
Beijing Wants to Rewrite the Rules of the Internet - kshatrea
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/06/zte-huawei-china-trump-trade-cyber/563033/?single_page=true
======
gonvaled
By trying to make governments irrelevant, the big internet companies will end
up in the bin of history. I would say that it is understandable that China or
the EU are not happy to see how their tax revenue is siphoned out to the US
(in the best scenario) or to fiscal paradises (in the worst case).

A supra-national level of organization is desirable, with open networks and a
global community, but not the way we are doing it right now: currently a
handful of companies are amassing all the power, benefitting a very small
minority of workers (SV), collecting private information worldwide and
providing that information to the US government. It is not even illegal, as
Snowden thankfully revealed: US laws do not protect foreign nationals against
eavesdropping.

What else can we, in the rest of the world, do? Since the behemoth is
profitting from the global network but not contributing to its fairness, the
only option left is to break it up, and take care of our piece of the network.

The other, better option, would be to regulate all this at the supra-national
level. Sadly, we are entering a phase of nationalism, and that battle is
already lost.

~~~
tim333
I'm not sure Google, Facebook and the like are actively trying to make
government irrelevant or heading for the bin for that reason. Their core stuff
of providing search results or updates of what your friends are up to are kind
of separate from the core duties of governments of making laws.

I agree the tax situation is a problem and think govenments should change the
tax laws. Countries could estimate a fair tax for each multinational and tell
them pay it or be blocked. Its not really the problem of the CEOs who can only
really pay the tax required by law.

GDPR seems something of a success at regulating things supra-national level if
not perfect.

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superkuh
So does Europe. Article 13 up for vote today and GDPR already passed. To quote
the article, "Many of these elements serve a dual purpose: supporting domestic
industry while further closing off the internet."

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redbeard0x0a
I think GDPR is mostly good, it is a lot of work, but so is protecting
people's data. It is a law for individual's personal data. It is coming from
the right place.

Article 13 is for copyright owners, not individuals. Large corporations
benefit the most from this legislation.

~~~
derekp7
The goal of GDPR is good, but I think the biggest issue people have with it is
enforcing one countries laws in another country, where people following the
regulations had no say in them (regulation without representation).

Also, if I'm reading it right, one of the provisions Article 27) is that if
you are outside the EU, you need to hire someone inside the EU as a
representative / contact point for GDPR issues. If I'm running a one-man
business, there is no way that can happen.

The reason I'm concerned is that if I start a business providing support for
one of my open source products, and have something like a web forum, well then
I have user-generated content, so that would mean that I have to now hire
someone in the EU to act as a point of contact.

~~~
jacoblambda
Looking at the actual text, according to section 2(a) of GDPR Article 27†, a
representative is not required in the cases of small or occasional operations.
Basically, If you aren't a large corporation, it doesn't apply to you.

You still have to follow the majority of the Article but a representative is
not required.

† [http://www.privacy-regulation.eu/en/27.htm](http://www.privacy-
regulation.eu/en/27.htm)

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hevi_jos
It was only a matter of time.

Today computers like imacs, ipads, mobile phones or tvs(not even talking about
Alexa), clocks could spy on you in your house at every single time and give
the data back to home at the other side of the globe.

Your pulse could be monitored, your movement could be monitored, who you talk
with privately could be monitored, who you sleep with could be monitored.

Once this is possible it is a temptation so great for the US Government(or any
other Govertment) and status quo to resist.

It is only a matter of time that Governments react. Of course the other powers
of the wold want to do what the US Govertment already does.

Massive surveillance spying using technology created by companies of the same
country? Already done by the US.

Protecting sensitive data from outside Governments? Already done by the US.

Restricting companies from working in strategic sectors and forcing them to
provide source code? Already done by the US.

~~~
vorg
> Once this is possible it is a temptation so great for the US Government(or
> any other Govertment) and status quo to resist

You emphasized _Government_ but most surveillance in countries like the U.S.
and Australia/NZ is done by the _status quo_ of self-styled "community
leaders" spread across business, media, academia, religion, sports, and
government. They informally network with one another in bar drink ups, legal
war rooms, and prayer meetings, as well as surveil their targets and
disseminate their messages via misled employees. Workers at internet
providers, government departments, and vehicle leasing businesses provide
customer data to associates and "friends" all the time, and a wide variety of
channels such as news stories, entertainment, and social media are used to
spread manufactured narratives. When you add the extent of this informal
network to the formal U.S. government surveillance and interference, it could
equal the extent of China's. Such American and Australian actors also
frequently network with their "Chinese counterparts".

~~~
boznz
Dude, you really need to get out more.

