Shandong City Requires Web Sites to Register with Public Security Office

September 28, 2005

Public security officials in Penglian, Shandong province, have issued a notice that all small and medium sized Web sites in the city must register with the police, according to a September 2 article on a Web site operated by the Dalian municipal government and local Communist Party Central Committee. The article states that the registration is necessary to "clean out" Web sites with "reactionary" and other types of "harmful" information. Public security officials intend to investigate Web sites that register and "punish" Web sites that fail to register.

Public security officials in Penglian, Shandong province, have issued a notice that all small and medium sized Web sites in the city must register with the police, according to a September 2 article on a Web site operated by the Dalian municipal government and local Communist Party Central Committee. The article states that the registration is necessary to "clean out" Web sites with "reactionary" and other types of "harmful" information. Public security officials intend to investigate Web sites that register and "punish" Web sites that fail to register.

Penglian joins Qingdao, Beijing, and Guangzhou in forcing Web sites to register with public security authorities. Officials have cited provisions of the Measures for the Administration of Security Protection of Computer Information Networks with International Interconnections as authorizing this registration requirement, but have not explained why the government has chosen to begin enforcing those provisions now, when the Measures were enacted in 1997. The move coincides, however, with the Ministry of Information Industry's (MII) recently concluded crackdown on private Web sites that resulted in the closure of thousands of Web sites whose operators failed to register. Like the public security crackdown, the MII's campaign was based on regulations that were enacted several years ago (the Measures for the Administration of Internet Information Services, which became effective in 2000), but that are only now being enforced (pursuant to the Registration Administration Measures for Non-Commercial Internet Information Services).