Wall Street Journal: Hackers May Get U.S. Funds To Fight China's Web Curbs [Excerpt]

November 6, 2002

If some lawmakers in the U.S. get their way, freedom-promoting computer hackers soon may receive a bucketful of money to battle China's Internet-censoring police.

Christopher Cox, a House Republican from California, introduced legislation in early October that would create an Office of Global Internet Freedom and spend $100 million over two years to fund efforts to develop censorship-busting technology. China would be the main focus in Asia, but Vietnam, Burma, Laos and North Korea also would be targets.

Mr. Cox and his co-sponsors trumpet in their draft bill that "the Internet stands to become the most powerful engine for democratization and free exchange of ideas ever invented."

The congressman's goals are lauded by human-rights activists, champions of a free Internet and opponents of China's Communist leadership, but many computer experts and China specialists have reservations about whether throwing so much money at the problem will work. "I'm skeptical that any of the measures can be so effective that they can't be counteracted" by Chinese authorities, says a senior official of the U.S. administration.

Analysts say the software being developed may help Chinese users circumvent official blocks. But they add that their activities may still be detectable by the authorities, leaving these users less protected than they believe and vulnerable to reprisals, including imprisonment.

Chinese officials have long been torn about whether to view the Internet as an engine to boost economic growth or as a subversive threat that could undermine the ruling Communist Party. According to a recent study by the Rand Corp. think tank, China has about 46 million Internet users, while at least 25 people have been arrested in the past two years for online activities. And after a deadly fire in an Internet cafe in Beijing earlier this year, the authorities closed thousands of Internet cafes and demanded that those allowed to reopen install surveillance and firewall software to block [...] Web sites [that Jiang's regime dislikes].

The Communist Party has always seen the media's primary role as rallying public support for the party and its policies. So when the Internet came along, it was no surprise that the party wanted to control it, too, even as it recognized the Internet's economic and educational benefits. [...]

In an apparent bid to control users, China in late August blocked access to the Google Internet search engine for a brief period, diverting users to local Chinese search engines instead. In recent weeks, Beijing has shifted tactics again, opening some previously blocked Web sites but making it impossible for users to open documents on those sites that relate to China.

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