China Will Monitor, Censor SMS Messages

maggeth writes "Early reports on the AP (via Yahoo) indicate that China will begin monitoring and censoring SMS communications in real time. China's 'great firewall' is infamous, but the move to censoring SMS has been slow due to technological roadblocks. Algorithms are used to identify key words and combinations of words that might be associated with 'political rumors and "reactionary remarks,"' and the system automatically notifies local police. Something to think about on your Fourth of July weekend!" Reader ackthpt adds links to coverage at the BBC and The Register, asking "What next, a massive government database system to track every message and contacts between people?"

Comments

Secure IMs

[MntlChaos]

Good thing programs like Trillian allow encryption of instant messages, largely defeating such a system (not only do the messages need to be scanned, but cracked and then scanned)

Re:Secure IMs

[DarkHelmet]

Sorry to ruin your sense of security, but Trillian's security model is made on the method of being "good enough" to prevent people from sniffing your packets, but not good enough to really block any government organization from spying on you.

The encryption alogorithm for Trillian is quite strong (128 bit blowfish), but the method of exchanging keys is open to attack. Tril uses Diffie-Helman key exchanges for the clients to get private keys, but this is entirely open to a man-in-the-middle attack. A server (or carnavore type machine) could sit between the two clients during the key exchange, and manipulate the exchange so that the whole conversation is readable to the client.

More info here

I always thought about creating an IM service that uses certs in order to encrypt / decrypt messages. Like, when the person logs in and authenticates with the server, the client registers a new public key with the server.

Of course, something like this will take a bit of thought, and is in the future. Thoughts?

one system to monitor them all?

[ksp0704]

"What next, a massive government database system to track every message and contacts between people?"

Like this, or maybe this, or this
I don't know if the Chinese have a system like this yet, but we already have Echelon, so were set.

(For those of you to lazy to read all the articles, Echelon is a global communications spy network run by the NSA (with cooperation, in the form of listening posts, from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. It gives them the capability to listen to and monitor any broadcast transmission on the planet.)

Im sure the US does too

[DrugCheese]

I'm sure, almost POSITIVE that Echelon reads SMS messages in the US. They don't censor them, but I'm sure if you're up to something they notify authorities. How else will they achieve the New American Century?
I'm sure they have tons of backup plans. Including ... yes you know.

Sharks with freakin ... yes we know.

Re:Meet the NSA

[ericspinder]

I am sure that you are thinking about the CIA. The NSA principle mandate is signals intellegence.

From here

Unlike the CIA, whose basic functions are clearly outlined in the 1947 law that created it, NSA, created in 1952, simply gathers intelligence.
...
All intelligence agencies are tasked with producing a particular product. NSA produces -- that is, collects, analyzes, and disseminates to its consumers -- Signals Intelligence, called SIGINT. It comes from communications or other types of signals intercepted from what we called "targeted entities," and it amounts to about 80 percent of the viable intelligence the U.S. government receives.

From a CNN special about the NSA:

In certain cases, the NSA can look into the activities of U.S. citizens or residents if it believes they are acting as agents for another country. The agency must first get the permission of a special court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and then get the U.S. attorney general's consent.

While it's not "normally" permitted, it's hard to say if they ever get turned down.

Re:nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure? An alleged counterexample:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/12/20/211923/ 84

Don't quite grasp it

[OpenSourced]

I just ended a vacation in China, and pre-paid SIM cards could be obtained over the counter at the local supermarket with no ID check or anything. Then you could recharge it with other cards similarly bought over the counter. So how's one supposed to control anything when you don't know who's sending and to whom?

The size of it...

[grainofsand]

According to Xinhua, over 220 billion text messages were sent in China in 2003, making up some 55 percent of the world's text messages.

Re:Huh? Most mobiles here are quasi-anonymous

[zalle]

Nope, the phones themselves have a unique identifier, the IMEI code, which are quite trackable. Once you know who's using which IMEI, you can listen to them pretty easily even when they're using a prepaid account.

Re:nothing new

[danheskett]

so you would never know. Does the US have similar imoral laws?
Generally no. Though apparently in terrorism related cases they can ask a judge for a gag order on all involved participants.

However, all of that is after charges have been filed, not before.

Plenty of misbehavior in both parties.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

1.the CIA used to be prevented from spying on US citizens, not the NSA.
2.Patriot act I and II (which was quietly approved on the day that we announced the "capture" of Sadaam) stripped all that pretense away. Any
group is allowed to spy on us, with any group being (NSA, CIA, Fatherland Defense, and DOJ).

There's plenty of misbehavior to point at on both sides. But let's understand it.

From at least the mid '70s to about the mid '90s (as far as us outside the "security community" wall can tell) the breakdown was this:

- FBI was responsible for investigations involving interstate lawbreaking, kidnapping (assumed to involve intestate flight), and domestic security (including investigating spy rings and conducting security clearance investigations). Their operations often lead to prosecutions and are intermittently subjected to court scrutiny and on-the-record congressional investigation. So they must meet strong constitutional tests, or risk losing cases, injunctions, and civil-rights suits.

- CIA was responsible for spying and covert operation. Their operations are compartmentalized for security - which limits oversight and control - and are often outside the law in the areas where they operate. They were prohibited from operating inside the US at all - due to constitunal-authorization concerns, practical concerns (like coups, political sabotage, ...), potential legal issues if their information is used in a criminal investigation , and to preempt inter-departmental turf wars by clearly defining the boundaries.

- The NSA was charged with signals intelligence - both decoding to hunt for enemy action and protecting US communications - government, corporate, and personal - from foreign spying. As a side-effect they end up intercepting lots of private domestic communication content that the government isn't authorized to use. So they held it tightly (which also helped protect their methods) and dribbled it out pretty much only to the intelligence community (because a drop of it in a criminal case could blow the case). (Indeed, for decades the US claimed they didn't exist. Joke: NSA = No Such Agency.)

Info from NSA (apparently) fed mainly into CIA (which had the political/military implication analysis section). CIA would give info to FBI when appropriate, mainly stuff related to domestic spying and security clearances. (CIA and NSA info generally could NOT be used in criminal cases, because it's collected without probable cause or warrant. The constitutional protections would get stretched by using it to generate a "tip", telling the FBI where to look for something - but the info they developed had to come from open observation -> probable cause or warrants to be used in court.)

During the Clinton administration the wall between CIA and FBI was raised: ALL communication between them had to go up a bureaucratic red-tape chain and be handed over through a special office headed by a Clinton appointee (after approval by that office). The same set of Clinton administration officials came up with the idea that terrorism should be treated as a criminal offences rather than acts of war.

The result: No information was passed through the red-tape gauntlet from NSA and CIA to FBI. First fallout: The "nuclear secrets for campaign contributions" investigation was gutted (leading to leaks from frustrated agents.) (Some speculate that gutting this was the reason for the change.) Second fallout: Info about Bin Laden's activity didn't reach the FBI. The Clinton administration had several offers from Middle Eastern powers to hand over Bin Laden, which they turned down because the FBI couldn't make a criminal case against him. Third fallout: The mechanism hadn't been dismantled by 9/11.

The Bush administration went overboard the other direction. The Constitution's protections of the accused are relaxed in wars and the like - apparently because holding a trial in the middle of a battlefield is impractica