The Chinese government institution that requires personal-computer makers to ship Internet filtering software with their PCs, has defended the plan due to concerns that it could be used for political censorship or create privacy or security risks. That’s why China gets protest such as those which we report “China Receives Protests on Software Censor” on some few days ago.
Only two days after the regulation - which originally was disclosed quietly to PC makers last month - became public, state-run media on Wednesday reported by quoting a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Industry that users will have a choice whether to install the filtering software, called Green Dam-Youth Escort, and that it will not be used to collect user data.
Separately, state-run English-language newspaper China Daily said quoting Liu Zhengrong, deputy chief of the Internet Affairs Bureau of China’s State Council Information Office, that the software is designed to filter Internet pornography and that is the only purpose of it.
The statements were the first public comments from Chinese officials who oversee the Internet about the software plan, which was reported Monday by The Wall Street Journal. The software has drawn concerns from computer-industry executives, the US government and free-speech advocates, who say it could open up computers to privacy breaches, hacking or further censorship of the Internet.
In a statement Tuesday, four US technology-industry associations urged the Chinese government to reconsider implementing its new mandatory filtering software requirement.
“We believe there should be an open and healthy dialogue on how parental control software can be offered in the market in ways that ensure privacy, system reliability, freedom of expression, the free flow of information, security and user choice,” said the statement, released by the Information Technology Industry Council, the Software & Information Industry Association, the Telecommunications Industry Association and TechAmerica.
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