Geodata about China stays in China.

May 21, 2010 1:50 PM

The Great Firewall just got a little taller. Starting next month, all geo data about China must be stored on servers inside China. This is much more that a snub of Google for moving its data out of the mainland, it is a power play aimed at controlling a type of data about which China is very sensitive, as shown in recent border disputes, and the discovery of secret military installations.

Western data providers will be forced to either "sanitize" their data according the Chinese government standards, or to cede the market completely to the Chinese. But the loss of a $10 billion/year industry isn't the only thing at stake. Individuals who upload GIS data to public servers may also be targeted.

posted by CheeseDigestsAll (25 comments total)

I presume this means all geo data about China that is to be delivered in China. How can you stop fly-over data from appearing anywhere else?
posted by StickyCarpet at 1:58 PM on May 21, 2010

StickyCarpet: "I presume this means all geo data about China that is to be delivered in China. How can you stop fly-over data from appearing anywhere else?"

Yes. It's essentially "host your maps inside China where we can control them, or we'll block you".
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:12 PM on May 21, 2010

StickyCarpet: It means all geo data that you want to serve people in China must be hosted there.
posted by zsazsa at 2:12 PM on May 21, 2010

Secret military installation, lol. These ones always crack me up. Clearly they aren't secret from anyone with serious military might or satellites, they are only secret from the populace. This seems to be true of so many military 'secret'; it isn't a secret kept from the enemy, it is a secret kept from the people.
posted by Bovine Love at 2:12 PM on May 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

Of course, for much of government, the enemy is the people....
posted by Bovine Love at 2:13 PM on May 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

Bovine Love: "Clearly they aren't secret from anyone with serious military might or satellites, they are only secret from the populace. This seems to be true of so many military 'secret'; it isn't a secret kept from the enemy, it is a secret kept from the people."

This ignores a basic tenet of military intelligence and state secrets: Never give anything away. Your enemies have information? Don't help them out by confirming it. They know the location of your secret base? Sure, but you keep denying it's there. Simply confirming or not caring about things because they're already "known" makes it more likely that you leak more information through carelessness, or that your enemies can find out additional details through analyzing the relative timing of disclosures, the differences in wording and content, and all sorts of other stuff.

If you just keep things that are supposed to be secret, secret, no matter what, you avoid this whole mess, and it's a hell of a lot easier to keep track of for the thousands of more-or-less brainless peons who might have clearance enough to have access to classified information.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:25 PM on May 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

Security by obscurity can lead to failure of security. Ask Bruce Schneier.
posted by Xoebe at 2:47 PM on May 21, 2010

Security by obscurity can lead to failure of security. Ask Bruce Schneier.
posted by Xoebe at 2:47 PM on May 21 [+] [!]

That refers to the details of cryptographic algorithms, not to any secret ever.
posted by atrazine at 2:53 PM on May 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I still have my circa 1950 Rand-McNally atlas, NYAH NYAH
posted by DU at 3:01 PM on May 21, 2010

If you just keep things that are supposed to be secret, secret, no matter what ...

... you impose an incredible burden on the organizations that work with some secret stuff, because that means they largely can't talk to anyone outside ever about anything, at least not in a reasonable way, even if the subject is mundane. This results in incredible isolation.

Once you have this rule, the tendency is to label everything as secret, despite the obvious cost.
posted by zippy at 3:16 PM on May 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

I am so sick of the Chinese fucking government, but you know what's even worse? The fact that their cold and bloodless authoritarianism is now seen as so familiar and harmless that my own government is pointing to Chinese censorship approvingly.
posted by Ritchie at 3:19 PM on May 21, 2010 [5 favorites]

If you just keep things that are supposed to be secret, secret, no matter what ..

