---snip--- Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 17:20:55 +0100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Georg Schoefbaenker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [infowar.de] DFN 21.11.01: China closes 17,000 Internet cafes
Infowar.de, http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bendrath/liste.html ------------------------------------------------------------- http://dfn.org/focus/china/internetcafes-closed.htm China closes 17,000 Internet cafes by Bobson Wong, Digital Freedom Network (November 21, 2001) Chinese officials have reportedly closed more than 17,000 Internet cafes and ordered thousands more to install Internet surveillance software as part of a major offensive against unsupervised use of the Internet. Shanghai's Wen Hui newspaper said today that Chinese police and commercial officials have examined over 94,000 Internet cafes in the last seven months. Last April, the government announced it was imposing a three-month ban on the opening of new cybercafes. All registered Internet cafes were required to renew their licenses, and those operating illegally would be shut down. Only about half the country's Internet cafes have installed the required filtering software, according to Wen Hui. About 28,000 cafes have been ordered to install it. In February, the Ministry of Public Security announced that it released Internet filtering software called Internet Police 110 that allegedly can also monitor Web traffic and delete or block messages from sources deemed offensive. Only half of China's Internet cafes have had their licenses renewed. About 15 percent, or four million, of the country's Internet population rely on cafes as their main source of access, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. Most of these users are in the country's smaller cities. [..] ---snap---
