On Tuesday, the China’s Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) proposed draft regulations to cover any service that uses Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or other technologies to create a short-distance network for transferring content. That category would include Apple’s AirDrop as well as derivatives found in Google’s Android and in Chinese phones from Vivo, Xiaomi, and Oppo, the South China Morning Post reports.
Features like Apple’s AirDrop, which allow smartphones to transfer content directly to other users nearby, may soon be restricted in China under new rules proposed by the country’s top internet regulator.
If implemented, services would need to undergo a security assessment before adding features that affect “public expression and social mobilization.” Users would also need to provide their real names and other identifying information in order to use these features, similar to other online services in China.
Providers would be required as well to report the dissemination of information deemed to be harmful, and not display preview thumbnails and screenshots without the user’s consent.
The CAC wrote that it was proposing these rules to “maintain national security.” The rules are now subject to a monthlong public consultation process.
“The core aim is to ensure that all the information transmission can be traced in case problematic things happen,” Gao Fuping, a professor at Shanghai’s East China University of Political Science and Law, told the South China Morning Post.
MacDailyNews Take: Justice Potter Stewart put it so well: “Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.”
The bottom line is that the Chinese government is so deathly afraid of its own citizens that they’re (quixotically) trying to keep them from being exposed to new ideas, fearful that one day they’ll think for themselves. Wonder why? (smirk) — MacDailyNews, November 7, 2019
When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie. ― Yevgeny Yevtushenko
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