Police confiscate ‘illegal income’ of developer deemed to have used ‘unauthorised channels’ to connect to international networks
  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    32•1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    The programmer, surnamed Ma, was issued with a penalty notice by the public security bureau of Chengde, a city in Hebei province, on 18 August.

    Ma said the police seized his phone, laptop and several computer hard drives upon learning that he worked for an overseas company, holding them for a month.

    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.

    VPNs, which help users circumvent the “great firewall” of internet censorship by making it look as if their device is in a different country, operate in a legal grey area in China.

    The government generally turns a blind eye to the relatively small number of individuals who use the technology to access websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and, often, view pornography.

    In June, Radio Free Asia reported that a Uyghur student, Mehmut Memtimin, was serving a 13-year sentence in Xinjiang for using a VPN to access “illegal information”.

    The original article contains 682 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • P03 LockeEnglish
    30•1 year ago

    upon learning that he worked for an overseas company, holding them for a month.

    I mean, I dislike China’s censorship and dictatorship as much as the next guy, but I feel like working for a company that isn’t China is the bigger deal here.

    • @Jako301@feddit.deEnglish
      4•1 year ago

      Yup. That alone will break many tax and employment laws in most countries, leading to serious lawsuits pretty much anywhere in the world. China’s government type just sped up the whole process a bit, but the result would be pretty much the same elsewhere.