China Calls Out US On Internet Freedom

rsmiller510 writes "In an interesting case of the pot calling the kettle black, the Chinese government released a report criticizing the US government of being hypocrites where Internet freedom was concerned — criticizing others for cracking down, yet circling the wagons when it involves US internal security (WikiLeaks anyone?). And the Chinese might have a point."

Read the whole report.

[Animats]

The entire report, "Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2010" [xinhuanet.com], is worth reading. Most of the items on the list are well known, and have even come up on Slashdot.

• "The United States reports the world's highest incidence of violent crimes ...
• "According to figures released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in September 2010, more than 6,600 travelers had been subject to electronic device searches between October 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010, nearly half of them American citizens. A report on The Wall Street Journal on September 7, 2010, said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was sued over its policies that allegedly authorize the search and seizure of laptops, cellphones and other electronic devices without a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The policies were claimed to leave no limit on how long the DHS can keep a traveler' s devices or on the scope of private information that can be searched, copied or detained. There is no provision for judicial approval or supervision."
• "According to a report on Chicago Tribune on May 12, 2010, Chicago Police was charged with arresting people without warrants, shackling them to the wall or metal benches, feeding them infrequently and holding them without bathroom breaks and giving them no bedding, which were deemed consistent with tactics of "soft torture" used to extract involuntary confessions."
• "The United States has always called itself "land of freedom," but the number of inmates in the country is the world' s largest. "
• "The U.S. regards itself as "the beacon of democracy." However, its democracy is largely based on money. According to a report from The Washington Post on October 26, 2010, U.S. House and Senate candidates shattered fundraising records for a midterm election, taking in more than 1.5 billion U.S. dollars as of October 24. The midterm election, held in November 2010, finally cost 3.98 billion U.S. dollars, the most expensive in the U.S. history. "
• "While advocating Internet freedom, the U.S. in fact imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace. On June 24, 2010, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which will give the federal government "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency. Handing government the power to control the Internet will only be the first step towards a greatly restricted Internet system, whereby individual IDs and government permission would be required to operate a website. "
• "Unemployment rate in the United States has been stubbornly high. From December 2007 to October 2010, a total of 7.5 million jobs were lost in the country " ... "The share of residents in poverty climbed to 14.3 percent in 2009, the highest level recorded since 1994 " ... . "A report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in November 2010 showed that 14.7 percent of U.S. households were food insecure in 2009 (www.ers.usda.gov), an increase of almost 30 percent since 2006" ... "According to a report by USA Today on June 16, 2010, the number of families in homeless shelters increased 7 percent to 170,129 from fiscal year 2008 through fiscal year 2009."
• "The number of American people without health insurance increased progressively every year. "
• "The New York Times reported on May 13, 2010, that in 2009, African Americans and Latinos were 9 times more likely to be stopped by the police to receive stop-and-frisk searches than white people. "
• "So far, a total of 193 countries have joined the Convention on the Rights of the Child as states parties, but the United States is among the very few countries that have not ratified it."

These are problems the US has that aren't being fixed.

Re:Hah!

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

This post is hardly "insightful". China "has never claimed to be anything but repressive"? I disagree. Like all communist governments, citizens are guaranteed theoretical "rights" that do not exist in reality - the right to say whatever they want, the right to worship, the right to petition the government for redress, etc. I read just yesterday about how China arrested a bunch of Christians in Beijing because they refused to register their churches with the government.

And then we have the old bugaboo about how the "evil" US represses people - yada yada yada. Consider the following, oh great know it all.
1) A citizen sells Nazi memorabilia. He may not in any way be a Nazi sympathizer, but simply a dealer in artifacts looking to make some money.
2) A citizen expresses his "freedom of speech" in making the vile statements that the Holocaust never existed.
3) A citizen expresses his 'freedom of speech" by picketing and protesting at funerals for soldiers.

Care to enlighten me as to how many US citizens are under arrest for those three "crimes"? The answer is - wait for it - ZERO. Care to tell me how many European citizens have been imprisoned, yes, thrown in freakin' jail, for the first 2 on that list?