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China keeps information in, not just out, with Internet filtering

James Fallows in "The Atlantic" finds that the Chinese Internet filtering machine is beginning to keep unfavorable information from getting out, not just stopping controversy at online borders.

Graham Webster
Formerly a journalist and consultant in Beijing, Graham Webster is a graduate student studying East Asia at Harvard University. At Sinobyte, he follows the effects of technology on Chinese politics, the environment, and global affairs. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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Graham Webster

James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic and a blogging resident of Beijing's Chaoyang District, has written a good outline of how China's online filtering apparatus works: "The Connection Has Been Reset."

Aside from the fact that The Atlantic has made the lovely choice of freeing its content, the news to me was that China's filtering system is working in reverse:

Xiao Qiang, an expert on Chinese media at the University of California at Berkeley journalism school, told me that the authorities have recently begun applying this kind of filtering in reverse. As Chinese-speaking people outside the country, perhaps academics or exiled dissidents, look for data on Chinese sites--say, public-health figures or news about a local protest--the GFW computers can monitor what they're asking for and censor what they find.

The article, which was briefly available here but is now apparently offline for a while, also makes the argument that full-bore IP and domain blocks may gradually fall off in favor of more refined filtering of actual content.