Privacy

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Chinese programmer ordered to pay 1m yuan for using virtual private network (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 year ago by pedroapero@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A programmer in northern China has been ordered to pay more than 1 million yuan to the authorities for using a virtual private network (VPN), in what is thought to be the most severe individual financial penalty ever issued for circumventing China's "great firewall." The programmer, surnamed Ma, was issued with a penalty notice by the public security bureau of Chengde, a city in Hebei province, on August 18. The notice said Ma had used "unauthorised channels" to connect to international networks to work for a Turkish company. The police confiscated the 1.058m yuan ($145,092) Ma had earned as a software developer between September 2019 and November 2022, describing it as "illegal income," as well as fining him 200 yuan ($27).

Charlie Smith (a pseudonym), the co-founder of GreatFire.org, a website that tracks internet censorship in China, said: "Even if this decision is overturned in court, a message has been sent and damage has been done. Is doing business outside of China now subject to penalties?"

Abstract credit: https://slashdot.org/story/420019

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[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

US regime doesn't even allow its citizens to visit Cuba let alone work there.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

True but I can critize the people in power and vote in elections in the US. You can't do that in China.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

This is what your choice looks like in practice:

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”

And this is precisely what research analyzing decades of policy shows:

What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

Meanwhile, imagine being so utterly ignorant to think that people in China don't vote for their leaders. You should be embarrassed of yourself.