Google vs. China

In recent news, Google and China have blamed each other for mysterious glitches in the Gmail system. A Google representative said, “There is no technical issue on our side; we have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail.” China responded by saying that the accusation against the government in China was completely “unacceptable”. This problem is not the first of altercations between Google and China. Google has been having issues with the communist government in China since early 2010. The Chinese were prevented from sending and receiving emails as well as looking through their contacts while the system was down. Why is this a problem? Because China is censoring what their people are allowed and are not allowed to view on the internet and they are blocking their personal email accounts. It is one thing to limit the access of some internet sites to protect people from harmful things, however suppressing them from using their email to contact friends and family is unnecessary. What is the communist government’s reasoning behind this other than to have complete control over the citizens of China. The only valid argument for China to be snooping through people’s email accounts would be if they suspected the person to be leaking information to other countries or planning some type of attack on the Chinese citizens. If there is no threat coming from the people then there should be no reason for China to censor their email.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/03/china-says-googles-accusations-about-gmail-tampering-are-unacceptable.html