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TechnoratiCorporate Complicity With the Great Firewall
China is strongly criticised for its internet censorship – but it is western technology firms that have provided the tools for the job
Like its precursor, the Great Wall of China, the Great Firewall was constructed to guard China from waves of foreign influence and information intrusion. With the world's spotlight on China and widespread criticism of its repressive actions, one should not forget that the knowledge and technology used to create the world's most prominent Big Brother society was designed in the west, often by the very same corporations whose advertisements on TV take up the time between the relay race and the javelin competition.
Much more than your standard internet filtering gateway, the Great Firewall comprises an administrative collaboration of seven government ministries, unrestricted access to numerous public record databases, closed circuit television footage with built-in facial recognition systems, as well as the more well-known information surveillance and censorship technology. Software and hardware purchased from around the world continue to tighten the screws of a digital information society. Network control and optimisation, intrusion detection and other security features promised in the product brochures of western IT firms are put to use against the rights to privacy and freedom of an entire populace. This is a brief survey of the surveillance scene:
A recent (non-intrusive) scan through the website of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security revealed a number of documents listing an inventory of various security technologies. One spreadsheet details software and hardware implemented for network surveillance, packet scanning and user detection. A closer inspection reveals that the Chinese internet infrastructure employs a huge array of security products, procured from companies all around the world. An example of four tools, chosen from the several hundred found in the inventory:
XSGuard Management System: purchased from the Els Shield (Shanghai) Information Technology Co Ltd, network management software developed in the Netherlands. It allows for monitoring of network packets and performing digital forensics.
Cisco 4125 Intrusion Detection System: purchased from Cisco China and used for monitoring activity on the T1 subnet. Other items sold include the ASA 5505, which "provides intelligent threat defense and secure communications services that stop attacks before they impact business continuity."
YangNet Police Network Intrusion Detection System: purchased from the Bright Oceans Corporation in China. According to their (badly translated) website, the product "acts in a transparent based on a URL filtering and text content filtering, shielding bad, illegal site, on the conduct of fine-grained web content filtering and the precise control and prevent all internal net users to browse the cult, pornography and other undesirable foreign websites and webpages. This feature is suitable for primary and secondary schools, tertiary institutions, government, business and professional applications."
Radware DefensePro 2000: an Israeli technology organisation; in this case, the product offers an "Adaptive Decision Engine: behaviour-based, self-learning mechanism proactively scans for anomalous network, server and client traffic patterns ... and is designed for enterprise core and perimeter deployment, data centers, university campuses and carrier backbones."
A popular acronym in government, big business and the military for today's centralised surveillance technologies is "C4I" (Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence). The top shelf of the technology market offers solutions that integrate closed circuit television with criminal records databases, national health insurance with biometric ID cards, holiday travel bookings with international terrorist lists and so on.
Security China 2000, the largest national security exhibition, attended by the world's most renowned IT corporations, marked a beginning of Chinese endeavours to create the world's most sophisticated surveillance infrastructure. It was sponsored by the Chinese Public Security Bureau, the ministry in charge of policing the internet. The meeting was attended by US-based Lucent, Sun Microsystems and Cisco, European wireless giants Nokia and Ericsson, and Canada's Nortel Networks, among many others. The main event was China's Golden Shield Project - an ambitious plan to link China's national and internet surveillance networks, public record databases, CCTV cameras, speech and face recognition databases, smart cards, credit records and a myriad of regional and national ministries. Their mission was to make the network "see, hear and think" in the continuing effort to solidify state control.
Nortel Networks continues to work with the Chinese Tsinghua University on developing speech recognition software, often used in surveillance of telephone conversations, allowing the network to hear. It has also widely distributed its "personal internet suite" to providers in Shanghai, Beijing and other major Chinese cities. The software allows IPs not only to monitor what their subscribers are doing online, but to control what information is delivered to them.
Content requested from a home computer for topics deemed undesirable will be stored against that person's personal file in numerous databases. The network rolled out with product and knowledge support from western IT firms is designed to think - that is, to identify individual subscribers when they log on, matching names to IP addresses, and learning, over time, what interests them.
The Golden Shield Project also integrates a facial recognition system (FRS), partly developed by Acsys Biometrics, a Canadian company. Rolled out across closed-circuit video surveillance networks in Chinese cities, it allows the Golden Shield to see. Rick Collins, senior manager of Nortel's advanced research laboratory, ProtoNet, said of the Acsys system: "Layering Acsys' face recognition's capabilities within Nortel Networks' solutions will make communication networks more personal. I envision a network that knows who you are, where you are and can reach you whether you're on your mobile phone or at your desktop."
An enthusiastic business partner of the Chinese state apparatus has been Cisco. Notorious for its several appearances before the US House of Representatives to explain their role in supplying virtually the entire hardware on which the Golden Shield Project operates, as well as multiple systems to assist Chinese ministries responsible for catching political and social dissidents and censoring the internet. In 1997, Cisco won the contract to supply internet "firewall boxes" and, by 2006, they supplied 60% of the Chinese market for routers, switches and other sophisticated networking gear. Its estimated annual revenue from China is $500m.
