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Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

PARANOIA in the real world: Chinese Internet cartoon cops 

Via BoingBoing, this Shanghai Daily story (January 5, 2006) about two cute little Chinese Internet cartoon cops who pop up on websites and bulletin boards to keep the populace in line:

Cyber Police to Guard All Shenzhen Websites


Shenzhen police plan to equip all Shenzhen Websites and electronic bulletin board systems with two virtual policemen icons on the main pages to maintain order in cyber space.

People may click the two cartoon policemen to enter the cyber space of two virtual cops and ask questions about information safety. Real policemen will answer their questions immediately.

Internet users may also learn information about the Internet laws and regulations and some typical Internet criminal cases from these two virtual policemen.

"The two dummy policemen were made to remind Netizens the Internet is protected by the law. People should pay attention to their behavior when they are surfing on the Net," a senior official of the Shenzhen cyber police told China Youth Daily.

The mordant Shanghaiist site comments about the mascots: "One is named Jing Jing (the male), and the other Cha Cha (the female). ‘Jing’ and ‘cha’ are the characters that compose the word for ‘police’ in Chinese. [...P]eople have expressed the feeling that Jing Jing and Cha Cha look just too darn cute, and that no Internet bad boys are going to be thinking about what they gonna do when these cartoon cops come for you.

"We’ve been unsuccessful at actually getting someone [to talk to us] thus far. It could be that there are just too many people out there dying to talk to an internet cop about Tibetan independence, official corruption, human rights violations, heroin and gay sex."

You can see these two darling little instruments of totalitarian oppression on the China Internet Information Center site: Cha Cha, Jing Jing.

Our friend The Computer's loyal servants in HPD & Mind Control would certainly promote similar cartoon mascots in Alpha Complex. Suggestions?
Posted by: Allen Varney / 4:06 PM

Comments:
Compy and Pooter, a pair of adorable animated bots that pop up on terminals when citizens attempt to access restricted information. They disable all terminal access for 3-5 minutes while they sing songs, or perform little educational skits about respecting intellectual property and the dangers of accessing the subnets. Some prominent terminals are equipped with actual Compy and Pooter bots that stand on either side, ready to zap terminal users with a stunrod if they misuse the terminal.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : January 19, 2006 5:10 PM
 
They could also be called PoPo and LisaLisa.
# posted by Blogger Geekus Elusivus : January 19, 2006 8:27 PM
 
Whoever they are, they of course comes with a warped version of the personality of Clippy the helpfull paperclip.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : January 20, 2006 11:22 AM
 
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