A brave new world - where the U.S. is blind and deaf

[Reality Check]

Fall out from the Snowden release of NSA information.

When Snowden shared details of how the NSA uses U.S. designed and implemented telecomunications hardware and software to spy on U.S. citizens and the rest of the world many, John among them, were in denial. John may still be.

The Chinese communist party, on the other hand, has acted on those revelations:

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j ... 9F8O-1Edhw

[John]

If this is directed at me, I can't read the article because I don't
have a wsj subscription.

[gerald]

If this is directed at me, I can't read the article because I don't
have a wsj subscription.

hope this helps --

China Pushes to Rewrite Rules of Global Internet
Officials aim to control online discourse and reduce U.S. influence
China is aiming to draw the world’s largest group of Internet users, such as these patrons of an Internet cafe in Fuyang, away from an unrestricted global Web. ENLARGE
China is aiming to draw the world’s largest group of Internet users, such as these patrons of an Internet cafe in Fuyang, away from an unrestricted global Web. PHOTO: AN MING/FEATURECHINA/ZUMA PRESS
By JAMES T. AREDDY
July 28, 2015 3:49 p.m. ET
205 COMMENTS
SHANGHAI—As social media helped topple regimes in the Middle East and northern Africa, a senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army publicly warned that an Internet dominated by the U.S. threatened to overthrow China’s Communist Party.

Ye Zheng and a Chinese researcher, writing in the state-run China Youth Daily, said the Internet represented a new form of global control, and the U.S. was a “shadow” present during some of those popular uprisings. Beijing had better pay attention.

Four years after they sounded that alarm, China is paying a lot of attention. Its government is pushing to rewrite the rules of the global Internet, aiming to draw the world’s largest group of Internet users away from an interconnected global commons and to increasingly run parts of the Internet on China’s terms.

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It envisions a future in which governments patrol online discourse like border-control agents, rather than let the U.S., long the world’s digital leader, dictate the rules.

President Xi Jinping—with the help of conservatives in government, academia, military and the technology industry—is moving to exert influence over virtually every part of the digital world in China, from semiconductors to social media. In doing so, Mr. Xi is trying to fracture the international system that makes the Internet basically the same everywhere, and is pressuring foreign companies to help.

On July 1, China’s legislature passed a new security law asserting the nation’s sovereignty extends into cyberspace and calling for network technology to be “controllable.” A week later, China released a draft law to tighten controls over the domestic Internet, including codifying the power to cut access during public-security emergencies.

Other draft laws under consideration would encourage Chinese companies to find local replacements for technology equipment purchased abroad and force foreign vendors to give local authorities encryption keys that would let them control the equipment.

Chinese officials referred questions about Internet policy to the Cyberspace Administration of China, a recently formed government body. That agency declined to make an official available to comment for this article.

Such a strategy would have been impossible a few years ago when Western companies dominated the Internet. That has started to change with the rise of Chinese powers such as e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., online conglomerate Tencent Holdings Ltd. and information aggregator Sina Corp., which enable Chinese citizens to enjoy most services Westerners use, plus some unique to China, without needing Google Inc. or Facebook Inc. Chinese companies are easier for Beijing to control and have a history of censoring users upon demand.

The government is directing financial and policy support toward domestic firms that are developing semiconductors and servers that can replace ones provided by Western players. Earlier this year, Premier Li Keqiang unveiled Internet Plus, a strategy to incubate Chinese companies that integrate mobile, cloud and other types of computing with manufacturing and business.

Many Western companies are surrendering to Beijing’s rules so they can build a position in China, with an online population nearing 700 million.

LinkedIn Corp. structured its Chinese operation as a domestic company and agreed to censor content its customers see there. It said it respects freedom of expression but must comply with Chinese rules.

Hewlett-Packard Co., recently sold a majority stake in its China server, storage and technology services operations to a Chinese company after it came under political pressure in China following revelations that U.S. officials collected information abroad using infrastructure produced by American companies. A spokesman for H-P described the deal as a partnership formed to drive greater innovation for China.

Apple Inc. said in August 2014 it has been using the country’s primary Internet platform, run by state-controlled China Telecom, to store its Chinese users’ data. Apple says the data are protected by encryption.

China is seeking international validation for its efforts. Earlier this year, China led Russia and some Central Asia governments in proposing the United Nations adopt an Internet “code of conduct” that would effectively give every government a veto over technical protocols interlinking the global Internet.

China has argued such controls are necessary on national-security grounds, especially following allegations by former U.S. defense contractor Edward Snowden about American cybersleuthing. The code wasn’t adopted.