In 2003, Cisco's "Policenet" software was rolled out as the backbone of the Chinese state security system. This software, in conjunction with Intel's fingerprint technology, is compatible with the Chinese surveillance systems and allows a policeman stopping a person on the street to scan that person's ID card and access instantly the individual's past political and social behaviour, family history and recent internet activity.
Terry Alberstein, director of corporate affairs for Cisco Systems (Asia Pacific), confirmed in 2005 that Cisco does indeed sell networking and telecommunications equipment directly to the Public Security Bureau and other law enforcement offices throughout China. Cisco recently stated that it also provides service and training to Chinese police officials. Unlike other IT companies, Cisco has signed contracts directly with Chinese public security authorities.
It is futile to argue whether western corporations are directly responsible for the uses to which China puts their technologies. Following basic free-trade principles, products are most likely sold "as is" to (rather than customised for) the Chinese government or third-party resellers. However, just as in the arms trade, these practices have led to the creation of a hostile digital environment, inhabited by Da Ge (pinyin for Big Brother). Whenever we pause to discuss or protest China's decision to filter websites or jail Yahoo email account holders, we must bear in mind that the technology that has made this possible was built in our own backyard.
Dmitri Vitaliev is an independent consultant working extensively in the human rights and independent media sector with an emphasis on information security.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
14 Comments so far
Show AllGood article and it's amazing just how forgiving or understanding people can be of the Chinese Police State. What will happen if some corporation wants to get even wealthier and sells the latest scientific discovery which is making objects (and I suppose people) invisible? Can such a discovery remain free from spies from China who steal all of our secrets? We had better watch our back before this gruesome example of government takes over the world which is what China intends.
sorefeets August 13th, 2008 8:58 pm
"an aside- ralph nader has fairly large holdings in cisco- wonder what he thinks of their complicity in the modern security state."
Ralph Nader had significant holdings in Cisco in 2000, eight years ago. No one knows whether he still does or not and won't until he makes a financial declaration as a candidate if he does.
Lobo Gris
The world has gone to see the Olympic Games in China which is, in fact the largest security fair ever. Scotland Yard send observers to check out how the Chinese Police keeps the crowds under total control, is perfectly revealing. The subtext is, Scotland Yard wants to 'import' total control
to the UK. Unfortually they are not the only one.
Laws are passed everywhere in the world in 'increase' security but the bottom line is to multiply control and to shift to total control.
The Patriot Act is a perfect example how for the sake of 'security' all rights of the citizen are removed.
Total control is fascism.
More laws = less rights.
Even freedom of speech will be soon restricting to speak in your own bathroom. The thought control is on its way.
Am I having a bad day?
"...we must bear in mind that the technology that has made this..." barbarism "...possible was built in our own backyard." That isn't the point. That isn't the point at all, unless I'm misunderstanding the author and he's saying what I'm saying.
The point that needs to be made has to do with the system and the politics. The point has to do with the intentions of key players, namely members of elite groups who make decisions that affect us all. The intentions are clear. The brutal minority that runs the world will risk everything in order to continue doing so (reflecting the thought behind Chomsky's chosen title for one of his books, namely HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL).
They have 'chosen' to have as their goal, riches, glory and power. They play the game that most of the world - winners and losers, rich and poor - plays, namely 'riches for the strongest'. However, It goes against the way we were designed. The fact that so many have consented to be re-designed, or re-programmed, into dogs ready to eat neighbors who think similarly, doesn't change the living reality that is being defied. And there are consequences to that.
I've said it many times; People need to understand that winning in a wrong game is not a worthwhile goal. The game needs to be dropped. Most are not listening.
There is a name that has been given to this criminal global money system that I'm happy to use. John Perkins (CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HITMAN) refers to the 'corporatocracy'. It's as good as any.
The corporatocracy is a very fascist system. Fascism isn't hard to grasp. It's simply what you get when the corporate sector conspires with the political classes to rule. Fascism is hard to dislodge because greedy, timorous elites like it and because they will always use the disruptions and chaos - disasters - that they and their capitalist pursuits cause to argue that the old system (which we, the majority, just happened to have had a hand in constructing) and it's rules are no long working, but Don't worry, They are going to go into action with a new system and new rules and firmly set things right. 'Rightwing' is more like it. And so we have rightwing governments everywhere spouting the need for more law and order, while their partners in the private sector continue to make headlines for their criminal, destructive behavior that, it turns out, is okay - because those who make the laws say so. We get law and order and regulation, none of which is 'for' us, but almost all of which is 'of' us, while the social and environmentally destructive profiteers, get more freedom via free trade rules.
