Countries have been screening the internet and even all forms of media for a long time, but mostly for those countries that have maintained either monarchical or communist rule. Countries in the Middle East and in Asia have long enforced internet filtering but with brushes between the government and Google in the recent months regarding nude pictures getting through their image search facility, China has decided to take matters into it’s own hands. In what is being called as the Green Wall of China, it is a home-made screening program that takes matters into it’s own hand, blocking anything that the government deems a s disruptive or counter’s the ideals of the state.
It has drawn ire from all over the world and even from state media people due to the problems that were found with it. Firstly, it extremely slows down computers it’s installed onto and it seemingly has little to show for in quality, being easily hacked and can be used for malware propagation. Life in China has remained to be what the government wants you to see, hear and speak. With almost everybody who enters the country having their own personal spies. They tell you not to do anything they deem as against the Chinese state, even as the country embraces freedom in some aspects of their opening up to world trade. Whether the government would heed calls to not continue with their plans for the screen, it remains to be seen but this would surely raise more questions than answers in a country that has been seeking freedom to anything it wants to as part of the global community.