Asia governments make fewer demands on Google

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These too will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China is always changing. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is...

04/23/2010

Governments in Asia seem less likely to petition Google to hand over user data or to censor information, according to statistics revealed by the search giant in a new online tool.
Governments in Asia seem less likely to petition Google to hand over user data or to censor information, according to statistics revealed by the search giant in a new online tool.

Google has implemented the new tool and map to provide the numbers of government requests directed to Google and Youtube, but it stops short of providing any precise details on the nature of the requests.

Google said the "vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations".
Read more at ComputerWorld

Apr 23, 2010 8:59:41 AM | Current Affairs, Technology, Web/Tech