead. What’s done is done. But there’s something about the second scenario that doesn’t sit as well with us as with the first.
* The “Censorship” variable is constant.
Edited 2013-07-27 17:00 UTC
kwan_e,
“Have you not heard of the phrase ‘adding insult to injury’?”
Adding insult to injury is making a bad situation worse, but how exactly is technology from a Chinese firm adding insult to injury?
“let’s say someone ran over your dog and it happened in front of you. In one scenario, the person gets out of the car and kicks your dog’s limp body to the side. In another scenario, the person backs over your dog and goes over it again once or twice.”
The second scenario is intended to reflect evil qualities in the person, so are you trying to infer that Chinese firms have evil qualities in and of themselves? If so, then that’s the antithesis of my original post, if not then I don’t get your analogy.
Because the Chinese firm in question is Huawei.
The second scenario is NOT intended to reflect evil qualities in the person. It is intended to reflect that, even in a irreparably bad situation, you can still add to it to make it worse.
If you’re an atheist like me, a dead pet dog is a dead pet dog. No doggy heaven. But I still wouldn’t like to see my dead pet dog’s body treated badly.
Twice you’ve said “Chinese firm”, as though all the criticism is because the firm is Chinese. The point is not that it’s Chinese, it’s because it’s Huawei.
kwan_e,
“Twice you’ve said ‘Chinese firm’, as though all the criticism is because the firm is Chinese. The point is not that it’s Chinese, it’s because it’s Huawei.”
Well, your earlier post lead me to believe that your criticism was based on nationality:
“See, censorship in a democracy is already VERY controversial. Then the fact that they use tax payer money to fund a Chinese supplied system makes the already VERY controversial into a holy-fuck controversial.”
If this isn’t because they’re a Chinese firm, I guess I missed the source of your criticism for Huawei?
“The second scenario is NOT intended to reflect evil qualities in the person. It is intended to reflect that, even in a irreparably bad situation, you can still add to it to make it worse.”
Except you haven’t really pointed out what has made it worse now that you know Huawei is sourced for the technology instead of someone else. Is anything at all tangibly worse about Huawei than someone else?
Because YOU used “Chinese” in your post that I replied to instead of Huawei. You were the one who started off by framing the question as one of nationality, even though the title of the thing also specifically mentions Huawei. If you then look at my subsequent reply to Soulbender, one of my equations was:
Censorship + Huawei/CCP.
Yes, because of the aforementioned equations referencing Huawei and other candidate companies.
How about Huawei’s ties to the CCP? You can’t be naive about that. I guess you can suspect the other companies having similar ties to the NSA.
But given that the US is a waning power, and everyone now wants to get a piece of Chinese economic action, the CCP can use Huawei’s reach to pressure countries. If you don’t believe me, you should take it from the Australian PM Kevin Rudd (who knows Chinese) who has had to deal with the CCP’s attempts to silence criticism abroad, despite their supposed policy of non-interference in internal politics.
Choosing Huawei is kind of like paying another country to do your censorship for you.
kwan_e,
“Because YOU used ‘Chinese’ in your post that I replied to instead of Huawei.”
Ok, the response wasn’t very clear then. Moving right along…
“How about Huawei’s ties to the CCP? You can’t be naive about that. I guess you can suspect the other companies having similar ties to the NSA.”
At this point, where can you escape this kind of influence. The US, Israeli, British, Chinese, Australian, etc govs all have dirty hands.
“Choosing Huawei is kind of like paying another country to do your censorship for you.”
Well, Cameron is seeking to pay another country to implement a turnkey censorship platform for the UK. I honestly think it would be more controversial if a US company was involved, but that’s just my take. In the end it all gets manufactured in china anyways
Edited 2013-07-29 02:33 UTC
Yes, but the point is some are dirtier than others. If the constant “Censorship” variable is the same, then any slight different, no matter how slight, means some results will be more than others.
Like I said, China’s growing economic power makes it more of a concern right now than the US’s. If the US tries to pressure other countries based on what it discovers, that country would have more leverage because the US is not their sole trading partner.
Your use of the word irony hurts.
Irony would be to consult with Huawei (actually, make that any big networking corp.) on how to protect the internet freedoms of the citizens.
But this is something else and whatever it is it’s not irony. The words “expected” and “sad” comes to mind.