MindBytes

I have already written an article about the monitoring and control of the internet by the Chinese government. Now an interesting finding from the research carried by Pew Internet and American Life Project ,shows that most chinese approve of the control of the government on the internet medium. Many Americans and people all over the world have been assuming that chinese arent happy about the Internet control , but they have been proved wrong. In the survey carried out ,

• 80% of the Chinese think that Internet should be managed and controlled

• 85% say that Government should be responsible for this

The report brings out various other statistics about the internet usage within China. The research report is available on the website for further study

I have been reading over lot of articles about the the Chinese control over media which includes all the mediums. Now when i actually think about the way this is being managed, it must be a heavy job for the law enforcers in the country. I beleive the Olympic games coordinators in the country have requested the Government to open up the internet gateways during the Olympic Games as a good will gesture. A company like Google, with a high global presence, has also been forced to listen to the Chinese terms and conditions to operate in the country i.e., the Google Search Engine results are completely filtered. If you actually search for any information on Tibetan protests , not a single article comes out of the Chinese Web portals . If everyone remembers, around last year, there was an article in the Indian News papers about the satellite image of the “Presidents Estate – Rashtrapathi Bhavans ” on Google Earth ( The software used to view the satellite images ). This was definetly a breach of National Security. Now when Google was told to drop such images , it never bothered to do so. Even today , on Google earth, one can easily sift through the satellite images of various places which are of National importance. Such is the India’s control over the media. Now coming back to Google, which proclaims itself to be a pure Organic Search engine and has denied on various occasions that the results are not tweaked and tampered……..this has to been seen with in a wider perspective.

I just recently read an article talking about FBI concerns about counterfiet CISCO Network switches made in China , sold by the Gold/Silver Partners of CISCO to US Federal government agencies.This information was based on a presentation made by the FBI on an investigation into the incident wherein this fraud came to light.Now whether there is a hidden objective behind this or not is noy yet known. The switches have been sold to numeorous government agencies. Now this can be a real concern in India also.Now the question is when these sales are executed through the Gold/Silver partners of CISCO, how does the government check this whether these are OEM certified or look alikes??? First of all we do not have adequate expertise in the Government Quality Control Systems , which are going to do this.How does CISCO check , whether the gold /Silver partners are not selling any counterfiet Switches?? Are there any checks in place…I dont think so that this happens cos i never heard of such a thing.A Network switch in a government organisation can be very dangerous as it can give access to the complete network thereafter. Moreover, how will you know if there is any malicious program running inside these network switches? these questions do not have any answers or are there any???

Now ill tell you something interesting , I have a broadband connection from MTNL(National ISP) wherein they have given me a Chinese broadband modem. I regularly see that , in my router there are lots of intrusions from IP addresses originating from China..Infact i do not know how many people have actually seen their Broadband log while working in the night or left ideal for few hours. Chinese are really proactive in network intrusions and hacking (A Sports site , thought to be associated with CNN has been hacked yesterday by a Chinese University) in protests against Olympic Torch boycott movement in certain European countries.