Some other countries share China’s vision of an Internet with borders. Turkey at times has temporarily blocked YouTube and Twitter. Russia has pressed U.S. social-media companies to erase content. The European Union’s top court ruled last year that search engines including Google must in many cases scrub links containing personal information from search results for individuals’ names upon their request.

“More and more countries are enforcing their own requirements,” says Rebecca MacKinnon, director of the Ranking Digital Rights Project for New America, a Washington think tank. “Nations enforcing their own Internet restrictions present a tension between national interests and participation in a global marketplace.”

[Reality Check]

If this is directed at me, I can't read the article because I don't
have a wsj subscription.

Strictly speaking this WSJ article does not require a subscription to read:

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j ... 9F8O-1Edhw

WSJ uses a punishment algorithm, not a subscription algorithm, to deny frequent visitors from viewing many non-premium articles, such as this one.

Some website's do use subscriptions to prevent anyone other than subscribers from accessing "premium content". Some websites use both methods, however this article has not been designated as premium content on the WSJ website, even if they also use that method.

This article, on the WSJ website, is not a "premium article" protected by subscription.

I will PM you a simple method of avoiding being "identified and punished" as a frequent visitor.

Why do some websites, like the WSJ, use a punishment method to restrict access to many articles, and not a subscription method for the vast majority of articles available on their websites ? The apparent answer is that, like a drug dealer who sells drugs near an elementary school, the website gives away "free samples" until they have the reader hooked.

[John]

SNGG-2015-08-01-0000.08.29.30.gif (42.89 KiB) Viewed 5201 times

[Reality Check]

I agree, you do not understand how the WSJ website works.

I have never had a subscription to the WSJ website, and I read that article without getting a message saying I need to buy a subscription, and I am not doing anything the most casual user does not do.

The Wall Street Journal does sell subscriptions to some premium content. The Wall Street Journal did send you a web page that implies you were denied for not having a subscription. Yet this article, lke the vast majority of articles on the WSJ website is not "premium content" that "requires" a subscription to accesss no matter how you access it ( how you access it meaning which public URL you use to access it).

Again, I will send you a PM.

[John]

I clicked on the above link that you provided, and got the screen
shown above.

I opened the same link in a Firefox private window, and the same thing
happened.

I didn't understand your PM.

A few weeks ago, Gerald said he had a way of getting an article behind
a paywall with some technique using google and getting it a few
paragraphs at a time, but I never figured that out either.

I used to be a WSJ subscriber years ago. It's possible that they've
saved my IP address in their data base and are blocking me.

Comcast says that they can't change your IP address -- except that
they do it when they hijack your IP so they filter everything you do,
and sometimes modify your web pages. But that's for their "benefit,"
not mine. And that's another discussion.

I could try to rent a proxy IP address and do it that way, but the
widely available commercial proxy IP addresses are well known, and
probably WSJ will block them. But I haven't tried that.

I've gotten pretty cynical about media behind a paywall. I use
sources from all over the world for my articles, so I don't need WSJ
or any particular source, except in an exceptional circumstance like
this where I have to have a specific article, but that only happens
every few months. Even where a particular source has an "exclusive,"
I just have to wait a couple of hours, and Bloomberg or Reuters or
someone else will be covering the same story.

[John]

I don't like to screw around with Firefox too much, since I have
a lot of saved tabs and don't want to lose them.

However, I opened Chrome, and then opened an "incognito window." I
copied the above link into the chrome incognito window, and the entire
article was displayed.

[gerald]

John , Sorry I did not post this earlier but I am wading through the diary of Eugene Delacroix only 700 + pages reduced from 1500 +pages.

Thought you might find this quote interesting,--

Wednesday May 1, 1850

"On man's gifts of reflection and imagination. Fatal Gifts. --

A fatal gift, did I say? Beyond a doubt: amidst this universal conspiracy against the fruits of invention, of genius, and of the spirit which composes, does man have at least the consolation of wondering greatly at himself for his constancy, or of a rich and continued enjoyment of the various fruits which have issued from him? The contrary is most often the case. Not only must the man who is greatest through talent, through audacity, through constancy, be also the most persecuted, as he usually is, but he is himself fatigued and tormented by his burden of talent and imagination. He is a ingenious in tormenting himself as in enlightening others. Almost all the great men have had a life more thwarted, more miserable than that of other men."

I think I understand,

cheers

[John]

Interesting.

I'm looking at a story about Taiwanese student who committed
charcoal-burning suicide two days ago in protest of proposed
changes to high school textbooks that would favor reunion
with China over independence. I guess you could say that
he's provided a "fatal gift" to his fellow activists.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/a ... 2003624291