I've seen a couple of pointers to information about China's ambitious attempt to build their own censorable net, but not a lot of discussion. The Chineese net strikes me as a very signifiant (and very negative) development. In a worst case scenario, I could see them shopping their net around the world as an alternative to the Internet. China's size might make it possible for them to put together something that might be in the Internet's ballpark as an information resource, especially for technical and commercial applications. This would make it attractive to other countries -- Islamic, for example -- who want to use networking to stay competitive economically with the West, but who are unwilling to allow information to flow freely. A split between a Western net and a Chineese net would have important political, cultural, and economic reprecussions; it could be the cyberspatial version of the old iron curtain, with information policy rather than economic policy as a dividing line. I know that the Chineese net won't have bullet proof security, and the crypto anarchy model tells us that the attempt is doomed to failure over the long run. That's probably true, but there is a chance that it might not be. No one, including the Chineese, is going to expect perfect security. But everyone ought to expect a real and substantial chilling effect on the free flow of ideas. It doesn't seem at all unlikely that they'll be able to have the same sort of success controlling ideas online as they have with printed material. We ought to speak out against this Chineese net, and start asking questions about Western companies that are collaborating in its construction. All of this, incidently, puts a new spin on the exportability of crypto. We've always assumed that exporting crypto meant that individuals and businesses would be able to have control over their own tools. But what's our posisition if RSA wants to sell tools to the Chineese government that will be used to affix signatures, perform validation, and generally control the flow of ideas? We ought to allow the free export of any crypto tools to any country for any reason. But if there are going to be any restrictions at all, it ought to be on tools used for anti-democratic controls. -- Alex Strasheim, alex@proust.suba.com