Which is fine (sort of*) for the organization with the secrets. It doesn't make any difference what a third party has to say about the secrets though. In fact, engaging the third party over the secrets is exactly what you are saying shouldn't be done, because it confirms that there is something there.
*I actually agree with zippy's take on the approach.
posted by Chuckles at 4:19 PM on May 21, 2010

@Joakim: Of course, what you say is true. But clearly there is a limit: You don't hide every base, because some of them are completely in the open. For many decades now, every large, above ground base is completely in the open to any credible enemy. Satellites made that an assurance. Sure you can try to make them look like something else, but for a large one, forget it. This isn't a matter of keeping a secret, they aren't secret.
posted by Bovine Love at 4:30 PM on May 21, 2010

Cripes, China needs to grow up already.
posted by bwg at 4:38 PM on May 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Man, the Tea Party and the Libertarians need to look at China to see that Obama is nowhere near a communist. I mean, he's pushing net neutrality, which is like the opposite of this if I'm not mistaken.
posted by mccarty.tim at 5:02 PM on May 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Man, the Tea Party and the Libertarians need to look at China to see that Obama is nowhere near a communist.

Neither are the Chinese ruling elite. Authoritarian ≠ communist...
posted by killdevil at 6:00 PM on May 21, 2010

Man, the Tea Party and the Libertarians need to look at China to see that Obama is nowhere near a communist. I mean, he's pushing net neutrality, which is like the opposite of this if I'm not mistaken.

China's not even communist. It's Fascist.
posted by clarknova at 6:26 PM on May 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Facts mean exactly nothing to Teabaggers. Their position on issues is precisely as credible as the Chinese government's position on state secrets.
posted by Aquaman at 6:43 PM on May 21, 2010

Facts mean exactly nothing to Teabaggers.

In fact, they actually hate so called "facts". Facts are a tool of the liberal elites, trying to tell you what to believe with their "books" and their "science". The only "facts" that matter are the ones that you believe in your gut.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:29 PM on May 21, 2010

mccarty.tim: "Man, the Tea Party and the Libertarians need to look at China to see that Obama is nowhere near a communist. I mean, he's pushing net neutrality, which is like the opposite of this if I'm not mistaken."

Well, judging by some of the news coverage, net neutrality is actually being presented as "government control of the internet", and is then being used as evidence that Obama is a communist.
posted by alexei at 10:06 PM on May 21, 2010

Yep.

"Net neutrality, as I see it, is the fairness doctrine for the Internet," she said. The creators "fully understand what the Fairness Doctrine would be when it applies to TV or radio. What they do not want is the federal government policing how they deploy their content over the Internet and they want the ISPs to manage their networks and deploy the content however they have agreed on with ISP. They do not want a czar of the Internet to determine when they can deploy their creativity over the Internet. "They do not want a czar to determine what speeds will be available....We are watching the FCC very closely as it relates to that issue."

Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)

posted by Tenuki at 12:09 AM on May 22, 2010

my own government is pointing to Chinese censorship approvingly.

I'd bet there are plenty of governments that wish they could keep the 'net spotlight away from their toys like, say, China, or BP.

Ironic, really, that tyranny's being pushed underground, innit? Like light keeps the cockroaches under the fridge.

On a related note: can't help noticing all the furious suppression around investigations of the quantity of oil under the Gulf's surface.
posted by Twang at 1:14 AM on May 22, 2010

Tenuki: "Yep."

Oh, that's nothing. Check out this "debate".

"The Obama administration is pushing to get more control over the internet." That's not the debater speaking, that's the moderator.

When the supporter tries to explain what net neutrality actually is, the moderator says "Let me stop you, because nobody knows what net neutrality is." You can't make this stuff up.
posted by alexei at 1:40 AM on May 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

East solved. Host them in Taiwan, because that's part of China, right?
posted by fleacircus at 9:00 PM on May 22, 2010

The funny thing about this is that it will probably prompt Google to throw up the most high-resolution images they can get of the entire country, just as a little F-U to China. Hosted, of course, outside of China, with some nice sanitized versions for the good people inside the firewall.
posted by caution live frogs at 1:21 PM on May 24, 2010