China May Revoke The
'Green Dam Youth Escort' Program

News is filtering out that the Chinese government may actually revoke its 'Green Dam Youth Escort' program, designed to control the country's online habits and access. The cleverly named program is said to be designed to protect young kids from porn and other bad stuff online, but the laws that accompany it mean that every single computer that is sold in mainland China from July 1st must come with the program pre-installed. This is basically a prelude to all the country using it, and in turn, handing over all control of what sites they can visit, and possibly any personal information that is attached to those visits too. Now the Chinese are letting out little rumours that they will suspend it, and make it voluntary instead of mandatory, and this would be fantastic unexpected news!

June.17.2009 - George Valentine Corr, Blatant News Editor
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SELLING IT TO THE CHINESE PEOPLE
The 'Green Dam Youth Escort Program' is an actual computer software program, but its implementation is also a government program, so the word program could be perceived as being either or both. The fact that they use the word program is a sign that they want their people to know about it, and fear it. This is the Chinese way of the past few decades, and they have stuck with it. It was designed by Zhengzhou Jinhui Computer System Engineering Ltd & Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology Academy Ltd, and when they announced it to the public they proudly stated that they had bought exclusive rights and usage for the next year. This is obviously another ploy to pull in people who will be thinking that if their government is shouting about it, and its exclusive to China, then they are lucky! They are miles away from the truth there. This program is designed for population control, and nothing else, and it was funded and developed by the government themselves, so it was always going to be exclusive to the country's regime.

HOW THE 'GREEN DAM YOUTH ESCORT' PROGRAM WORKS
There will be a central system that will have a list of blocked websites, and if the program is switched on these sites will not be accessible. The program also collects private user data on each visit and stores that information. They say that you can turn off the program or un-install it if you wish, or you could even unblock the sites that are on the database list of un-approved websites. This all sounds pretty good so far, and not dis-similar to the many child-protection programs that are out there, but there is 2 huge difference. This program is controlled centrally by a government and everybody's computer in that country was supposed to have it in place. As time goes on the government could then make it mandatory - thru the programming of computers sold in the country - then everyone has it switched on, and hey presto, you have complete population control! Imagine if Iran had such a system in place now? Nobody would be twittering or such like over these past few days. This is the risk, so hopefully this risk will disappear now with the program.

WHY THE CHANGE OF HEART?
The reasons for it being changed from compulsory to optional, if this is the case, will be down to human rights groups and a few clever hackers. First the human rights groups had put a lot of public pressure on the government which lead to much more public knowledge about the program and its sensitivities. The hackers then uncovered documents that showed that the program had a list of politically-sensitive words actually embedded to filter away opposing views to the Communist Party, and they also showed that if the program was installed and running on your computer, someone who had access to the central system could possibly take over your computer and control it manually. This was the end game that will hopefully not come now.

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