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Source: Reuters -
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China's Communist Party mouthpiece accused the United States of
mounting a cyber army and a hacker brigade, and of exploiting
social media like Twitter or YouTube to foment unrest in
Iran.
The People's Daily accused the United States of controlling the
internet in the name of internet freedom after Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton called for more internet freedoms in China and
elsewhere in a speech on Thursday.
China warned that Washington's push against internet censorship
could harm ties.
"Behind what America calls free speech is naked political scheming.
How did the unrest after the Iranian elections come about?" said
the editorial, signed by Wang Xiaoyang.
"It was because online warfare launched by America, via YouTube
video and Twitter micro-blogging, spread rumours, created splits,
stirred up, and sowed discord between the followers of conservative
reformist factions."
China has blocked YouTube since March, the anniversary of uprisings
in Tibet, and Twitter since June, just before the 20th anniversary
of a crackdown on protestors in and near Tiananmen Square.
Facebook has been down since early July.
The People's Daily editorial asked rhetorically if obscene
information or activities promoting terrorism would be allowed on
the internet in the US.
"We're afraid that in the eyes of American politicians, only
information controlled by America is free information, only news
acknowledged by America is free news, only speech approved by
America is free speech, and only information flow that suits
American interests is free information flow," it said.
Clinton's speech came shortly after Google revealed a sophisticated
hacking attack, and said it might close its google.cn Chinese
search engine if it could not find a way to offer a legal,
unfiltered search service in China.
"Everyone with technical knowledge of computers knows that just
because a hacker used an IP address in China, the attack was not
necessarily launched by a Chinese hacker," Zhou Yonglin, deputy
operations director of the National Computer Network Emergency
Response Technical Team, said in an interview carried in a number
of Chinese newspapers on Sunday.
Zhou mentioned an outage suffered by Chinese search engine Baidu on
January 12 but did not mention that it was attacked by the Iranian
Cyber Army, which had previously attacked Twitter, nor that Chinese
hackers launched retaliatory attacks on Iranian sites the next
day.
The People's Daily also denounced a May ban on Microsoft's instant
messaging services to nations covered by US sanctions, including
Cuba, Iran, Syria, Sudan and North Korea, as violating the US
stated desire for free information flow.
