China and Internet/Cyber-Censorship Issue

airsuperiority said:

I thought about this too, and that's why I said terrible PR campaign. Whereas Western states produce their equivalent of various surveillance bills and laws, NONE had been so explicit or that extensive and arbitrary in terms of trying to touch you all over. They either do it behind your back and quietly, or pass bills with implicits and sufficient ambiguity or at least not so overt in saying I'll look at everything you do. China on the other hand, is totally different, and doing it the worse way possible.

While I also disagree with Harper or Patriot Act or NSA or other Western intelligence sneaky peeky actions, they again at least do put/give enough Fs about the public sentiments and the public, HRW groups, activists can actually voice about it. China's like, right in your face about it, and not caring what you think at all.

Also the issues with these bills is, often they're left ambiguous in terms of avoiding key words that can flare you up, so in other words at least they don't seem to state directly gonna take away your privacies and rights. The same sword is that also you won't know if your rights could potentially be in jeopardy and also the duration of the bill in effect. Thus why wordings are on the top of critic's minds while ambiguity and duration are often for concerned citizens and activists' primary concerns..all of which they have good reasons in investigating.

And again there's no knowing for sure if this is merely for counterterrorism or for cracking down on other voices critical of the government. Also if given the contexts of how it was framed, there's barely any gesture this is for CT-related rather than for general-purpose.

Finally, China as authoritarian with terrible track records up to recent years when it comes to human rights and censorship makes them have even less social points, credibility, and trusts in terms off this field. Again as I've mentioned in a previous thread....even IF China means for the best(and by the scheme of things of this bill,it doesn't feel so), they have such terrible impression and history and issues with people not trusting them, that what they do will always not be assumed too generously by others and for good reasons. And also often when they make a gesture, it's gestures like this type of bill which just makes them worse off.

And just to drag a little off-topic, the same goes with how HK government makes public statements the past year. They would say things that are too high profile, sound extremely pretentious and flamebait people more than anything. For example after incidents of police brutality that was also reported in the latest HRW report, public officials, rather than say things like "we will investigate" or make more cautious statements, they said things "the police handling of the event was like a kind mother handling a child", when you still have people recovering from broken bones from police baton strikes. It's lip services like these that makes the government even less credible, creates even more anger for their shameless statements. You don't see the States department or Canadian politicians saying these things, and when they do, they also get sh!t for it and the politicians usually come out apologizing.

Sometimes I just lose hope in this country, and I'm losing hope in HK gov't with this impotent administration, and also the Harper regime. Ugh

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