China May Have New Censorship Weapon

According to a report published Friday, a Chinese Internet censorship tool dubbed the Great Cannon could be more powerful than previously imagined. The tool launched attacks on American websites by overwhelming them with Internet traffic last month, but with some adjustment, the tool could be used to spy on anyone seeing content hosted on a Chinese computer, even if it’s just an ad on a non-Chinese website. “The operational deployment of the Great Cannon represents a significant escalation in state-level information control,” the report said. It called the tool’s potential “the normalization of widespread and public use of an attack tool to enforce censorship.”