Blog Topic Number 6

ABC's Cracking the Great Firewall.
     The article I found was published just before the Olympic games and talks about the Chinese effort to censor the internet usage of their people intensifying before the games began.  They talked about some of the terms that you may search such as the three T's or even some terms than were completely out there and held no significance to me such as 'oriental red space time' being censored.  I wondered what would happen in China if you did search for these things, and the article answers that by saying a page saying 'content unavailable' may appear or you may simple just not get certain results you would get here in America from the same search.  I was interested when they talked about other countries who use internet censorship relying on technology and intimidation or fear tactics to be successful, such as Iran for example.  However, as they say in the article, no one does it quite like China and they are able to rely on some pretty advanced technology and software, and a whole section of computer savvy government workers to successfully get the job done for them.
     This point can be seen when they interview a Chinese born American citizen from North Carolina who helps in a sort of technology race against their censorship firewall.  He says they are very fast and are able to overcome their advances very quickly.  China now has surpassed the number of internet users in the U.S. but with this firewall in place, they will never be able to know what it is truly like to experience free flow of information and will be stunted somewhat in globalization.  I have a hunch that this firewall will not be tolerated by the people of China for much longer.
     I also wanted to include the following article written about China cracking down on social networking site usage in their country.
China cracks down on social networking
     As well as the following video of China's conflicts with Google recently over the issue of cecorship, all these thing illustrate the wide array of the length China truly goes to in order to keep information from its people.