Chinese arrest 9,000 cyber-crims Chinese police have smashed over 700 cyber crime gangs and arrested nearly 9,000 alleged criminals. The Ministry of Public Security – or police force, to you and me – announced confidently that it had cracked 4,400 criminal cases in its bid to "earnestly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the masses of the people …
I was wondering where all my spammers had gone, and I hope it's a long time passing before any of them show up again. Let me note that I am predicating that on a potentially risky belief that the Chinese authorities aren't going to execute any of them or anything really drastic. Even sociopathic spammers are sort of human, after all.
Also I should clarify that it isn't all the spammers, but I do track the spammers on two accounts and I had noticed drops and that the residual headers showed much less activity from China than I would have expected. It kind of makes you wonder how such visible criminals can survive. The essence of their crimes is to be visible to as many unknown people as possible, and it's not like they can avoid letting ALL of the police see them in action. From that perspective, I suppose the real question is "Why now? Why did China suddenly decide to cut it off?" I don't think it can be just because they were worried about the bad publicity.
Conspiracy time? Could it be somehow related to the American election? Romney's buddy Sheldon Adelson asked his Chinese business partners to fix things so that his candidate's reams of spam will be more visible over the next few weeks? President Obama threatened to sic Hillary on them for a similar reason? China is rounding up the spammers to auction their services to the highest bidders in support of any candidates?
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.. because it's exactly because the legal system is slower than a snail over coarse sandpaper that such extortion rackets exist. If you publish negative and untrue content in print, it takes time and preparation - this stuff can be online in seconds.
In addition, as we have seen in the Australian case, you can prejudice a nation's justice system with such manipulations by simple jurisdiction shopping.
Unfortunately, I don't have an answer. I can see the point of only being compliant with your own laws too, but there must be a happy middle somewhere, and I too am absolutely no fan of random censorship. In some cases it makes sense, but it is a power that must be wielded rarely and transparently, like the blanking of news about IRA bombing in the 80s.
Did you really just put transparency and censorship in the same paragraph? I'd laugh, but I think you might be serious.
Censorship should NEVER be tolerated. Neither you, nor anyone else, has the power to infringe upon another person's right to express themselves or share information. Even if you don't like this information. Either ignore it or, if it's illegal, act upon the author using the current legal frameworks.
Neither you, nor anyone else, has the power to infringe upon another person's right to express themselves or share information.
I quote:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
That's just an example (it's from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 12) - there are more arguments available. No "right" is universal and without matching obligations. This is one of the entertaining things that has been happening of late: people hollering loudly about their rights, but ignoring the fact that such rights always come with obligations.
Now, if you want to claim that the request to abide by your obligations amounts to censorship you ought to look very carefully at what sort of world that creates. Am I happy with censorship or even remotely in support of it? No. Do I understand why it is in some cases worth considering? Definitely. If such measure is the result of a carefully balanced legal process than I have, as a responsible and law abiding citizen, an obligation to abide by this - that is the price of living in a democratic society.
I see what you did there.
Re-editing - that oh-so-needed feature to handle the kind of errors that %&ç* auto-correct throws in when you press "Save". Because I work on many systems, not all of them have that crap killed in all apps - I *hate* it with a deep purple passion, almost as much as auto-formatting..
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