China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

[Batu69]

 

2018 deadline to stop individuals from accessing global web

Tightening controls come amid Xi’s goal of "cyber-sovereignty"

 

China’s government has told telecommunications carriers to block individuals’ access to virtual private networks by Feb. 1, people familiar with the matter said, thereby shutting a major window to the global internet.

 

Beijing has ordered state-run telecommunications firms, which include China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, to bar people from using VPNs, services that skirt censorship restrictions by routing web traffic abroad, the people said, asking not to be identified talking about private government directives.

 

The clampdown will shutter one of the main ways in which people both local and foreign still manage to access the global, unfiltered web on a daily basis. China has one of the world’s most restrictive internet regimes, tightly policed by a coterie of government regulators intent on suppressing dissent to preserve social stability. In keeping with President Xi Jinping’s “cyber sovereignty” campaign, the government now appears to be cracking down on loopholes around the Great Firewall, a system that blocks information sources from Twitter and Facebook to news websites such as the New York Times and others.

 

While VPNs are widely used by businesses and individuals to view banned websites, the technology operates in a legal gray area. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology pledged in January to step up enforcement against unauthorized VPNs, and warned corporations to confine such services to internal use. At least one popular network operator said it had run afoul of the authorities: GreenVPN notified users it would halt service from July 1 after “receiving a notice from regulatory departments.” It didn’t elaborate on the notice.

 

It’s unclear how the new directive may affect multinationals operating within the country, which already have to contend with a Cybersecurity Law that imposes stringent requirements on the transfer of data and may give Beijing unprecedented access to their technology. Companies operating on Chinese soil will be able to employ leased lines to access the international web but must register their usage of such services for the record, the people familiar with the matter said.

 

Shares in U.S.-listed 21Vianet Group Inc., a provider of networking and datacenter services to Chinese clients, slid as much as 4.1 percent before ending 2.4 percent lower. Westone Information Industry Inc., which helps to set up VPNs and secure networks, fell as much as 1.5 percent Tuesday.

 

“This seems to impact individuals” most immediately, said Jake Parker, Beijing-based vice president of the US-China Business Council. “VPNs are incredibly important for companies trying to access global services outside of China,” he said. 

 

“In the past, any effort to cut off internal corporate VPNs has been enough to make a company think about closing or reducing operations in China. It’s that big a deal,” he added.

 

China Mobile Ltd., the Hong Kong-listed arm of the country’s biggest carrier, declined to comment. Representatives for publicly traded China Telecom Corp. and China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. couldn’t immediately comment. The ministry didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

— With assistance by Steven Yang, and Christina Larson

 

Article source

 

[Akaneharuka]

That mean their will be no more privacy in China ? lol

[dufus]

noose is getting tight on all of us around world when one door shut another open then always window

[Mystique]

What is preventing people from downloading things like tor or using a proxy to temporarily purchase a VPN if so desired.

I cannot see how this will help.

The internet is becoming far too political these days, it makes you wonder what the politicians will think up next to take more control and freedom out of your hands.

[steven36]

 

Quote

 

With this move, China will effectively choke off all VPN usage

 

China wants you to know it means business on its new censorship rules.

 

The government has told three telecommunications carriers to completely block users from accessing virtual private networks (VPN) by Feb. 1, 2018, according to a Bloomberg report.

This is huge. Many people in China rely on VPN providers to access information from dozens of popular websites that are blocked in the country. We're talking Google, Facebook and Twitter, to name a few, not to mention foreign news sites.

 

And although China has been talking about shutting down VPN providers for some time now, this latest announcement comes at the internet service provider (ISP) level, meaning users can't simply hop to another VPN provider if their favourite one gets shut down.

 

The carriers involved — China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom — are all state-owned and are the country's biggest operators. That means most users are going to be on one of the three, and will be affected.

A broad sweep across China's connected users

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had earlier pledged in January that it would move to tighten control over VPNs, adding that all VPN services would need to obtain prior government approval.

