Google says China blocking its email services

[Veritas]

BEIJING – Google says the Chinese government is interfering with its email services in China, making it difficult for users to gain access to its Gmail program.
Google said its engineers have determined that there is no technical problems with the email service or its main website.
"There is no technical issue on our side; we have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail," the company said in a brief statement.
A Google spokesperson said that users in China have reported having intermittent problems with the service since the end of January.

Google says China blocking its email services - Yahoo! News

 

[Tiki Tam Tam]

Why should that happen?

I thought it has opened up to the world.

 

[Veritas]

Why should that happen?

I thought it has opened up to the world.

I really do not know, why China is targeting Google. China wants a piece of Google, I suppose.

 

[forcetrip]

Maybe google needs to climb out of the US state departments bed and become a corporation once again.

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135105.htm

Are they going to "MAKE" China like google if they say no?

 

[Veritas]

Maybe google needs to climb out of the US state departments bed and become a corporation once again.

Statement on Google Operations in China

Are they going to "MAKE" China like google if they say no?

I personally think a country has to be a little bit more tranparent, if China has problems they should kick Google out, hacking and interrupting email service sounds like rogue behavior rather than enforcement of law.

 

[forcetrip]

From Times Online
March 31, 2008
CIA enlists Google's help for spy work
US intelligence agencies are using Google's technology to help its agents share information about their suspects
Jonathan Richards

Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.

Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world.

Google is also providing the search features for a Wikipedia-style site, called Intellipedia, on which agents post information about their targets that can be accessed and appended by colleagues, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The contracts are just a number that have been entered into by Google's 'federal government sales team', that aims to expand the company's reach beyond its core consumer and enterprise operations.

In the most innovative service, for which Google equipment provides the core search technology, agents are encouraged to post intelligence information on a secure forum, which other spies are free to read, edit, and tag - like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Depending on their clearance, agents can log on to Intellipedia and gain access to three levels of info - top secret, secret and sensitive, and sensitive but unclassified. So far 37,000 users have established accounts on the service, and the database now extends to 35,000 articles, according to Sean Dennehy, chief of Intellipedia development for the CIA.

"Each analyst, for lack of a better term, has a shoe box with their knowledge," Mr Dennehy was quoted as saying. "They maintained it in a shared drive or Word document, but we're encouraging them to move those platforms so that everyone can benefit."

The collection of articles is hosted by the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and is available only to the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies.

Google's search technology usually rates a website's importance by measuring the number of other sites that link to it - a method that is more problematic in a 'closed' network used by a limited numbr of people. In the case of Intellipedia, pages become more prominent depending on how they are tagged or added to by other contributors.

As well as working with the intelligence agencies, Google also provides services to other US public sector organisations, including the Coast Guard, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Often, the contract is for something as simple as conducting earch within an organisation's own database, but in the case of the Coast Guard, Google also provides a more advanced version of its satellite mapping tool Google Earth, which ships use to navigate more safely.

There is no dedicated team promoting sales of Google products to the British Government, but a Google spokesperson said the company did target public sector organisations such as councils, schools and universities through the team that run AdWords, its internet advertising platform.


http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3652494.ece

 

[forcetrip]

Thats not the job of a corporate entity and it seems China feels its a vulnerability. A corporation needs to respect every country where it does business and China probably has evidence or feels that it could become a larger problem. It has started to counter the problem in a very sleazy way, pretty much the same way google might have tried to get its holding in the country. Lot of Chinese telecom companies were not given the same right in the US, I dont see where the problem is if China does not want to openly piss off the US. Maybe its because of the 13+ Trillion $'s they still owe.

 

[Veritas]

Thats not the job of a corporate entity and it seems China feels its a vulnerability. A corporation needs to respect every country where it does business and China probably has evidence or feels that it could become a larger problem. It has started to counter the problem in a very sleazy way, pretty much the same way google might have tried to get its holding in the country. Lot of Chinese telecom companies were not given the same right in the US, I dont see where the problem is if China does not want to openly piss off the US. Maybe its because of the 13+ Trillion $'s they still owe.

