There have been plans for the Beijing government to roll out free wifi for some time now, and today we noticed Techcrunch is reporting that roll-out will begin at the end of this month. Eventually, the three-year pilot program will install over 460,000 hotspots around the capital. Hooray? Not so much.
Obviously, there have been some concerns about the security and, er, integrity of a free internet connection provided by the Chinese government, since said government has a fondness for censoring the internet as well as using it to track and prosecute dissidents and other citizens they perceive to be a threat.
But a China Daily article from a few days ago essentially confirms fears that the network is, in essence, a trap:
An employee at the Beijing branch of the China Mobile Communications Corp, surnamed Yang, said the requirement of submitting a phone number to log on will help trace those whose online activity might endanger social security.
Ah good, so the network — which will require users to submit their mobile phone number before they can log in — will only be used to trace “those whose online activity might endanger social security.” Unfortunately, “endangering social security” is a stock charge the Chinese government levels at anyone it considers a possible threat, including dissidents, petitioners, protesters, right-defenders, lawyers, artists, bloggers, journalists, and…well, you get the idea.
Beyond concerns about the inevitable human rights violations, there are also concerns that even for loyal Party line-toers, the personal information and phone numbers collected by the network might be sold to companies who could then use them to target advertising and/or just spam everyone’s cell phones. Given that China’s mobile networks are already crammed to the gills with spam, it’s hard for us to imagine how anyone might notice the difference, but yeah, that will probably happen too.
Oh, and did we mention the network might not be free after the three-year pilot program ends? Yeah, just in case you didn’t get the message:
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