The Firewalls of the State

Abstract

With China’s Great Firewall it is necessary to go over why a country would apply such a system. This paper will go over US and EU’s hypothetical reasoning for a firewall, as well as China’s actual reasoning with citizens being the stakeholders. The introduction will be about the concept of walls leading to what a firewall does. States in this paper are what we would consider countries, while nation can be used it infers only countries designed by ethnicity. The main subject is the national firewall, but it will also be referred to as a great firewall since this is also a common term for the idea. Background information will be provided in the main body about China, US, and EU’s history with firewalls. After the background information, general impact and views on a national firewall policy will be discussed and a how this affects IT. A hypothetical ideal outcome will be before a summary where the best practices should be mimicked. The People’s Republic of China will be referenced multiple times as PRC or just China with no situation referring to Taiwan. Northern Europe will also be referred to and this includes the Nordic countries and Finland. It also should be noted that the technical aspects of firewall aren’t the subject while the policy of firewalls is.