Privacy Working Group

Yesterday the House Committee on Science and Technology held a hearing to discuss cybersecurity activities at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). To read witness recommendations please find their official testimony linked below.

The witnesses include:

• Gregory C. Wilshusen, Director, Information Security Issues, Government Accountability Office (GAO)
• Mark Bregman, Executive Vice President and CEO, Symantec Corporation
• Scott Charney, Corporate Vice President, Trustworthy Computing, Microsoft
• Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies, Cato Institute

A “filtering software” recently introduced in China shows just how far the Chinese government is willing to go when it comes to censorship. The Chinese government has insisted on installing Green Dam software on every computer in China. Chinese officials claim the software is a “porn filter” but experts suggest otherwise.

The OpenNet Initiative – set up by Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and the University of Toronto, released a report on Friday suggesting the software could be easily adapted to act as spyware. This would allow the software to monitor activities outside of Web browsing and even terminate applications.

As Chinese citizens have been able to explore the Internet rather freely thus far, most are condemning the transition. A survey of 26,232 people on Web portal Sina.com found that more than 80% of respondents did not support Green Dam. Some commented that educational information such as news stories and course materials is often blocked and no longer accessible to schools or teachers.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “No country in the world has gone to such great lengths to control online content as what China has proposed with Green Dam. Although questions remain about how it will be implemented, it appears to be one of the most intrusive filtering technologies ever mandated for use on a large scale. The great effort China puts into its censorship regime shows how much the Communist Party still fears online dialogue. But as the public backlash against this software shows, it can be very hard to shut down a flow of ideas once the dam has been opened.”