~~~
vorg
> we can easily trivialize what you say with a reply questioning your sanity

You didn't make fun of the parent comment in the same way. Why is that?

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sunstone
This could be just the natural evolution of the internet. Early on the
internet needed a global scope to reach a critical mass. These days a critical
mass can be reached within a trading zone with not much (percentage wise)
value added outside of that. Also because equipment continues to get cheaper
the size of a viable critical mass is shrinking.

~~~
billiam
That this could be true makes me very sad.

~~~
iforgotpassword
Every time I take a step back and look at what the internet is today I am
simply amazed. That we could for once agree world wide on running this huge
thing together involving almost every country in existence. Leaving (recent)
developments like carrier grade Nat aside, we have a system that enables me to
address anybody anywhere on this planet directly and send them a data packet
that arrives within milliseconds.

I mean we had the same with phones or mail before but its still different
because the Internet is technically decentralized. Anyone could fuck around
badly with BGP, but it's mostly OK. DNS is completely optional or you could
roll your own, but everyone participates.

With phones, you just need to agree on the country codes and everything that
happens after that is everyone's own business. Mail even more so, you drop it
off somewhere at the destination country and then it will involve varying
amounts of manual processing to further distribute it. It just feels
different.

~~~
workinthehead
I don't think it's accurate to consider the internet decentralized. Consider
the entire domain name system is under ICANN control with a couple dozen root
servers. Or the backbone which is almost entirely owned by Level3, Cogent, and
a few other regional carriers.

Redundant is nice, but it's not decentralized.

~~~
wsinks
Did you mean redundant (not or no longer needed or useful; superfluous) or
resilient (able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions)?

:)

~~~
TeMPOraL
redundant - /Engineering/ (of a component) not strictly necessary to
functioning but included in case of failure in another component.

------
TimJYoung
Those that know their history better could expand upon this, but isn't this
what happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s where globalization peaked and
then gave way to nationalism/protectionism ?

Perhaps we're just dealing with a natural cycle of trade expansion followed by
protectionism.

~~~
Tharkun
Perhaps it is a natural cycle, but that doesn't mean we have to stop fighting
it.

~~~
TimJYoung
I think you misunderstood me. What I'm saying is that perhaps we _are_ in the
fighting portion of the cycle where free trade has reached some extreme where
individual nations feel like they need to rein it in a bit in order to retain
their autonomy.

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rektide
SESTA & GDPR just did. I'm generally in favor of the ideas of GDPR but these
countries are all imposing ridiculous constraints that crush & quell the very
small would be's & gdpr especially is vulgarly pathetically unilateral. But
SESTA is truly vile. Some safe harbor is required & the US fucking wrecked it.
That China wants to rewrite is a comedy compared to what the west did in two
thousand fucking eighteen. Lordy lordy do have mercy we got proper fucked by
the rules rewrites this year.

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BLKNSLVR
There's nothing mentioned in this article that's either a new type of strategy
or anything limited to China.

Three objectives:

1\. _legitimate desire to address substantial cybersecurity challenges, like
defending against cyber attacks and keeping stolen personal data off the black
market_

2\. _support domestic industry, in order to wean the government off its
dependence on foreign technology components for certain IT products deemed
essential to economic and national security_

3\. _expand Beijing’s power to surveil and control the dissemination of
economic, social, and political information online_

Replace Beijing with <country's capital city> in #3 and all of those points
sound like what Western countries are doing. There's nothing noteworthy in
those three points. What's noteworthy is that #3 is becoming prevalent in
countries that consider themselves 'free'.

Other things listed, such as employing people to manipulate content, is done
elsewhere, but it's done by private companies rather than 'the state'. Not
new, but the singular direction makes this stand out in a 1984 way. The
Tanzania example is just a modernised version of the US' manifest destiny
behaviour in Central America and other 'strategic' nations ( _cough_ Ukraine
_cough_ ).

Where China is a leader, others are (often hypocritically) following. Where
they're a follower, the leading has been done by the West.

" _China’s control-driven model defies international openness,
interoperability, and collaboration, the foundations of global internet
governance and, ultimately, of the internet itself._ "

Replace China with "Facebook" or "Google" or even "Apple" or "Microsoft" and
the sentence still rings true. Singularly calling China out smells like fairly
blatant propaganda.

Openness, interoperability, and collaboration are utopian ideals of the
Internet that were achieved when the Internet was a network of universities
and scientific institutions back in the late 80's, up until "view your trolley
/ Checkout" was a thing. Profit is what's re-written the Rules of the
Internet. Why else would it be so full of ads?

The nation states have just followed the money.

------
jensv
Kind of an odd error message.

" Looks like you are offline

You'll need to check back here once you have restored your connection. Thanks
for your patience. "

But you're clearly online if you can see the error message....

