In a recent speech, Ali Baba co-founder Jack Ma suggested that the Chinese government should use big data to help prevent crime, a view that resonates with the Communist party’s efforts to establish a system parsing citizen information online. Citizen Lab Senior Research Fellow Jason Q. Ng commented on Ma’s remarks in an interview with Bloomberg.
Freedom House has released their “Freedom on the Net 2015” report, placing China at the bottom of a ranking comprising 65 countries. The report cites the Citizen Lab’s research on China, specifically on chat application censorship and targeted threats.
In an article written for Foreign Affairs, Citizen Lab Senior Research Fellow Jason Q. Ng discusses the crackdown of “rumours” on the popular Chinese WeChat mobile application, and its broader implications for censorship in the country.
Citizen Lab Senior Research Fellow Jason Q. Ng spoke to the China Economic Review on the findings of the UC Browser report, and the impact of security vulnerabilities on users.
China’s censorship of social media platforms has largely been focused on speech that targets or criticizes the government, until recently. The Cyberspace Administration of China’s new regulations will target sexual innuendo, in particular 25 of the most popular “dirty words” in China.
According to state media organization People’s Daily, Apple agreed to Chinese government “security checks.” Citizen Lab Research Fellow Jason Q. Ng expressed concern that this practice may set a trend of compliance to such demands amongst other firms.
Citizen Lab Research Fellow Jason Q. Ng commented on the effect that China’s real name registration policy will have on virtual private networks (VPNs) and self-censorship.
