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Global Social Media: China

Surveillance and Censorship Beyond the Great Firewall

People outside of China normally thinks that the internet censorship practices of the Chinese are primarily domestic, performed through the famous “The Great Firewall of China” - a surveillance system and internet blocking technology that stop the China citizens from accessing websites and application outside of the country. Chinese government explains that the reason for the firewall is based on the concept of “Internet Sovereignty” (O’Brien 2019).

Well as for Hong Kong, part of the “one country, two systems” agreement, has the freedom of internet access outside of that firewall. The Hong Kong citizens are able to access platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google without interference.

With the ongoing restless Hong Kong protests, and China’s extensive attempts to stop the movement globally, have emphasized that China is not trying to expand their reach beyond their borders. China are now trying to stop the protest by revealing the tools that can be used to silent the criticism and protest worldwide.

The “Great Cannon” Targets Sites Outside of The Firewall

The Great Cannon is a web tool technology that China ISP (Internet Service Provider) uses to attack foreign websites. What is basically does is inject JavaScitpt code into customers’ insecure internet request (Citizen Lab Team 2015). This code was placed in the citizens internet connections and when it detects that the user is accessing blocked websites, the user’s browsers then run the government's malicious JavaScript without the user knowing. The execution of the code will potentially bring the website down.

According to O’Brien (2019), the Great Cannon had took down the website Github, where Chinese users were hosting anti-censorship software and provide access to banned news outlets such as New York Times.

Just in September this year, the Great Cannon launched another cyber attack, targeting specifically at the Hong Kong protestors. It was proven that the attack was indeed from the Great Canon as the internet experts were able to trace it back to the Chinese ISP companies (Lam 2019) . It successfully took down LIHKG for some time, it is an Hong Kong social media platform where the Hong Kong citizens used to organize their protests.

So, Is China setting the Standard for Global Enforcement of Local Law?

It is clear that “Internet Sovereignty” is not enough to meet China’s needs. It require Internet control both inside and outside of its borders. China now shows its Internet capabilities worldwide with its extensive use of malware, government-supported DoS (Denial of Service) attacks, client-side filtering and surveillance.

In my opinion, it is crucial that the lawmakers, corporations, and internet users to be brave and make their stand as an authoritarian like the people of Hong Kong. If not the concept of the great firewall might be adopted by other countries, and limits the freedom of every user on the internet.

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