China’s attempts to filter Web surfing might well be keeping citizens away from sites about Falun Gong and the Tiananmen Square incident. But even if the Web blockades are working, that doesn’t mean they’re especially staunch.
In fact, researchers at the University of New Mexico argue in a new study that China’s fire wall is surprisingly sievelike. Instead of simply blocking certain Web pages, the nation watches data passing through the Internet and filters out banned words and Web addresses on a case-by-case basis. According to the New Mexico researchers, that system allows Chinese Web surfers to browse freely, at least on occasion, and it causes the fire wall to become “particularly erratic” when a lot of people are online.
Still, there’s little doubt that the online surveillance restricts the flow of information: As the researchers told BBC News, many Web users censor their own searches for fear of the government’s prying eyes. —Brock Read
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