OVERSATISFYING BEIJING Still, there was outrage at the extent of a cooperation that many saw as another example of once-admired Western Internet giants bending their principles in order to do business in China. The problem with Skype is that they did more than what people expected. They over-satisfied the government, said Isaac Mao, one of China’s earliest and best known bloggers. Yahoo Inc.
has been widely criticised for its role in helping the Chinese government identify Shi Tao, a reporter accused of leaking state secrets abroad. He was jailed for 10 years in April 2007. Google Inc., which has the corporate motto Don’t be evil, upset some by launching a self-censoring Chinese site. TOM said only that the company adhered to Chinese rules and regulations, and declined to answer any further questions. Their defence was mocked by the people they aimed to monitor.
We must interrogate you: the constitution stipulates that citizens have freedom of correspondence and of secret correspondence. Have you complied with this mother of laws? one post on an online message board asked. Author Wang said government controls on phones and other Internet programs left him with little choice but to take Skype at its word and continue using its original software, but even that has a security flaw that he worries about constantly.
He says the program allows one user to open their account on two separate computers, with no notification to the first. If our password is stolen, everything that we do on Skype can be seen or copied on another computer without us knowing. And in fact stealing a password is very easy for Internet police or hackers, he added.