Google has been making headlines recently over its decision to stop censoring its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, in response to attacks on its corporate infrastructure that targeted the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. Although this Google incident is a new development, Internet censorship in China has been a fact of life for years. If anything, the recent attack on Google is part of a larger trend, which started years ago and has been gathering steam since early 2008, of increased control and monitoring, both of Internet content and of China's own citizens as they get online in ever greater numbers.

The past several years have been dismal for proponents of Internet freedom in China: we've seen increasingly sophisticated censorship technology coupled with the rise of the "50 Cent Party," an army of youth who are paid 50 cents for every pro-government comment they write online; social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have been banned; the restive province of Xinjiang has had no Internet service whatsoever for six months now (although the government recently allowed access to a few state-run websites); and then there was Charter 08, the web-based manifesto promoting respect for human rights and peaceful democratic reforms in China. Originally signed by 303 concerned Chinese citizens from all walks of life, Charter 08 has gone on to collect over 10,000 signatures--but all references to Charter have since been deleted from Chinese websites and a key author of Charter 08, Liu Xiaobo, was sentenced on Christmas Day to eleven years in prison. [Read more]

According to recent reports, one of China's "most tenacious civil rights lawyers" who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, has gone "missing". Gao was detained by authorities in February 2009 and his friends and family have not heard from him since.  Gao's brother, Gao Zhiyi, traveled to Beijing late last year to find the police officer who detained Gao Zhisheng. The officer told him that "Gao Zhisheng lost his way and went missing".

That Gao has "gone missing" is troubling and may be a sign that he has died in police custody.  "Teng Biao, a lawyer and friend of Mr. Gao, said he feared the worst. 'This is the first time the police have come up with ‘went missing’ as an excuse,' he said. 'That’s impossible. Gao was in their custody and could go nowhere.'"

According to the AP, "Gao's case has drawn international attention for the unusual length of his disappearance and for his earlier reports of the torture he had faced from Chinese security forces. In a [letter], he described severe beatings, electric shocks to his genitals and cigarettes held to his eyes."

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs will be holding a hearing tomorrow, Friday, January 15 on the impact of U.S. export controls on national security, science and technological leadership. A live webcast of the hearing can been seen on the Committee on Foreign Affairs website at 10:30AM (PST).

The Laogai Research Foundation supports efforts to regulate and prevent the export of crime crime control equipment and technology to countries with repressive governments that have proven themselves willing to violate the human rights of their citizens.

In June 2008, LRF submitted public comments to the Department of Commerce (DOC) regarding Crime Control License Requirements in the Export Administration Regulations (Download our letter to the DOC here).  In September 2009, Congressmen Frank and Congressmen Wolf, who both serve on the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, commended our outreach efforts to the DOC and formally encouraged DOC to respond to LRF's comments over a year after our comments were submitted. 

There is a wide range of new technologies not included on the CCL list that are currently being used and developed by law enforcement agencies in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and other countries. (Continue reading after the jump)

While these technologies have legitimate law enforcement applications, when put into the hands of repressive regimes such as the government of the PRC, we fear these technologies will be used in ways that violate the human rights of the citizens of these countries. Many of these technologies were originally developed and produced in the United States and then marketed to the PRC, at times directly to the Public Security Bureau (PSB) and other Chinese government and law enforcement agencies. Though we would like to believe that US companies take the human rights records of countries into consideration when selling their products to foreign buyers, companies have a long history of working with and profiting from dictatorships and other questionable regimes.

LRF recommends that the following equipment and technologies be added to the Commerce Control List, and that licenses to export these items to China be denied in all cases: biometric technology, including faceprinting technology; speech-signal processing; video-signal processing; other algorithmic surveillance and video-analysis technologies; and bullet proof fabrics. We also recommend that the following equipment and technologies be added to the CCL, and that licenses for these items be granted only if the end-user is determined to be a private company or individual: firewall technology; software modules for routers, or any specialized routers, that allow monitoring of Internet content and tracking of Internet users; Smartcard technology; surveillance cameras; and video surveillance networking technology.

Read our letter to the Department of Commerce (PDF).

Despite freezing temperatures, over 500 people participated in a candlelight vigil for democracy activist Liu Xiaobo co-hosted by LRF Hong Kong.  Click below to see a slide show of pictures from the event.