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Updated Sunday, October 4, 2009 11:30 am TWN, The China Post news staff

How much policing is needed on the Internet?

Jingjing and Chacha have large black eyes, big heads and short, cute limbs. Since their debut in Shenzhen, China, three years ago, the pair has kind of become celebrities. Instant messaging accounts and personal blogs were set up in their names. They appear in advertisements, newspaper stories and Internet forums.

Jingjing and Chacha, however, are not the little siblings of Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, the giant Pandas that China gave Taiwan a year ago. The seemingly innocuous names Jingjing and Chacha combine to mean “Jing Cha,” or police. They are the cartoon mascots of the Internet Police in China.

According to the head of the Shenzhen Internet Police, the purpose of Jingjing and Chacha is “to let all Internet users know that the Internet is not a place beyond the law; the Internet Police will maintain order over all online behaviors.”

In other words, they are the online version of the life-size, cardboard cut-outs of police officers in supermarkets or shopping malls.

It goes without saying that in China, the Internet Police function more than as simple deterrence. They are the main force behind the authoritarian country's drive to rein in online opinion. Internet cops in China routinely hunt for anti-party comments on Internet forums, sometimes going as far as to erase comments or shut down entire Web sites.

Of course, they also do real-life intermediation and arrest people responsible for dissident content online.

It is fashionable to regard the Internet Police as the muscle for the 21st century Big Brother, and the World Wide Web as the hero for the young, the free and the democratic. While using virtual cops for propaganda and censorship is wrong, the Internet has grown to a such degree that some form of organized policing is necessary.

The word “organized” is used because Internet policing already exists in most countries. In Taiwan, undercover cops often masquerade as potential clients or ignorant would-be shoppers or on Internet bulletin boards to fish out child pornography, prostitution or fraudulent sellers.

However, as the Internet has increasingly become the venue not only for opinion and communication, but also for business, a comprehensive system of law and enforcement is needed.

Two recent high profile cases of online product mispricing by well-established companies in Taiwan have highlighted the need for precisely such a system.

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October 4, 2009 citi2gate2@

Pretending to carry the interest of "business and consumers" at heart, while all you actually want to see is the blocking out of websites criticizing the government, as in the case in China. Poor journalistic cowards.


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