~~~
swsieber
I think Web workers can actually do that if you've visited the site once
before, even if you can't connect now.

~~~
vanadium
Service Workers, probably.

~~~
swsieber
Doh, you are right. That's what I was thinking of.

------
cityhomesteader
Europe has been rewriting the rules of the internet for a while. It's amazing
how europe/EU is getting a pass when it comes to censorship. Not to mention
what our corporations and our media have been doing.

The problems with the internet isn't china. It's our media and our government
but for some odd reason, all I hear is "china/beijing".

Is beijing the reason why there is so much censorship? Is beijing the reason
why google search is so terrible? Is it beijing why there is so much
censorship of the social media and the rest of the internet in the west? Of
course not. The real reason is News Corp, NYTimes, WashingtonPost, The
Atlantic along with corporate america and their stooges in the government.

Try googling anything. Half of the frontpage is now links to nytimes,
washingtonpost, cnn and rest of the media.

I remember googling for yanny vs laurel not too long ago. Do you know what the
top result was? A nytimes article. It wasn't the original instagram post. It
wasn't the reddit post that made it go viral. It was a nytimes post. And
almost all the results on the first page of google were links to news
companies. I've been using google search since the late 90s. It's pathetic
what google search has become. Youtube is going down the same path.

I'd take the atlantic a bit more seriously if they did an article about
themselves or the rest of the media in regards to the rewriting of the rules
of the internet. The biggest supporters of censorship and destruction of the
internet is the media in the west.

~~~
camgunz
This is whataboutism. Nothing the West does compares to China's firewall and
blanket surveillance, even if we stipulate we live in a corporatocracy and
include the private surveillance of Facebook, Google, et al (which would make
for an unfair comparison). I'm no apologist for the West's behavior or any of
the things you point out, but let's not try and minimize the human rights
violations China's committing -- and actually proud of, for what it's worth.

~~~
jexah
I think the point was something like JP's "clean your room before you try to
change the world".

Let's fix our system before we go grand-standing about China.

------
pnathan
> This alternative would include technical standards requiring foreign
> companies to build versions of their products compliant with Chinese
> standards, and pressure to comply with government surveillance policies. It
> would require data to be stored on servers in-country and restrict transfer
> of data outside China without government permission. It would also permit
> government agencies and critical infrastructure systems to source only from
> local suppliers.

That is the trend in the EU and US as well. Cyber protectionism, more or less.

To be crystal clear: a nation's critical infrastructure that is produced or
designed in places which are neutral or quasi-hostile to that nation is
suspect. It's perfectly reasonable for China to want its critical
infrastructure supply chain local.

It's _also_ perfectly reasonable to mandate that products sold in China be
compliant with Chinese standards.

The open question is what constitutes "transfer of data". And, to again be
crystal clear: China is notorious for abuse of human rights and for being at
the forefront of applied digital surveillance of its citizens. Which is a
shame.

> we cannot take for granted that the internet will remain a place of free
> expression where open markets can flourish.

The internet has not been a place of genuinely free expression for something
like a decade now; platform operators set boundaries. Note that open markets
are disjunct from free expression.

> . At a roundtable in Dar es Salaam sponsored by Beijing, Edwin Ngonyani,
> Tanzania’s deputy minister for transport and communications, explained, “Our
> Chinese friends have managed to block such media in their country and
> replaced them with their homegrown sites that are safe, constructive, and
> popular.” Among other countries where China invests heavily, Nigeria has
> adopted measures requiring that consumer data be hosted in Nigeria, while
> Egypt has pending legislation that would mandate ride-sharing companies to
> store data in-country while also making it more accessible to authorities.
> Chinese partners like Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt engage in aggressive online
> content control.

Notice that there are benefits here: citizens' data is being stored in a
country where they have jurisdiction to sue over misuse. I consider that a
Good Thing. But censorship, again, is problematic. The desire to be an
individual entails being wanting to able to say and write what you desire,
regardless of the government's censorship (and China does have people who want
this- it is not special in this regard!)