I heard news that US owes 13 Trillion dollars to China, really bro... h

 

[cross1993]

I heard news that US owes 13 Trillion dollars to China, really bro... how can country lend another twice its GDP esp. when its living standards are of third world ?

Do you know inflation? China has 13+ Trillion USD spent at home, we will have a horror of inflation.
Money only represents the accumulation of capital, We need foreign markets, Transfer the risk of economic crisis.

 

[Nomenclature]

It's not really targeted at Google anyway, and people should stop thinking the whole Internet revolves around Google.

What's happening is the Internet filtering system in China just received a major update, and all secure communications to servers outside China is experiencing some difficulties. Apparently China brought online a system of smart algorithms to determine the nature of outgoing secure communication channels without decrypting them (as decryption is computationally infeasible at the moment).

It's quite an achievement given the massive telecommunication infrastructures and computational power such system requires, but I do hope they fix problems this system causes soon. China's huge arts outsourcing industry is currently suffering from unreliable communication channels with their overseas clients, same for China's software outsourcing industry. If engineers can't fix their new filtering algorithm soon, the government will be under intense pressures to drop the new system.

 

[forcetrip]

My bad I hurriedly put the whole US national debt with China. Chinese share of that 13 trillion is 1 Trillion.

P.S - Some put that figure to as much as 2.5 Trillion

 

[JayAtl]

My bad I hurriedly put the whole US national debt with China. Chinese share of that 13 trillion is 1 Trillion.

P.S - Some put that figure to as much as 2.5 Trillion

While you are at 'my bad', I'd like you to read the very first sentence in that article. You know right after the author's name and then take as long as you can to process at first, followed by attempting to comprehend it.

Technology companies can help govt. too and yet be independent. If you then attempt to read the article you posted- you will (well maybe) comprehend that that they have basically created a search service (seperately) for the govt to do faster searches on docs the govt posses. Yup just the ability to do it faster and better. Like a hardware manufacture perhaps would suggest to up the server specs. It has nothing to do with content or violation of ones privacy . Have a nice day ....

 

[forcetrip]

While you are at 'my bad', I'd like you to read the very first sentence in that article. You know right after the author's name and then take as long as you can to process at first, followed by attempting to comprehend it.

Technology companies can help govt. too and yet be independent. If you then attempt to read the article you posted- you will (well maybe) comprehend that that they have basically created a search service (seperately) for the govt to do faster searches on docs the govt posses. Yup just the ability to do it faster and better. Like a hardware manufacture perhaps would suggest to up the server specs. It has nothing to do with content or violation of ones privacy . Have a nice day ....

So after accepting that first line you have somehow ignored the rest of the article?? Praise be .. Anyway if a corporation starts to work in a capacity for a government agency which bothers another country then it has opened its doors to being treated in a similar manner as well .. Its always best for publicly traded companies to stay away from these roles as they have a global commitment in most cases. Plus what they are doing could be done by a government run department much more efficiently and effectively. Again .. the US and India kicked out telecom equipment citing security concern. I totally agree with them just like I agree with China on this one.

 

[Tigershark]

After jumping in bed with the White House and NSA to interfere in Chinese society, Google has lost all credibility to me.

 

[no_name]

It's not really targeted at Google anyway, and people should stop thinking the whole Internet revolves around Google.

What's happening is the Internet filtering system in China just received a major update, and all secure communications to servers outside China is experiencing some difficulties. Apparently China brought online a system of smart algorithms to determine the nature of outgoing secure communication channels without decrypting them (as decryption is computationally infeasible at the moment).

It's quite an achievement given the massive telecommunication infrastructures and computational power such system requires, but I do hope they fix problems this system causes soon. China's huge arts outsourcing industry is currently suffering from unreliable communication channels with their overseas clients, same for China's software outsourcing industry. If engineers can't fix their new filtering algorithm soon, the government will be under intense pressures to drop the new system.

I was trying to search some chinese sites (even traditional ones) last night about 10pm but they all timed out. I tried english sites and they were fine. I though it was strange because the sites I'm searching worked fine just in the afternoon. Now that you mentioned it this may have been the cause.