Naomi Klein wrote The Shock Docrtine, explaining disaster capitalism (capitalists believe firmly in a Darwinian game in which 'how' you survive is not as important as simply surviving). I haven't read it yet. But I've long regarded capitalism as nothing more than exploitation and oppression. Klein recently wrote an article titled "China's All-Seeing Eye," (Rolling Stone magazine http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye) in which she detailed how American corporations were working hand in glove with the Chinese government to create it's Golden Shield security surveillance network in order to completely control their people. I think she nailed it when she concluded that other states, where we have (varying degrees of) democracy, like the direction China is going. They regard China's project as presenting the perfect delivery mechanism for capitalism. Stay tuned.
On the Toronto Star's website (taking advantage of it's largely useless interactive commenting feature), I put it like this:
*If we could get the elites to answer the following question honestly, What would they answer?
Q: Would you prefer to be the masters in a rickety, dirty and unsafe mansion in which innumerable servants saw to your every need?; Or else equals in a clean, intact and safe mansion in which every resident contributed and received equally?
See the problem?*
We see their answer. We see who they slave for, and it isn't God. It's money. They must be endured for a little while longer. But in order to escape sharing with them their final reward, folks must not play their Darwinian game - actually, a contradiction in terms - of 'riches for the strongest'.
Nate,
Are you still under some kind of strange belief that China is "communist" or socialist in any way???
China IS a capitalist state and and it's model of capitalist wealth accumulation backed by he iron fist of the state IS the new-wave FUTURE of capitalism. Yes, it has earlier examples backed with the support of the US - Pinochet, Suharto, The Argentine Junta, the Brazil junta, Somoza...but China is the real thing this time - coming to a country near you.
an aside- ralph nader has fairly large holdings in cisco- wonder what he thinks of their complicity in the modern security state. not to berate him but merely to show how the tentacles of corporate capitalism reach into every aspect of modern human life. what to do about it?
well it's been fun folks, this little experiment called 'civilization'. best of luck in the dawning dark age.
Google, Cisco, etc are in the business to sell licenses, hardware and consulting to anyone who has the front money. The historical parallel is with US Arms manufacturers who gladly sold weapons to opposing sides as they killed one another. Saddam Hussein famously monitored his underlings' web browsing habits with US products. We're extensively monitored here too in the states, naturally, with corporate tyrannies in control. The government has set up creative entrapment programs to destroy the lives of anyone who comes close to child-porn. (If she's 18, the supreme court says it ok to view her in a gang bang) Corporations have long used information as an abusive truncheon to beat over the heads of their slaves. Newer, more intrusively powerful ways to take someone down are at hand.
The same rope, material need but materialistic greed, is now hanging all of us.
Only deeper, shared conscience can unravel this noose.
zzz writes: "I'm not going to get too worked up over China's Big Brother till we shake off our own."
Well, Western governments will draw lessons from China's surveillance system, the most advanced in the world, easily surpassing Britain's in its level of sophistication ;)
Meanwhile, our own government's spying continues as an issue of national security too secret for even the Congress to be briefed on (except a few "special members"). How does our spying compare to other countries? No one knows. The extent of our spying is secret.
I'm not going to get too worked up over China's Big Brother till we shake off our own.
We have free speech cages, arrests of legitimate protesters, secret police, police brutality, secret prisons, massive public surveillance etc... plus much more people in prison than they do.
NatW writes: "One can only hope that the lust for money will continue to trump ideology with the Chinese Communist Party..."
The lust for money by Western corporations is what created the virtual Great Wall of China in the first place.
The future is looking good! (Don't worry, I haven't gone insane. I'm just popping a load of happy pills ;) )
AND WE CALL THIS PROGRESS?
People seem to believe technology progresses by itself, and that what we are witnessing is the latest iteration in the "unavoidable" misuse of cutting-edge technology.
But decisions are taken to develop one kind of technology over another. In this way, one group can enhance its interests at the expense of another.
For example, the Pentagon allocates funds to keep particular lines of research going; that is, certain scientists are subsidized. Obviously, the Pentagon hopes that the technology these scientists are developing will have a military application, like the one described in the article below:
U.S. military may soon have a Star Trek-like cloaking device:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4494440.ece
It's progress that ignores the needs and opinions of the people. It's progress WITHOUT the people!
And that's, actually, the title of a book I bought a few years ago: "Progress Without People" by David F. Noble.
"...David Noble goes to immediately to provide a detailed analysis of the effects of automation. He knows how history has been distorted so that the term 'Luddite' can be used to target any who try to save their jobs and control conditions of life in industrial, office, retail, or service jobs." (Eric Hobsbawn).
Noble's view is that it is now too late to change what is happening. We should have all rebelled 15 or so years ago!
China's surveillance system will be coming over to us eventually. Already, in Europe, legislation has passed - or is being passed! - to allow everything a person does online, all the data they send and receive, including private text messages and e-mails, to be stored on a centralized database for up to two years.
It would somewhat appear as if a digital variation of Stalin's unattributed maxim, "When we hang the capitalists, they will sell us the ropes," is potentially coming to pass with Mao's inheritors. One can only hope that the lust for money will continue to trump ideology with the Chinese Communist Party (though both options are quite unpalatable).