Even if the Chinese make this work for a few years and the US does the same, it doesn't matter in the long run. People can run short lived remailers out of accounts that don't belong to them. They can buy service over an encrypted link from a seller outside of China. They can use steganography. Given this, how can a Chinese or other represive government crack down? They can't turn off all the computers. They can try to allow access to only 'aproved' sites. They can arrest people. But will the war on encryption be as easily won as the war on drugs? Drugs are physical things; they emit odors, require bulky transport, guards, etc. Binary code doesn't emit a smell. You can't train a dog to find PGP. Yes they can crack down, but all that will do is make the information economy move underground and offshore. In time, those states that declare war on encryption will become police states. Police states can kill a lot of people, but they tend not to last more than a few generations. Jon Lasser wrote: | Not if it's just a proof-of-concept for US implementation of the same. | | The US version might be ostensibly only "anti-indecency" or | "anti-cryptography," but I'm betting that if the Chinese are successful, | many other nations follow. | | It's the naval blockade to JPB's Independant Cyberspace. And I think JPB | is... a little overoptimistic this time... but I still don't like the | blockade.