China ponders creating a national 'cyberspace ID' Beijing may soon issue "cyberspace IDs" to its citizens, after floating a proposal for the scheme last Friday. Although the policy is only open for comments and not certain to be adopted, the IDs would serve to "protect citizens' personal information, regulate the public service for authentication of cyberspace IDs, and …
In which country can you sign up to an ISP without giving a real name and address? How are they going to serve you if they dont have that info? At least where I live, even pre-paid telephones require submission of ID's. Is that not a requirement, pretty much everywhere?
Online services, absolutely dont need real info. And I could see a potential benefit for having a single portal, as then the various Tech firms dont get any info to sell on, except an ID. Although lets be honest they'll probably track that to build up a profile they can sell on anyway. Hopefully, that would be forbidden in any legislation setting this up, but who knows...
But then we all know that the Chinese Government aren't interested in this for the benefits of the Chinese people, only the benefit of the CCP. It's for control and going after dissidents, that's all.
It might be slightly funny, if this does gets implemented though. If a Malware/Phishing campaign can be directly tied to a specific Chinese IP Address, it will be funny to hear what excuses the Chinese Government comes up with for why they cant possibly identify the Malware scum, despite having all of this lovely tracking info available...
But the point is it's just an address. Who lives there is, according to the supplier, just the name on the bill. If 24 people live in your address, this "privacy measure" would allow you to all sign on with your unique biometrics. Connecting to a public wi-fi? Just use your state-issued biometric id. Logging onto Facepalm, X(?), your "private" email or whatever - just use that state issued id.
It's great in theory and only becomes a problem when you have something to hide, however minor or insignificant that may be but is disliked by the current state overseers ... like daring to email a jpg of Pooh Bear.
I was responding to this statement in the article (and I assume so did lglethal):
> ISPs are required to collect the real names and ID numbers when customers sign up for services
It does not talk about people using the connection, but about people *signing up for services*. And the ISP definitely has identifying personal information about them. Whether it specifically includes some kind of national ID or not is irrelevant – they have sufficient personal data regardless.
I take issue with the often peddled assert of "only bad people have something to hide" (I'm not saying you're making this assertion, just adding to your post). Everyone has something, to hide, some of it small, some of it bigger (depending on what they're into).
In the words of Glenn Greenwald in his 2014 TED Talk "Why privacy matters", which has retained its relevance:
> Over the last 16 months, as I’ve debated this issue around the world, every single time somebody has said to me, “I don’t really worry about invasions of privacy because I don’t have anything to hide.” I always say the same thing to them. I get out a pen, I write down my email address. I say, “Here’s my email address. What I want you to do when you get home is email me the passwords to all of your email accounts, not just the nice, respectable work one in your name, but all of them, because I want to be able to just trawl through what it is you’re doing online, read what I want to read and publish whatever I find interesting. After all, if you’re not a bad person, if you’re doing nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide.” Not a single person has taken me up on that offer."
Put simply, a world in which every law is always or can always be enforced because the Powers of the Day have full visibility in all your activities, would be a world in which everyone was a criminal, which is useful if you want to be able to 'spirit away' anyone you deem a nuisance. That type of world is called a Totalitarian State. And while today you may think you're part of said Totalitarian State's in-group, you'll soon find out how quickly you can become part of its out-group.
Iglethal,
It's pretty easy to get on the internet anoymously. I don't think there are any ISPs in the UK you can pay for with some sort of pre-paid card / voucher - and given you're wired to a specific address - anonymity isn't exactly easy. But you could use a Mobile phone / 5G modem on a Pay-as-you-Go tariff paid for with pre-pay phone cards with cash. I presume China's laws mean that mobile companies will have to get a name and ID number on all phones.
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but when I had a Pay-as-you-go tariff in the UK, I think I still had to provide ID in order to get the number in the first place...
Admittedly, that's almost 20 years ago (way to make myself feel old!), so maybe I'm remembering wrong, or maybe the rules have changed since then... Maybe it was also because I was a dirty foreigner... :P Perhaps the rules are different for Brits...
I don't think (I've not used one in 20 years) that you're required to give information to get a Pay-&-Go SIM. But the shops want your details to send you marketing. I've never produced ID - and I've had several Pay-&-Go phones - which go on the company SIM and I claim on expenses. Many SIM-free phones I've bought came with a Pay-&-Go SIM as well - but I never refused to give my info, so don't know oif they'd have then refused to sell it.
For a land-line your location is pretty fundamental. For mobile it depends on how much the gov demands (and companies actually check) ID for a SIM card, and in the UK it is not terribly problematic.
In China though you need to prove your ID for practically everything, especially "social media" as the gov is really paranoid and intent on stamping out dissent. And before UK/USA readers pipe up - you have had NOTHING like China has enforced.
Now there are many good reasons to demand that social media companies can reliably identify trolls and those posting criminal material, and the current lack of consequences for being an asshat has real problems, but there is a lot to be debated about how to stop asshattery while keeping freedom for journalists and whistleblowers, etc.
Some friends recently came back from working in Shanghai - in china you use your phone for everything, even access to your apartment building.
They had seen first hand instances of people being shut out of their own houses because they had become unpersons for some reason.
This law will clearly just accelerate the states power and surveillance over it's citizens which is already frightening and, by our standards, horrific.
Currently ISPs and the like know a great deal about us thanks to the pile of analytic software they stuff on our systems. This isn't particularly precise and their kludgey efforts waste vast amounts of processor cycles and network bandwidth. Having a verifiable ID would make all this redundant. There's obvious privacy issues with this but which do you want -- the pretense of privacy or having stuff out in the open where you absolutely know who's monitoring you?
We're already quite close to this with IPv6. There's enough space in that addressing system to not only accommodate all the IPv4 like workarounds we use at the moment but also issue unique addresses to everyone many times over.
Forget the Chinese government, how many Reg users don't have an on-line Google ID? Or use Gmail, Drive, and Maps in a daily basis?
The on-line privacy battle was lost at least a decade ago, and it was a voluntary program - until services you need started demanding your on-line info just to enter.
I refuse to criticize these Orwellian schemes dreamed up by the Chinese CCP, since our own governments are busily coming up with very similar ones, albeit somewhat toned down. The chances are very high our governments here in the West will propose something similar under a different name and with superficially different intentions (mind the children, anyone?).
While you're probably right that our government(s) probably look(s) at China with envy, it's grossly unfair and uneducated to compare the governments of (e.g.) the US, the UK, India, ... to the political system of China. That is one of those instances where the statement "That is not only not right; it is not even wrong" applies. You're comparing apples to stellar nebulae.
Not criticizing these schemes when they pop up reminds me of the poem "First they came". It is imperative to criticize these shenanigans whenever they rear their ugly head, regardless of where they rear said ugly head! Ignoring them under the guise of whataboutism is misinforming at best, and disinforming more probably.
I take it you've not actually lived under the specter of an authoritarian or totalitarian regime and are merely (ab)using the stylistic element of hyperbole?
"The chances are very high our governments here in the West will propose something similar under a different name and with superficially different intentions (mind the children, anyone?)."
It's already happened - or at least attempted. Anyone remember David Blunkett's fondness for the so-called social security entitlement cards or New Liebour's enthusiasm for biometric-based ID cards, both backed up by the mother of all databases? This shite resurfaces from the Home Office every 10-20 years or so. It's overdue for yet another makeover and reappearance.
Another example just around the corner are the EU and UK plans to copy what other countries are already doing with fingerprinting and biometrics for their ETA "electronic visas". Bastards.
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