A programmer in northern China has been ordered to pay more than 1m yuan to the authorities for using a virtual private network (VPN), in what is thought to be the most severe individual financial penalty ever issued for circumventing China’s “great firewall”. The programmer, surnamed Ma, was issued with a penalty notice by the public security bureau of Chengde, a city in Hebei province, on 18 August. The notice said that Ma had used “unauthorised channels” to connect to international networks to work for a Turkish company. The police confiscated the 1.058m yuan (£120,651) Ma had earned as a…