chinaTwo short bits of news today: the first about the lack of protection for personal information in China and the massive spamming that follows it, the second about a Chinese lawyer who won’t shut up.
Just surfing the web yesterday, I found this Google ad:
Legally Email Millions
Email 81 million targeted prospects Never be accused of spamming again!
Sadly, the link doesn’t work anymore, but when I visited it I went to a spiffy website just like this one: http://www.101-website-traffic.com/. I was a little shocked to see what looks like an Internet spam pyramid scam. “Send out 2.5 million emails a day! Make money for us, uh, I mean, for yourself!” Now I’m starting to understand where all the spam comes from. In China, the situation is out of control.
In a survey posted by the China Daily, 90% of Chinese worry about their personal details being leaked and about 75% want tougher legislation to protect their privacy. For example, many complained about how they get unwanted text messages, emails, and phone calls from telemarketers who knew everything about them—from their children’s birth dates to the direction their house faces. One Chinese website, www.Souren.com.cn, apparently offers personal information about 90 million Chinese for a fee. I visited the site and it doesn’t seem to work anymore.
Many Chinese are asking for tough legislation, but it might be hard because much of the blame for the leaking of private information goes to government offices that sell their citizens’ private information.
It’s bad when some nut with a computer sends out 2.5 million spam emails a day, but things just start to get creepy when your own government sells your information to that nut….
The second bit of news is about a Chinese lawyer who won’t stay quite about what has happened to him and to the people he tried to represent. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote this article about Zhou Enchong who was convicted to three years in prison after a secret trial about his divulging of “state secrets.” By state secrets we mean information from an open trial. His mistake was sending that public information to Western news agencies. I suggest reading the article.
I think this is a case where a powerful real estate mogul manipulated government officials into doing things his way. Of course, the mogul got three years in prison along with Zhou Enchong… but I think if speech were more open, than bad land lords like Zhou Zhengyi wouldn’t be able to crush normal citizens and outspoken lawyers—which is absolutely against what Chinese socialism is all about. In fact, much of China’s early revolution was against people just like Zhou Zhengyi, landowners that oppressed the common people. It is sad and ironic that it is still happening today.
