[cpunx-news] [ISN] Nortel helps build 'Great Firewall of China' (fwd)

[Eugene Leitl]

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="<http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/>
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 03:19:35 -0500 (CDT)
From: InfoSec News <isn at c4i.org>
To: isn at attrition.org
Subject: [ISN] Nortel helps build 'Great Firewall of China'

Forwarded from: J <dharma at uninet.ee>

<http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2001/10/19_3.html>

Nortel helps build 'Great Firewall of China'
JACK AUBRY
Montreal Gazette
Thursday, October 18, 2001

Nortel Networks is working hand in hand with the Chinese government to
build "the Great Firewall of China," at least in part to target and
repress political dissidents using the Internet, a new report
concludes.

Former Liberal cabinet minister Warren Allmand, president of the
International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, will
release today in Montreal the damning report, titled China's Golden
Shield: Corporations and the Development of Surveillance Technology in
the People's Republic of China.

"The Chinese state has found an extraordinary ally in private
telecommunications firms located primarily in Western countries. Many
companies, including notably Nortel Networks, until recently Canada's
largest firm, are playing key roles in meeting the security needs of
the Chinese government," said the report.

The centre is releasing the report to coincide with the Asia-Pacific
Economic Co-operation meeting in Shanghai this weekend, to be attended
by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and U.S. President George W. Bush.

International pressure for China to clean up its human-rights act
appears to have lessened since the Communist country agreed to take
part in the broad coalition fighting terrorism.

China has used the war on terrorism to characterize Tibetans as
"terrorists," something the Canada Tibet Committee calls "an excuse to
stifle legitimate dissent and peaceful struggles for human rights and
democracy."

Tina Warren, a spokesman for Nortel, said the company had yet to
receive the report and judged it "inappropriate" to comment until it
is reviewed.

The 40-page report, written by researcher Greg Walton, said Nortel and
other firms are helping China build "a more sophisticated system of
content filtration at the individual level."

In the report's acknowledgements, Walton credits several online
activists by their Internet monikers, including the Hacktivismo!
Project, OxBlood Ruffin, Drunken Master, cDc, y Oda and "so many
others - on both sides of the firewall - who very sensibly choose to
remain anonymous."

The report added, "Old-style censorship is being replaced with a
massive, ubiquitous architecture of surveillance: the Golden Shield.
Ultimately the aim is to integrate a gigantic online database with an
all-encompassing surveillance network."

The network would include speech and face recognition, closed-circuit
television, smart cards, credit records and Internet surveillance
technologies.

China has already arrested numerous people for Internet-related
crimes, from supplying E-mail addresses to Internet publications to
circulating pro-democracy articles.

The report suggests Nortel's privacy statement for the Internet, which
states it will not sell, rent or share personal data with any other
organization, appears at odds with its work in China.



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