blog 7&8

1) In fys we have been talking a lot about the censorship of the internet in china. China’s government has been blocking websites, programs and even search engines in order to block out ideologies different than that of the Chinese government. The people obviously do not like this. Many of the websites and search engines the Chinese use are American made and run. Many Americans don’t like this because it shows that we are giving in, in a way, to the corrupt government of China.
The U.S. government should ban sales of technology to China that would be censored. Censoring the internet is a violation of the human right of freedom of speech. How would it look that a country founded on the freedom of the people was supporting a system where the government controls and has all the power? This will be good for both us and China. Hopefully it will force China into changing their ways to improve their internet quality and it will help keep our integrity of the companies that went over to China and had to forfeit their rights. Even the companies that are doing this said they aren’t happy about the situation but it’s the best possible one. What better way to show this than to boycott their system. Which side are we going to fight on? Are we gonna side with the over powering government or the people that make up the country and are the real reason we talk about this today?
This could also be bad. There are many hackers and proxies used now but kids and adults in order to get around the “great firewall of China.” If the surveillance is taken away, how much power will the people want next? Sort of like give them an inch they will want a mile. Also this is the Chinese government’s decision, why are we so special that we can tell them how they want the views of their people to be. They don’t try to convert is to their ideologies. These companies that are working in China are some of the largest named corporations in our country; Yahoo, Cisco, Google and Microsoft. Taking them out of the largest populated country would be a significant loss to the United States in a sales view. People come here and they adhere to our laws why should it be any different when we do business there?
I still think we shouldn’t let them censor our systems. It’s against everything our country believes in. Think about how much the Chinese population is being effected. There could be some great ideologists and modern day philosophers in China, but because they are having their resources limited, they are basically losing knowledge. A human being should have the freedom to free though t and learning and to choose what they believe in, not have it be chosen by the government in which they live.

2) Microblogs are ways for people to interact throughout the web through links, posts, videos, etc. Microblogs are a serious part of the growing social media and most people rely on them to give or receive information. The Chinese people probably use these the most. Due to the intensive watchful eye of the Chinese government the people are allowed very limited rights when it comes to the internet. Constant surveillance and ongoing censorship prevent many citizens from connecting to each other like the rest of the world does. This sort of isolates the people from the world and effects there ability to learn new ideas and get facts about certain events. According to the article “www. (censored)” the Chinese government employs thousands of people to site at a computer and read what people are searching and looking up and if the government finds it not suitable they can block them. This is in accordance to the 750,000 filters that are already in place to block citizens from looking up information the government doesn’t want them to know about. The filter such sites like “China Digital Times.” After a deadly train crash occurred people wanted their questions answered, like how did this happen, or how many survivors are there? Statements were released by the government but they were very inconsistent. On this websites thousand if not millions of messages were sent through this microblog about the lack of information the government would give out. People continued this for days and they still don’t know the correct answer. Many think that with sites like this and many other microblogs, that the people of China can obtain freedom of the internet. How would they do this? This is still unclear to me, maybe by pressure and showing the government they can proxy themselves anywhere wil change their mind. Or maybe overtime and increase in influence can bring someone into power that can eventually give this freedom to the people that much so deserve it. I think it’s a sort of lost cause. Because until someone elected to power with the views to do this happens, the people still suffer. And the likelihood of someone being elected to power is very unlikely because due to their governmental structure the people in power now would not allow such a thing to occur.