The Foreign Service Journal, November 2009

6 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 9 Story Not Available in China Advocates of Internet freedomwon a substantial victory on Aug. 13, when China’s Ministry of Industry and Infor- mation Technology scrapped its long delayed and heavily contested Green Dam Youth Escort program ( www. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2009/08/16/AR2009081 601697.html ). This program, introduced as man- datory pornography filter software on all new computers sold in China, blocks political content as well as pornography. It could enable Beijing to install a censor on every new com- puter in the nation. Although the major U.S. computer vendors in China did not challenge Green Dam, a host of other technology companies and lobbies openly opposed the project and pushed the Obama ad- ministration to decry it ( www.mercu rynews.com/breakingnews/ci_1258 0793?nclick_check=1 ). The discontinuation of China’s mandate that Green Dam be included on all new computers was lauded as a sign of the success of the global outcry and corporate conscience in altering Chinese policy. American pressure may not be behind the decision to re- duce the project scope, however. Rather, practical concerns and fail- ures may have precluded its nation- wide release. The filter, for instance, was only operational on Internet Ex- plorer, not on Firefox or Google Chrome. Moreover, flaws in the soft- ware would have exposed personal data to Internet spammers, potentially turning the entire Chinese computer system into the world’s largest junk mailer ( www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/ 06/AR2009070603305.html?nav=r ss_opinions ). Despite such flaws, Green Dam will nonetheless be installed in all In- ternet cafés and on university comput- ers in China. Green Dam is just one brick in Bei- jing’s wider Internet censorship pro- gram, popularly known as the Great Firewall of China. Comprised of filter programs and rooms of party employ- ees trolling the Internet for sensitive content, the censorship operation is a massive entity and difficult to follow. But certain sites are dedicated to track- ing stories about it ( www.newser. com/tag/24612/1/great-firewall-of- china.html?utm_source=ssp&utm_ medium=cpc&utm_campaign=tag ). To learnmore about the Great Fire- wall and see which sites have been blocked, go to http://greatfirewallof china.org . To learn what is being done to evade censorship within China, visit www.internetfreedom.org . For a transcript of the Sept. 10 hearing on China’s media and infor- mation controls sponsored by the U.S.- China Economic and Security Review Commission, go to www.uscc.gov . Do-It-Yourself Project Goes Wrong for State A long-awaited Government Ac- countability Office report analyzing the 2005-2006 restructuring of the Non- proliferation, Arms Control, and Veri- fication and Compliance Bureaus of the State Department was released on July 15 ( www.wtop2.com/index.php ?nid=15&sid=1721196 ). The restructuring aimed to consoli- date the three bureaus into two in an effort to eliminate overlap, thin top- heavy management, and better address arms and nuclear issues in the post-9/11 C YBERNOTES T hose who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone. We have sought — in word and deed — a new era of engage- ment with the world. Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges. — President Barack Obama, U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 23, www.whitehouse.gov