- BEIJING (Sapa-AFP) -- China
plans to set up a national surveillance system for Internet cafes and let
a small number of companies run most of them, in a move that was immediately
criticised as yet another attempt at online control.
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- Measures to "standardise" the management of
Internet cafes are already in place in two provinces in southwest China,
and the whole nation will be covered by 2005, the Beijing Morning Post
reported.
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- "We are actively pushing an 'Internet cafe technology
management system', requiring the whole nation to adopt the same standard
and each province the same software," said Liu Yuzhu, a culture ministry
official.
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- The paper did not give details about how the software
would enhance control over what people watch in the country's 110,000 Internet
cafes.
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- However, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said
it would make it possible to collect personal data on Internet users, store
a record of the webpages they visit, and alert authorities when they view
unlawful content.
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- The culture ministry also plans to introduce the chainstore
concept into the business, letting up to a hundred companies run the vast
majority of Internet cafes, the paper said.
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- Reporters Without Borders said the new measures could
serve as a model for other repressive governments.
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- "By putting the Internet cafes under the management
of a few, partly state-owned companies and by standardising the surveillance
equipment installed by the chainstores, the Chinese authorities are making
it easier to censor the Internet," said Robert Menard, the group's
secretary general.
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- There were roughly 68 million Internet users in China
at the end of June, putting the world's most populous nation second behind
the United States in terms of people online.
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- The Internet explosion is both a blessing and a curse
for the Chinese government, which wants people to be more tech-savvy without
absorbing too many foreign ideas or spreading subversive messages online.
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- Internet users are frequently jailed for posting articles
critical of the government.
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- China has formulated a policy of developing the Internet
while concurrently limiting the content of Chinese sites and restricting
access to some foreign sites.
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- The government passed a law last year that places the
burden of responsibility for content on Internet access providers.
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