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Archive for March 28th, 2023

2023-03-28

Program Think

I admit that, post-EFF, when I read about some terrible Internet regulatory proposal, or knotty problem of digital ethics, I often have a burst of “well, thank goodness it’s someone else’s job to deal with this now.” (Except for the narrower domain that is still my problem, I guess).

And then again, sometimes, I just feel the same pain as before. I read this article today, on a Chinese cybersecurity worker, jailed for seven years for a crime the authorities wouldn’t disclose, even to his wife. She is pretty sure she has finally worked out what that crime was: her was Program Think, a prolific anonymous blogger whose postings stopped the day before her husband was arrested:

The freewheeling blog offered a mixture of technical cybersecurity advice and scathing political commentary – including tips on how to safely circumvent China’s Great Firewall of internet censorship, develop critical thinking and resist the increasingly totalitarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party.

The blogger took pride in their ability to cover their digital tracks and avoid getting caught – even as a growing number of government critics were ensnared in Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s strident crackdown on dissent.

Working on EFF’s international team and before that at CPJ, Program Think has a familiar feeling: the independent, “arrogant” techy, staying up all night to write because something is not only wrong on the Internet, but wrong in the country, too. We still tend to characterize them as bloggers, but before, during, and after peak blogging, they were also independent journalists, and writers, and cranks, and nobodies, and brilliant alternative voices.

Popular sympathy about this kind of character has faded recently in the West, but they do keep typing. I have a lot of criticism of the U.S., Europe, and much of the rest of the world too, but I’m relieved that I’m somewhere where seven year sentences’ for writing what you think is not culturally accepted, isn’t coded into the law, and is recognized as an aberration by the majority of the establishment, and almost certainly the population too.

“Since June 2009, (Ruan) has used his computer to write more than a hundred seditious articles that spread rumors and slander, attack and smear the country’s current political system, incite subversion of state power, and intent to overthrow the socialist system,” the court verdict said.

It added that the articles, published on overseas platforms, attracted “a large number of internet users to read, comment and share, causing pernicious consequences.”

Program Think’s archive is still available, on blogspot.