 

It said at the time it would embark on a 14-month long campaign to "clean-up" China's internet services.

 

Chinese internet users had reacted negatively to initial reports of the ban in January.

 

"How will we declare our love for China on Facebook without VPN?" said one user on Weibo.

 

"Why are you preventing us from knowing what's on the outside? I really don't understand," another said.

"What about my 483 fans on Instagram??" one asked.

Bad news for free speech

The crackdown is bad news for free speech in China, which recently took a hit after the government moved to ban livestreaming on three major platforms.

 

According to Stan Rosen, a professor at the University of Southern California specialising in Chinese politics and society, China's crackdown is a show of force before the Communist Party's 19th National Party Congress, which is expected to happen in the later half of this year.

 

The congress will see the next leader of the Communist party be elected, or re-elected. It could explain Chinese president Xi Jinping's emphasis on cleaning up the internet — his political fate might depend on it.

 

http://mashable.com/2017/07/11/vpn-ban-china/?utm_cid=hp-h-1

 

Quote

 

Russia, China vow to kill off VPNs, Tor browser

New laws needed because today's censorship not good enough, apparently

 

Russia and China are banning the use of virtual private networks, as their governments assert ever greater control over what citizens can see online.

 

In Russia, the State Duma – the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia (legislature) – unanimously adopted the first reading of new legislation that would ban the use of VPNs as well as online anonymizers like the Tor browser if they don't block access to a government-run list of websites.

 

That list of websites will include any sites that provide software that can circumvent censorship. And, most insidiously, the law will require search engines to remove references to blocked websites so citizens don't know what it is they are not allowed to see.

 

The legislation was approved in record time after the director of the FSB intelligence agency, Alexander Bortnikov, gave an hour-long talk to Duma deputies in a closed meeting, in which he said how important it was that the law was passed and passed quickly. Attendees were told not to report that the meeting even took place, apparently.

 

In a note explaining the law, Duma deputies argue that the law is necessary because the existing censorship apparatus in place is "not effective enough."

A second law that also passed its first reading this month will require mobile phone operators to:

• Identify specific users
• Block messages if requested to do so by the state
• Allow the authorities to send their own messages to all users

Any companies that fail to comply with the rules can be fined up to one million rubles ($16,500).

Far East

Meanwhile, China has started enforcing its rules, approved in January, that do pretty much the same thing.

The Chinese government requires all VPN services to apply for a license, and as part of the license requirements, they are expected to block access to websites and services the Chinese government doesn't approve of.

 

Now the government has "requested" that the country's three mobile operators block the use of VPN apps on their networks, and have set a hard deadline of February 1 next year. Chinese users in their millions use VPNs as a way of bypassing widespread online censorship that blocks services such as Facebook and Twitter as well as many Western news websites.

 

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said back in January that the VPN and cloud computing market was undergoing "disorderly development," and as such there was an "urgent need for regulation norms."

 

That followed a largely ineffective effort to kill off VPNs back in 2015. But this time the government seems more determined to enforce censorship.

 

Earlier this month two VPN services – Green VPN and Haibei VPN – said they were shutting down their services in mainland China, having received a "notice from regulatory departments."

 

The government also recently passed new rules that will censor information that does not reflect "core socialist values" – in effect banning discussion on topics such as drugs and homosexuality. Previously, Chinese internet users had grown used to a censored version of the internet built largely around protecting the ruling party by limiting political debate.

 

It's unclear whether the same rules will apply to the political elite, however. The architect of China's Great Firewall himself used one publicly in a presentation last year when he found himself blocked by his own creation.

 

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/11/russia_china_vpns_tor_browser/

 

 

[Sylence]

23 hours ago, Akaneharuka said:

That mean their will be no more privacy in China ? lol

 

by using VPN, you don't get more privacy, that's a truly false belief. by using VPN, you just try to block one organization to see your web traffic  (such as your ISP) , But you allow another organization (a mysterious VPN server located on a remote location) to see your Internet data.