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The Great Firewall of China
By: Priyanka Pradhan   |   Apr 08, 2007

Chronology of Chinese oppression on the internet:

•The first Internet block in China, spanned June 2 to June 24, 2004, when access to Chinese Wikipedia from Beijing was blocked on the 15th anniversary of the Tianamen Square protest of 1989. Subsequently, all Wikimedia sites were banned from Mainland China.

•In April 2005, People’s Republic of China purchased over 200 routes from Cisco Systems, to give the government, a more advanced technological technical ability.

•There was a discussion on a self-censored version of Wikipedia to be made available to users in Mainland China, meanwhile, Wikipedia continues to be blocked, as of October 18, 2005.

•In February 2006, Google succumbed to government pressure, by blocking websites which were objectionable, according to the Chinese government.

•Chinese users begin to face problems accessing their emails, via Microsoft Hotmail service, in May 2006. Users also reported having trouble with POP mailboxes and in the last week of May, Google and many of its services became unreachable for internet users in China.

•On May 30,2006, NGO Amnesty International launched a website called irrepressible.info which aimed to spread awareness about different ways in which the Internet is being censored by governments.

•On January 24, 2007, Chinese state media reported that Hu Jintao had vowed to "purify" the Internet. Hu apparently made no specific mention of censorship, saying China needed to "strengthen administration and development of our country's Internet culture.

• February 24, 2007: The Chinese government launches a nation-wide campaign to cure its young 'internet addicts' with treatments that included mild electric Shocks.

•In March 2007, access to the LiveJournal blogging service and Xanga blogging service from within China, are blocked. Also, the Government bans the opening of new Internet cafes this year while it enforces strict censorship and control of blogs in the country.

•On March 30, 2007, Amnesty International released its report on China titled "Undermining freedom of expression in China - the role of Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google terror" that stated that the IT giants have been collaborating with the Chinese authorities to curtail freedom of expression.

 

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It is still a great an upsetting question as to why the search giants like google, yahoo continue to assist the non-democratic and suppressive governments with the latest technologies. What is the catch? I wonder!
Netizen a @ Apr 09, 2007
i read somewhere last year that one can join freenet (freenet.sourceforge.net) to avoid such snooping.i tried to download it but it doesnt seem to work as one has to be connected to some kind of node set up by an existing user.concept sounds great though. can anyone in the tech2 team help?
jolly jack @ Apr 09, 2007
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