Posted on 05/04/2004 8:22:20 AM PDT by af_vet_rr
Shanghai. (Interfax-China) - China will install a special surveillance system for all Internet cafes nationwide by the end of 2004, according to an official statement from China's Ministry of Culture (MOC).
Once installed, this new surveillance system will require all Internet cafes customers to enter personal information, such as name, age, and their national citizen identification number, before they are allowed to log onto the Internet. New supervisory centers will also be set up around the country to monitor the online activities of Internet cafe customers. To date, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hubei, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi provinces have already completed installing this new monitoring system in all the Internet cafes within their respective jurisdictions, according to a an MOC statement. All Internet cafes in China will have installed the new system by the end of 2004.
As Interfax previously reported, the State Council had previously called for a thorough rectification of the Internet bar industry throughout the whole of China from February through August of 2004. Cultural, industrial and commercial administration departments at all levels are jointly participating in this action, for which the main goal is the termination of illegal Internet bars.
Under regulations issued by the MOC, all Internet bars illegal operating without a license, including computer schools, computer training institutions, computer labs or electronics reading rooms, will be terminated. In addition, minors under the age of 18 are forbidden from entering Internet cafes. Moreover, "unhealthy information and websites" will be strictly censored. This new surveillance system will be one the main tools authorities use to carry out these policies.
According to the MOC, illegal Internet bars have been responsible for the dissemination of "unhealthy information and websites," including pornography, gambling, and violence, which has in turn had a harmful impact children and caused social instability.
FR Thread on Howard Dean's calls for a National ID that would have been required for internet usage - thread here
Story on Howard Dean's ID beliefs at Cnet
Fifteen months before Dean said he would seek the presidency, however, the former Vermont governor spoke at a conference in Pittsburgh co-sponsored by smart-card firm Wave Systems where he called for state drivers' licenses to be transformed into a kind of standardized national ID card for Americans. Embedding smart cards into uniform IDs was necessary to thwart "cyberterrorism" and identity theft, Dean claimed. "We must move to smarter license cards that carry secure digital information that can be universally read at vital checkpoints," Dean said in March 2002, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. "Issuing such a card would have little effect on the privacy of Americans."
Dean also suggested that computer makers such as Apple Computer, Dell, Gateway and Sony should be required to include an ID card reader in PCs--and Americans would have to insert their uniform IDs into the reader before they could log on. "One state's smart-card driver's license must be identifiable by another state's card reader," Dean said. "It must also be easily commercialized by the private sector and included in all PCs over time--making the Internet safer and more secure."
In the end it's all about protecting the children and other innocent people.
More likely they were reading a popular book on the left by University of Chicago law school employee Cass R. Sunstein's, "Republic.com." You see, the book "exposes" the drawbacks of narrow thinking and egocentric Internet sites. Guess which ones those are. They are a "danger" to democracy and government much force people to read more enlightened feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings. Guess what those might be. The nyt and other mainstream media praised the book.
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