China Shuts Down Hacker Training Site

Action contrasts rhetoric since Google ultimatum.

When Google released an ultimatum for China to free up search results or they were out of there, China responded in defiance. They claimed that their Internet policies were being misrepresented by the West. China warned that such talk could harm the already-delicate relationship the U.S. has with the biggest country on the planet.

However, China has now shut down its country's largest hacker training site. Three people were arrested, purported to run the program, which they dubbed the Black Hawk Safety Net. The program taught people how to run trojan virus programs and take over people's computers.

Is the move a symbol of solidarity? That remains to be seen. China is unlikely to simply say "We were wrong to censor people and we are changing our ways." Their history demonstrates a turtle-pace unraveling of extreme impositions on human rights. Plus, this could simply be a move to say "Hey, see, we didn't do the hacking. It was probably groups like this."

But even if that's the case, it's a change from the previous rhetoric which projected that Google's claims were false.

The journey of unraveling extreme human rights impositions has often taken a strange and turtle-like pace in China. Opening the Internet has been and will be no exception.