A Frozen Document in China Unleashes a Furor Over Privacy
Wall Street Journal | Wenxin Fan
This WSJ piece by Wenxin Fan is not dystopian fiction—it is an account of Ms.Gu, a fiction writer in China experiencing a dystopian reality. “This document may contain forbidden content. Access has been suspended” read a warning message when Ms. Gu attempted to open a draft of her one million-word, in-process novel saved on a cloud-based platform. “Ms. Gu’s story…suggested [China’s] surveillance has ventured into new territory: private writings that might or might not be intended for public consumption.”
The incident sparked online outrage, but experts say it’s to be expected. Fan reports that “a former censor with Weibo who now studies China’s internet censorship…said all technology companies that provide consumer cloud storage services in China are required to censor content.” After Ms. Gu contacted the software platform, an employee of the company “called to tell her that files are usually locked after banned keywords are detected by machines.”
Later, an employee “called [Ms. Gu] to apologize, saying the content-scanning machine had made a mistake [but] was never told what in her writings triggered the block.” After sharing her story on online, “several other writers described similar experiences.”
