Evaluating China's Green Dam software
The software, known as Green Dam Youth Escort, ostensibly protects children from harmful information online by filtering out sites that contain prohibited keywords. It will be mandatory on every computer sold in China after July 1, 2009.
The OpenNet Initiative, where I'm working as part of my internship for Harvard's Berkman Center, worked this week to evaluate the functionality of Green Dam. In "China's Green Dam: The Implications of Government Control Encroaching on the Home PC," we review the functional elements of this new software and explore the possible effects of its implementation on a national scale. We conclude that Green Dam is deeply flawed and poses critical security concerns for users.
Labels: berkman, china, internet censorship
3 Comments:
"We conclude that Green Dam is deeply flawed and poses critical security concerns for users."
I worried that you would refute that. It was for a short while, but I did indeed worry that you'd conclude otherwise.
This is certainly very calming.
(In other parts of the World, this comment was released under the title: Why Disagreement With the Unerringly-Righteous American Moral Standards is (Undemocratic!) Censorship.)
By 
The 27th Comrade, at
June 12, 2009 at 7:04 PM
Rebekah, ONI got this story wrong.
"preinstall" in Chinese actually means "bundle". Take this 6/12 ZDNet article citing WSJ for example:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=19688
The end users were never reuqired to install or run Green Dam. As to what Green Dam will filter, it is configuable by the user.
How this is twisted into censorhip is beyond me - anti-sinoism perhaps? Hope not, but as potential victim of rising anti-Chinese sentiment in America, forgive me I feel I should be vigiliant.
By 
, at
June 19, 2009 at 11:55 PM
i relay like it thank very nice this things .
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victor
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By , at
July 15, 2009 at 5:41 AM