Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

“Convenient and sufficient access to the Internet”

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That’s what the Chinese government has said it is willing to supply foreign journalists covering the Beijing Olympics.  But, of course, the Chinese government itself will determine what is “sufficient.”  Bottom line:

[A] high-ranking Olympic committee official said Wednesday that the committee was aware that China would continue to censor Web sites carrying content that Chinese propaganda authorities deemed harmful to national security and social stability. The committee acquiesced to China’s demands to maintain such controls, said the official.

The International Olympic Committee thus ends up with an enormous quantity of egg on its face, having recently (like two weeks ago) promised the exact opposite:

The restrictions, which closely resemble the blocks that China places on the Internet for its own citizens, undermine sweeping claims by Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, that China had agreed to provide free Web access for foreign news media during the games. Mr. Rogge has long argued that one of the main benefits of awarding the games to Beijing was that the event would make China more open.

“For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet,” Mr. Rogge told Agence France-Presse just two weeks ago.

Awkward.

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Comments

  1. To me, that means “no charge.”  I guess I take a lot for granted.  I do think we should have more censorship of the internet here though, but only for pornography and prostitution and suicide help and things like that.

      • to continue with your sarcasm, how would the world cope without it?  Do you think porn has made the world better?  Do you think anyone that has seen porn is better off?

        • the test is not, “does prohibiting this type of thing cause harm.” The test is, “does allowing this type of thing cause so much harm that it’s worth weakening freedom of speech by prohibiting it.” So far, no one has convincingly made that case WRT porn. You’re welcome to try.

        • sexuality is ingrained in us as any other basic survival instinct. Does that make us better? Worse? I don’t know, but you can’t change basic instincts that are hard-wired in us.  

    • http://blog.wired.com/27bstrok…

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      p>

      Journalists covering the Olympics in Beijing ought to consider using virtual private networks and avoiding the use of instant messenger to interview subjects for stories, says Rebecca MacKinnon, CNN’s former Beijing bureau chief and University of Hong Kong new media professor.

      “If you are trying to work on sensitive stories that may be beyond topics that perhaps the Chinese government might be happy about you reporting, if you’re communicating with sources who might be under surveillance, you  need to make sure that you’re using secure e-mail and that you’re using a secure internet connection,” she says.

  2. considering that, according to the same NY Times piece:

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    p>

    In its negotiations with the Chinese over Internet controls, the Olympic committee official said, the panel insisted only that China provide unregulated access to sites containing information useful to sports reporters covering athletic competitions, not to a broader array of sites that the Chinese and the Olympic committee negotiators determined had little relevance to sports.

    The official said he now believed that the Chinese defined their national security needs more broadly than the Olympic committee had anticipated, denying reporters access to some information they might need to cover the events and the host country fully. This week, foreign news media in China were unable to gain direct access to an Amnesty International report detailing what it called a deterioration in China’s human rights record in the prelude to the Games.

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    p>not only that, but

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    It was not clear how hard Olympic committee officials pushed for open access to the Internet during negotiations with the Chinese, which dated from to the decision to award Beijing the Games in 2001, or why Mr. Rogge, the Olympic chief, promised that the news media would have uncensored access during the Games when officials working for him were aware that China would keep at least some of its censorship policies in place.

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    p>This last part is the real kicker, because as someone who looks at the situation in China and sees real progress and improvements in many areas, I am really disappointed about this and see it as an opportunity missed by the IOC.  This kind of soft power that the IOC wielded during negotiations is exactly how things are changed (albeit slowly) and when the opportunity is missed and the status quo is allowed to be maintained even in the face of massive worldwide scrutiny, it does no help to those within China who were there before the games and who will be there well after working hard and quietly for real change.  

    • the Great Firewall is more of an inconvenience than a barrier. There are a number of proxy sites that allow them to access blocked sources. My own Website was blocked last I knew, even though all that was on it was family pictures. My wife’s friends in China could not access the site at first, but they were eventually able to by using proxies. I bet the Olympic reporters will figure that out pretty quickly.

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      p>For the Chinese, the problem is not just access, it’s monitoring. If the government discovers that someone has been going to porn sites, it probably piques their interest. If the surfer is detected going to political sites, it probably has more serious consequences.

      <

      p>Unfortunately, I’m not confident that our own situation is different in kind.

  3. NBC should do the world a favor and provide access via it’s satellites.  

    • I hope NBC also reports on the human rights abuses in China as well. In the past, they have focused on “human interest” stories, usually personal tales about athletes to give context to the events. I can think of no greater “human interest” story in this Olympics than the plight of the average Chinese citizen.

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