Computer users, free speech advocates, lawyers and industry leaders have all angrily spoke out against China's new policy for requiring computer makers to preinstall censorship software into all delivered machines. Many fear that this will become spyware for the government against all computer users. Computer makers worry that the software ( untested by them ) will cause the machines to crash or cause other conflicts with the operating system. The software, titled the Green Dam, is supposed to block access to pornographic websites and content--many are concerned that this software has far greater capabilities for spying, censorship and manipulation.
Beijing News did a report on the Green Dam software and found numerous performance issues. For example, on one website an innocent mathematics question that included the word "balls" was blocked. In other cases, actual pornographic images slipped through the filter, yet another person complained that they were prevented from viewing an image of pigs. (Source: New York Times, Beijing News, International Business Times)
This post follows an earlier, related post of the same topic:
China requires preinstall of censorship software