Some wild speculation - I missed the start of the Google / China hacker ? action due to some nasty food poisoning, but this seems both a bit contrived and maybe more of a posturing / negotiation activity for various entities beyond Google and the public censorship part of the PRC.
If certain words and ideas are censored completely from the internet, it will be difficult to track who is interested in those ideas, when, and who they then communicate with.
If words and ideas are not censored, many if not most people will use the most convenient internet means of searching for them, and will generate extensive data and statistics. Most of this will identify the to some degree, and provide much other useful information.
So what we may be seeing is a clash of two different approaches to counter intelligence - tracing versus walling off.
If the concern is a very small minority group, say Uighurs, the tracing method will tend to be the better choice. Small groups tend to be strongly motivated, so it is important to trace every person you can,
If the concern is a large, widespread movement, walling off offending material may be the best approach. The numbers of trace items becomes immensely large. Also, very large groups tend to toward lethargy and in action, and what they want can be ignored to a degree if they are not provoked and agitated.
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It appears that China has developed a better intrusion capability than the Russian, possibly the best in the world.
Some people believe the US has significant monitoring and tracking capability.
These two capabilities may be seen as complimentary, particularly if someone is looking at a diffuse, international threat, such as Islamic terrorism
So we may be seeing a "negotiation by action", or something similar. |
