Internet surveillance: the future & current circumstances in China.

I met up with my girlfriend in kunming
and the circumstances were somewhat improvised and unexpected not worth telling the whole story but when I met up with her we needed to use the internet to try to buy airplane tickets to look at different options we ended up taking the bus from coming to go home together which is beautiful I don't regret that at all now that i don't--all great that bus trip is that much rather do the bus and do the the airplane but anyway we were there I thought oh great no problem you know we'll just go around to some of the chinese internet cafes and I knew several in the neighborhood even though I've never used them no I had memories from fully ten years ago like 2007-2008 of how the internet internet censorship used to work in China now used to be at that time if you were at a public internet cafe as I was back then use a public internet cafe and you started typing in a word that was politically sensitive at that time I'm not going to give example you could have the computer shut down and log you out in front of you while you were typing the email so your email wouldn't get set he who would be you would be signed out of the computer while he did typing you know that was the kind of government control they had over over the Internet at that time ten years ago now what I didn't know I just found this out as a surprise walking around cream in with my girlfriend we tried cuz you know fine you know you you understand that you accept that you move on you know those are the rules you play by we use the internet right we use the public internet terminal in China but control in kunming had been raised the level a significant level in a significant way this last time when I was in conveying with my girlfriend we could not use a public internet cafe anywhere because all of them require Chinese government ID they need your citizens ID card and they would sign you in they would deepen the car they would scan the card and then everything you did sitting at that computer wasn't just monitored and controlled by the government it was linked to your name with one to your ID card right that's a significant next step in government monitoring control and I asked them but what about foreigners what about people like me who want to use the internet doesn't work you need to have a Chinese friend basically login and your account you to come with somebody who's a Chinese citizen and has this standard piece of ID that pretty much everyone in China has otherwise you cannot use a public Internet terminal so wow these things change just now I was live streaming and I started talking to a guy just signed up for the Navy he just went through basic training for the Navy the US Navy the American Navy and so I was interested to talk to him us talk to him before so he's a vegan he's just been through basic training and dealt with the dietary requirements and polishing leather shoes with a horse hair brush they make him wear you know leather boots miskin think so interesting guy interest if talked about so I'm trying to talk with him via live stream from a university campus in China and after you first except that's right in a contested border area and this is I appreciate the level Public Security who got here but this is an especially secure part of China for good reason right next to the Myanmar border and she is she's actually on a u.s. occupation and suddenly you know the quality of the connection deteriorates we had to reboot and restart several times to get live stream each now you know that maybe I have someone asking of the others that could be just a coincidence could be could be but the internet here is very actively monitored it's not something passive it's not a it's not a you know it's not a system that runs itself there are people whose full-time job is to sit and watch this happen in the internet and interact with it as sensors or as government regular regulated all the time and you see that so I have a lot of experience using skype here in China making skype calls within China making schedules to the United States or what have you and one of my friends who definitely is a person of interest she definitely is watched by the Chinese government much more than I am when I was trying to talk to her on skype skype was by saving very very strangely and skype also insisted on closing down and restarting before we make the call a lot of really really weird behavior at a skype and among other funny things you know Skype wouldn't let me send her a photo you know in the chat you can send a still photo I was just trying to send a photo actually of strawberries I've been buying a lot of strawberries here lately you might have seen that post on my Twitter so I mean it's funny in all kinds of little ways you get these reminders and there are posters up saying it everywhere if you go to an internet cafe here there's a poster up with a cartoon of the police saying you know the car to the police are always watching you you know this kind of thing back 10 years ago used to when you log into the computer we started up public view there was a reminder on the screen you know the Chinese police are watching everything you do you know for your safety and for everyone's safety on time so it's not it's not a secret it but you know it certainly makes you question the presumed contrast between Chinese culture on this and American culture we now have you know a new set of revelations about the extent front from WikiLeaks just this week yet more news with the extent to which the American internet is monitored and recorded and indeed controlled by the US government and you know the ways in which those powers are and are not controlled by democratic governments oversight so there are hard questions to be asked in every country owner of the world I have to say my concerns what I want to see legislation on has much less to do with privacy has much more to do with who can and cannot access those archives when the information is needed so if my brother disappears can I get the data to try to track him down you notice if I brother's a normal person if my sister is murdered you know under what circumstances can the police get that data can people get that data because once you know once you know that the data exists once you know the government has an archive of everything you're the rear sister said to anyone and everything that people said to them then you have to ethically justify why is it that we're pretending we don't have that data when it really could help someone with really good at consequences whether that's with a murder investigation or a missing persons case or anything you want to say what's the point of having a government that wants to pretend that data doesn't exist in a reality an agency like the CIA has it and can use it but your local police cannot and maybe you cannot what if you for some legitimate reason want to access that kind of data you know you know it exists these are things very very meaningful and important questions and we also get questions with verifiability so we had a court case in canada recently which I randomly read some articles about it was interesting me it's not worth mentioning why I guess it was interesting for human rights reasons but we had a a court case in Canada where you know the judge was misled by a fake Twitter account it wasn't a major part of the court case but someone made a joke Twitter account pretending to be the other person in the case and this judge thought that the comments on that twitter account really were the man in court and so I was quite interesting and as ever Cole what's Canadian court system did was that they actually had to issue an amended judgment they didn't invalidate the ruling but the judge went back and changed his ruling interesting now look to very obvious problems here if you have an internet that is managed and monitored by the CIA by the government of China by numerous other agencies but at NSA I mean it's the big one really National Security Agency well how can i or how can a judge verify is this really the person making this comment and conversely can we ever verify whether or not the government themselves are impersonating someone if the government wants to put me in prison what easiest ways they could do so would be sending emails that are apparently sent by me but not actually their power to impose you by using your accounts whether it's your Twitter account or your email accounts or even your credit card your banking account that is now unchecked and unlimited so verification of identity and the ability of the government to even scrutinize itself to hold itself accountable in cases of identity theft of perversion of Justice of misrepresenting someone's conduct those I think those are major major issues that didn't exist in the pre-digital era and that with absolutely no legislation to handle and I think there anyway I think they're much more important much more pressing and call for much more specific legislation than the blanket concept of privacy a concept that was really invented at a time when were talking about the privacy of a handwritten letter sent in the mail and the consequences for someone else reading that letter really cannot be compared to the consequences someone having access to my financial records my banking data being able to falsify transactions that I've apparently made myself accessing you know math mapping data where i am at what time i was in a given location and you know we really do we really do you know we really do have instances of people being convicted for crimes because they were talking on their cell phone in the car well if someone else was committing a crime and we can prove they chose not to call the police and they could have what's down to this very very fine level of specificity but as specific as that is is it verifiable how can you ever know whether or not those records were falsified perhaps by a hacker but much more likely by a government agency itself or simply by one corrupt individual within the government those are my god