China Will Monitor, Censor SMS Messages

Posted by timothy on Friday July 2, 2004 @06:44PM from the enlightenment-by-fiat dept.

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?"

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Re:nothing new by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-02 19:16 · Score: 5, Informative

You sure? An alleged counterexample:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/12/20/211923/ 84
Re:Huh? Most mobiles here are quasi-anonymous by zalle · 2004-07-02 20:47 · Score: 5, Informative

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.