China Censor Internet: news at 11.

[jackofallgeeks]

Now, it may be that I don't know all the different factors in play, but it
seems to me that Ars Technica neglected a possible explanation of why Chine
might be demanding hotels to filter the internet during the Olympic
games. The long and short of it is that China has a huge censorship regime,
but as a host city for the Olympic games part of their agreement is to, you
know, not censor the internet. There's talk that they might shut off their
Great Firewall of China during the games, but not Senator Brownback is
saying that he's recieved word (from confidential sources) that China is
demanding American-owned hotel chains to filter the Internet during the
games.

Ars submits that either Brownback is confused, or his sources are confused,
because why would China say one thing to the IOC and them make completely
contradicting actions? Ars admits the possibility that this could
really be true, but seems to think the idea is absurd. I submit that it
makes a lot of sense: the Government officially lowers their censor shields,
but under the table they're having private entities censor for them.
They get to claim compliance and still limit access to information.

Of course, if THAT'S the case then China would have had to botch things if
filtering can be traced back to the government -- but apparently so far the
only source is Brownback's contacts, so maybe China hasn't botched it yet.