> foundational principles of the internet in market-based democracies:

how disgusting a word choice! we're not liberal (free) democracies, we're
market (to be bought and sold) democracies.

~~~
throwaway37585
Markets are a prerequisite for liberal democracy.

~~~
pnathan
> Markets are a prerequisite for liberal democracy.

That is an assertion, and my recollection of history suggests that is not the
case. Would you mind backing that up?

~~~
throwaway37585
Can you give an example of a liberal democracy without markets?

~~~
pnathan
Mmm- no, I don't think that's how this works. You're dodging the question.

(markets have multiple definitions. a bazaar or person to person trade has
existed as an independent variable of governance. a stock market ("the market"
usually referred to in these sorts of articles) exists today in a wide variety
of modern governance, from authoritarian to liberal. Arguably Athens had a
liberal democracy, but no stock market)

~~~
throwaway37585
> Mmm- no, I don't think that's how this works.

How what works?

> You're dodging the question.

I'm not. Every liberal democracy I know of has a market economy.

> a stock market ("the market" usually referred to in these sorts of articles)

Why should "markets" refer exclusively to stock markets? What about the most
essential type of market: commodities? Markets have existed for millenia,
since humans began to trade.

> exists today in a wide variety of modern governance, from authoritarian to
> liberal

I didn't say liberal democracy is a prerequisite for markets (and I don't
think it is). I said markets are a prerequisite for liberal democracy.

> Arguably Athens had a liberal democracy, but no stock market

But they had markets, which agrees with what I said. In fact, ancient Athens
engaged extensively in trade. It's one of the major reasons it became an
important center of culture, arts, and philosophy.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
Western companies filter out “hate speech”. Chinese companies do the same. In
China, the definition of “hate speech” also includes anything that is critical
of the government or Xi Jinping.

~~~
garmaine
My ISP doesn’t filter hate speach, and it’d better damn stay that way.

~~~
jerf
You ISP may not, but plenty of other filtering is going on on social media,
YouTube, and all sorts of other sites. I say this without commentary on
whether it's good or bad, but it is _definitely_ happening.

------
peterwwillis
By requiring connections to be end-to-end encrypted (by pushing for HTTPS and
other strong encryption methods), web architects have forced nations into an
all-or-nothing position. They must completely control their slice of the
internet, because otherwise they can't accomplish their goals. The future is
fragmented, incompatible internets.

If protocols and services were designed instead to allow a measure of control
at a high level, these nations could still do all the things they're going to
do anyway, but allow the internet to remain open. For example, data wouldn't
need to remain within a nation's borders if the nation still had control over
it, at least within their own networks. They wouldn't have to create their own
Facebook if they could manipulate Facebook inside their borders. You could
still have cooperative compatible services, with controls where they were
required.

I guess it's western ideals that make these suggestions sound horrible. But
different countries are going to work differently - the fracturing of the
internet and laws governing its use is the proof of that. You can choose your
response: pick up your toys and go home, or make concessions so that everyone
can use the same toys.

~~~
unethical_ban
Welcome the free world to play with our toys. It is all-or-nothing. You can't
stop math.

~~~
iforgotpassword
Too bad everyone thinks they are the true free world and everyone else got it
wrong.

~~~
phicoh
With end-to-end encryption it is easy to tell: the free world is where end-to-
end encryption is unrestricted.

~~~
peterwwillis
Actually the free world is all non-Communist countries. It's a propaganda term
invented by the west (literally they were interchangeable, "free world" and
"western world"). You can still see this influence as the use of the phrase
"the leader of the free world" is exclusively held for the President of the
United States.

The "free world" as a broader idea is still kind of useless in the modern
world. Your government may not have made end-to-end encryption illegal (yet)
but as private corporations actually run everything that people use, they get
to impose their own will and determine your practical "freedom". There's no
law preventing Apple from changing its encryption technology.

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bayfullofrays
This isn't totally bad. China has shown that it is possible to both offer an
environment that fosters startups and online communities operating to their
maximum creative potential while policing for things that incite hate, forms
of bigotry, and ideas that create dangerous divisions. While China isn't
perfect, I wouldn't mind if America was made less influential when it comes to
the Internet.

~~~
throwaway37585
> things that incite hate, forms of bigotry, and ideas that create dangerous
> divisions

Is that a euphemism for “anything the Communist party dislikes”?

~~~
vfulco2
A clear and present danger. Youth are being exposed and educated to a much
higher level today. They know full well the uselessness of such dogma and
warped thinking.

