The Great Wall of China stretches for over 4000 miles built to keep invading nomadic groups out of the Chinese Empire. To protect the China’s borders against intrusions the Great Wall was also equipped with two-story Watchtowers that provided a clear view to detect any approaching enemies. Eventually advancements in military technology made the Great Wall obsolete.
Today’s Great Firewall of China is built to repress free speech and shield its people from opinions contrary to china’s belief. The BBC.co.uk says, it is composed of, “a vast infrastructure of technology to keep an eye on any potential online dissent. It also applies lots of human eyeballs to monitoring. The agencies that watch over the Net employ more than 30,000 people to prowl Web sites, blogs, and chat rooms on the lookout for offensive content as well as scammers. In the U.S., by contrast, the entire CIA employs an estimated 16,000 people.”
Despite having nearly 340 million Chinese online, all Internet traffic entering or leaving China must pass through government-controlled gateways — that is, banks of computers — where e-mail and Web-site requests are monitored. “E-mail with offending words such as “Taiwan independence” or “democracy” can be pulled aside and trashed within minutes,” says businessweek.com. Amnesty International says that China has the world’s largest number of imprisoned journalists and cyberspace dissidents.
In addition to being closely monitored, businesses are bullied into agreeing to promote China’s Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry. Contrary to world opinion, a Pew Research Center survey suggests more than 80% of China’s citizens believe the government should manage or control the internet.
Many opponents suggest developers intend to locate networks or hot zones of millions of, “RFID receivers strategically placed around the globe in airports, seaports, highways, distribution centers, warehouses, retail stores and consumers’ homes…” In addition, new technologies are offering RFID tag users the ability to read multiple tags simultaneously including those of different vendors.
