{"id":4214,"date":"2015-01-05T19:11:13","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T00:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=4214"},"modified":"2015-01-05T19:11:13","modified_gmt":"2015-01-06T00:11:13","slug":"whos-the-true-enemy-of-internet-freedom-china-russia-or-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/whos-the-true-enemy-of-internet-freedom-china-russia-or-the-us","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s the true enemy of internet freedom – China, Russia, or the US?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Google<\/a>Evgeny Morozov<\/p>\n

Beijing and Moscow are rightly chastised for restricting their citizens\u2019 online access \u2013 but it\u2019s the US that is now even more aggressive in asserting its digital sovereignty
\nBeijing has restricted Gmail’s reach in China. Photograph: Sinopix\/Rex Features<\/p>\n

Saturday 3 January 2015 19.04 EST<\/p>\n

Recent reports that China has imposed further restrictions on Gmail, Google\u2019s flagship email service, should not really come as much of a surprise. While Chinese users have been unable to access Gmail\u2019s site for several years now, they were still able to use much of its functionality, thanks to third-party services such as Outlook or Apple Mail.<\/p>\n

This loophole has now been closed (albeit temporarily \u2013 some of the new restrictions seem to have been mysteriously lifted already), which means determined Chinese users have had to turn to more advanced circumvention tools. Those unable or unwilling to perform any such acrobatics can simply switch to a service run by a domestic Chinese company \u2013 which is precisely what the Chinese government wants them to do.<\/p>\n

Such short-term and long-term disruptions of Gmail connections are part of China\u2019s long-running efforts to protect its technological sovereignty by reducing its citizens\u2019 reliance on American-run communication services. After North Korea saw its internet access blacked out temporarily in the Interview brouhaha \u2013 with little evidence that the country actually had anything to do with the massive hacking of Sony \u2013 the concept of technological sovereignty is poised to emerge as one of the most important and contentious doctrines of 2015.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just the Chinese: the Russian government is pursuing a similar agenda. A new law that came into effect last summer obliges all internet companies to store Russian citizens\u2019 data on servers inside the country. This has already prompted Google to close down its engineering operations in Moscow. The Kremlin\u2019s recent success in getting Facebook to block a page calling for protests in solidarity with the charged activist Alexey Navalny indicates that the government is rapidly re-establishing control over its citizens\u2019 digital activities.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s hardly a global defeat for Google: the company is still expanding elsewhere, building communications infrastructure that extends far beyond simple email services. Thus, as South American countries began exploring plans to counter NSA surveillance with a fibre optic network of their own that would reduce their reliance on the US, Google opened its coffers to fund a $60m undersea cable connecting Brazil to Florida.
\nFor detail please visit here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evgeny Morozov Beijing and Moscow are ri … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[1343,305],"views":3759,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4214"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4217,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4214\/revisions\/4217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}