China Owns the Information

Google released a statement this week saying that it and at least 20 other large companies, in the areas of Internet, finance, technology, media, and chemical, had been on the receiving end of a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack". In their statement, Google said that the attack on its corporate infrastructure originated from China and led to the theft of intellectual property from the company. This discovery resulted in Tuesday's announcement by Google Inc that it is no longer willing to continue censoring Internet search results in China and that if China isn't willing to play nice Google might just shut down its google.cn website, take its stuff and go home.
Google is likely feeling that their "Don't be evil" policy is being compromised by kowtowing to the censorship imposed by the Chinese government. The company had agreed to servile self-imposed censorship on Internet search results four years ago, but they're likely regretting that decision now, especially since they have included in their statement the claim that the attacks also targeted the G-mail accounts of some Chinese dissidents and human rights activists.
Google has not detailed how it knows the attacks originated in China. Neither did they come right out and point an accusatory finger at the Chinese government. While it can be incredibly difficult to actually find evidence leading back to the Chinese government in computer attacks, you just know Google has got to have had some damn good evidence for it to take the kind of action they announced this week. Such action could result in losing millions of revenue dollars from the Internet's largest market, and sustaining a loss like that isn't going to be a decision lightly made.
"The attacks used command-and-control servers based in Taiwan that are commonly used by or on the behalf of the Chinese government, according to iDefense. "The IP addresses used to launch the attacks are known to be associated with previous attacks from groups that are either directly employed agents of the Chinese state or amateur hackers that are proxies for them that have attacked other U.S. companies in the past," said Eli Jellenc, head of international cyberintelligence at iDefense." (cnet news, Jan. 13, 2010)
The Google Code of Conduct says that the "reputation as a company that our users can trust is our most valuable asset". Why didn't it occur to them before that a company that willingly goes along with censoring the truth is really not a company that users can trust? Their obsequious compliance with China's manipulation of the truth was screwing around with their own "don't be evil" policy. At least, whatever the reason for their actions then, they seem to be doing better now at putting together two and two and coming up with the fact that the Chinese government is concerned with neither truth nor trust. Maybe now their claim that "Google is committed to advancing privacy and freedom of expression for our users around the world" will ring a little more true.
Liu Xiao Bo, jailed in December for having the balls to call publicly for government reform, knows the truth about the government's take on truth in China. Liu, who previously spent 20 months in jail for joining the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, had helped organize the “Charter 08” petition, which called for sweeping political reforms. Now he's facing a sentence of 11 years on the trumped-up charge of "inciting to subvert state power", in spite of international protest. Liu and every other person in China who seeks to make the truth known is stymied by the same brick wall that Google has just smacked into. The Chinese government owns the information right now and so they can bend it any way they want, and they do that on a daily basis. They're not going to be in any hurry to let the gargantuan Google or the little Liu mess with that.