Already in proposal stage in many places. My current home, Thailand, just announced plans for their own version. I am not amused.
However, hilarity has already ensued. The gov here is so incompetent that they couldn't even make an annoucement without having a bunch of gov websites taken down by a manual DDOS attack yesterday [1]. A few thousand people coordinated via social media to repeatedly visit the gov's ICT website which brought it to a standstill. Yet the gov thinks they can manage a single internet gateway to facilitate surveillance and it won't be ruinous.
The alternative is that Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc build their own Great Firewalls and become countries. I'd prefer that but many people have a strong sentimental attachment to countries based on geography.
However, hilarity has already ensued. The gov here is so incompetent that they couldn't even make an annoucement without having a bunch of gov websites taken down by a manual DDOS attack yesterday [1]. A few thousand people coordinated via social media to repeatedly visit the gov's ICT website which brought it to a standstill. Yet the gov thinks they can manage a single internet gateway to facilitate surveillance and it won't be ruinous.
[1] http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/714432/single-gatewa...