Op-Ed: China restricts internet freedom while cyber scam flourishes

With only a few days to go until the Beijing Olympics begin, many people around the world have had to deal with the loss of tens of thousands of dollars from an online ticketing scam.

A story published today in Australia reveals that many of its Citizens have been the victim of a slick Internet scam selling fraudulent tickets to next weeks Games. At a press conference today, the Minister for Fair Trading in the State of New South Wales, Linda Burney blamed Chinese authorities for much of the damage done. “It is the host country that has the primary responsibility for monitoring and keeping an eye on whether there are, in particular ticket scams” “That’s why when the Sydney Olympics were on, we didn’t have this problem and I guess it’s ironic there has been so much said about Internet access in terms of the Beijing Olympics and we still have this major international scam” The Sydney Olympics were held in 2000. The Beijing Games are being held a mere eight years later, but when compared to the advances in technology since 2000, the landscape looks very different. The scam was more than slick, and very global. It was Internet technology at it’s best being exploited on the everyday Internet user as well as professional Internet developers. Some called it a “bloody good scam” David Boctor, a Los Angeles Internet entrepreneur who runs his own online retail store, paid beijingticketing.com $12,230 for hard-to-get tickets to the Olympic opening ceremony, swimming and diving. He told the LA Times he became suspicious when the company stopped answering his phone calls in April and his credit card was charged for airline tickets he did not buy. "If I failed to recognise this Internet scam, very few other individuals with less of an e-commerce background would have had a chance," Boctor said. "So I can empathise with others in the same position." Another computer savvy victim California-based victim, Jonathan Murray, bought $5,260 worth of Olympic equestrian events tickets. "I work for a fairly large software company, and the team I manage is responsible for dealing with Internet crime," Murray, originally from Britain, told the newspaper. "So it was quite amusing to everyone at work that I had been scammed on the Internet. "The important point I'm making by talking about this is that this was a bloody good scam." If all this seems a bit startling and making today’s headlines, my research indicates that the scam has gone on “undetected” for quite some time, maybe as far back as November 2007 Probing through this thread of information I have to wonder about a few things. If China has such prowess with Internet technology, why could it not discover, interdict and shut down this criminal activity? The Washington Post reported on this subject two years ago. As did a computer security site China seems to do a good job in restricting Internet freedoms to it’s Citizens. Maybe China should take a good look at how the free world views it’s behaviour? But then, maybe China does not care what the world thinks? If so, this portends to be an interesting turning point in geo-political events that may just dominate this juvenile Century.