The cameras will not only be on — they will snap a photo of each and every person who sits down at a computer terminal. This part of the news article left me a bit chilled:

At the Mingluo internet café in the Dongcheng district about 60 people were ensconced in front of terminals. Most were chatting online or watching films. The manager affected a lack of concern about the regulation, saying that he had introduced the policy a month ago. “I think most people don’t mind. We explain to them that this will not have any impact on them,” he said.

Yeah. It won’t have any effect. Until the government censors come to take you away because you had the nerve to attempt to access Wikipedia. Why would they bother recording the information if they didn’t intend to use it?

China’s disgusting policies against its own people have been condoned for too long. It’s very disheartening that — still — big companies like Google are willing to compromise the values of openness and freedom that are at the very heart of what the Internet is. Online life is a difficult thing to contain, but China’s devoted enough energy to manage it — for now. My only hope is that a certain segment of the Chinese population becomes affluent and educated, open source developers can create tools that allow them to sneak past censorship and surveillance and break some of the psychological and intellectual imprisonment of the inhabitants of Eastasia.