damon's blog

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality
----- Petition against the Chinese University of Hong Kong's prohibition of displaying Statue of the Goddess of Democracy in campus

The CUHK issued a public letter to announce that the student union’s application to display a statue of the Goddess of Democracy and related items in the CUHK campus was rejected, by the reason of “political neutrality”. We are enraged!

Hong Kong In-Media: Submission to Legislative Council Subcommittee Panel on Information Technology and Broadcasting

Introduction:

Hong Kong In-Media strongly believes that Public Broadcasting should be independent to ensure the freedom of speech and expression in Hong Kong. The recommendations put forward by Government in the "Future operation of the Radio Television of Hong Kong (RTHK) and new RTHK Charter" has ignored the fundamental suggestion put forward by the "Committee on Review of Public Service Broadcasting" that a "truly independent public broadcaster should be developed" in Hong Kong. We therefore express our our disappointment and regret towards such misleading consultation.

There are several online communities active in political and social mobilization in Hong Kong. One of them is Hong Kong Golden forum, its members are very critical of the Government and active in coordinating protests and demonstrations. However, recently, the CEO of the forum, Joe Lam （林祖舜）openly supported more legislation on cyber bullying.

What could we learn from Google's withdrawal in China? Evan Williams, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, had an idea. "We are partially blocked in China and other places and we were in Iran as well," he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "The most productive way to fight that is not by trying to engage China and other governments whose very being is against what we are about." Moreover, Williams mentioned that Twitter is now developing technology to prevent government censorship. In fact, Twitter runs across multiple mediums including the Internet and mobile devices, as well as modify the Hosts file, use Tweeter tool to set up their own Twitter API and use Dabr and other third-party sites and softwares, secure their advantage over a singular website to avoid government censorship.

Google's official announcement regarding its new approach to China has been escalated to the diplomatic exchange between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chinese officials, who denied any role in the attacks.

Although the decision may be business in nature, Google's market share in China is not big while there are more and more political risks in keeping their business in China. The 10 years sentence of mainland Chinese journalist Shi Tao is the most well known case in which Yahoo! (Hong Kong) provided the Chinese government with Shi's email information as evidence for the prosecution.

The campaign against the proliferation of pornography on mobile devices as outlined by the MIIT official document has entered the second stage in early 2010. According toXinhuanet's report in mid Jan, Mobile China Shanghai branch will start suspending a mobile phone's SMS function if they find the number distribute “vulgar”, “pornographic” and other illegal content. Mobile China Beijing also claimed that they would suspend a mobile phone's SMS function if they find a mobile number distributing "vulgar" and illegal content in a massive scale. Apart from Mobile China, the second largest telecom China Unicom also set up similar filter system.

The monitoring of mobile SMS has not only invaded citizen' private life but also set up an infrastructure to crack down social mobilization via mobile phone. In the past few years, mobile phone SMS has played a significant role in a number of mass incidents, such as the Xiamen anti-PX demonstration in 2007, the anti-maglev train strolls in Shanghai in 2009 and the recent protest against the Trash-to-energy incineration plant in Panyu.