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

nothing new

[XMichael]

I'm almost tired of hearing stories about this sort of thing. Is it an Amercian "we are better" additude or what? Check out the policy that AT&T has regarding SMS, turns out they log 3 months worth ... ala, the Amercians monitor it too. However, because its written in black and white in the agreement it's no news... ahh yahh.. Wireless Security Cameras

Re:nothing new

[ryen]

> turns out they log 3 months worth ... ala, the Amercians monitor it too

so since they do log 3 months worth that means they (as in AT&T) monitor our sms messages? and then you point to "the Americans" as monitors too? i'm not seeing your connection between a communist government that will throw people in jail for saying bad things about them and your conspiracy theory that AT&T and the US govt are in league to crack down on political opponents.

or just maybe its time for your nap.

Re:nothing new

[dave420]

In Britain, some guy texted some Clash lyrics to his friend (they are both in a Clash cover band). The text of the message was: "How about this for Tommy Gun? Ok - So let's agree about the price and make it one jet airliner for ten prisoners". The guy was at work the next day, and special branch turned up to ask him some questions. Needless to say, they let him go within minutes, rather sheepishly. You can read about it here. My point - this goes on all over the world, in places we usually think of as being "good". China does it, and suddenly everyone's up in arms. China's got its issues, but the western world has far more logging and scanning than the rest of the world put together. Echelon springs to mind, and GCHQ does too. Let's not take the piss out of the Chinese when we're worse. It's not cool.

Oh, and when your government stops killing people for money and wiping their asses on the constitution, I'll start to respect them. As that's never going to happen, fuck 'em. dumb monkey-faced bush and his evil cronies. fuck 'em to hell.

Re:Meet the NSA

[maelstrom]

The NSA is prevented from spying in America or on American citizens. This is quite different than the Chinese government.

China Government == King Canute

[eamacnaghten]

Well - not quite - King Canute ordered the tide not to come in as a demonstration to his sycophantic admirers that he did NOT have power over nature.

Though the Chinese Government now trying to maintain such control over it's population is fighting a losing battle. Control WAS just about possible before the prolification of IT for the masses, but now the Chinese Government is trying to stop the tide. There is NO WAY to keep up such control on modern communications. Even with auto-text-pattern matches and auto-calling-of-the-local-police, all the participants need to do is use code words!

I think we can expect the Chinese Government, in the next couple of years, in effect throw in the towell and permit uncensored communication to occur. If they do not the populus will have found ways round it anyway. Then what - who knows... I hope not another Tiananmen Square.

Huh? Most mobiles here are quasi-anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Shanghai for almost a year now, and I have never seen anyone showing any ID card when buying or recharging a mobile phone card.

Most people use a prepaid card that they recharge in 30, 50 and 100 Yuan quantities.

It works quite well and I have been using such a quasi anonymous card for almost the whole time.

How would the government track down such numbers to names? Maybe through correlation of SMS communication?

secure ims... sure

[vmircea]

yeah there are im clients that can be used for semi-secure conversations, like trillian and gaim, but the fact is that if someone with resources (like china) wants to break the code, then the code will get broken, its just that simple unfortunately, although it may take a while to do, with todays most modern and highpowered computers, you could easily crack a message perhaps even within a day. But the fact of the matter is that noone really cares, we have secure email, but almost noone actually bothers to encrypt their email do they? People allow emails with sensitive information to fly across the net, unencrpyted, and this happens all the time, my estimate is that at least 3/4 of all computer users dont know what encryption is past a rudimentary concept, and 9/10 of the remainder don't bother to actually use encryption although they know about it... just my two cents

Re:Sounds like a need for encrypted SMS.

[ron_ivi]

Someone really should watch these companies for insider trading violations.

Our sales guys are known to send SMS messages about "got [big client]" and similar.

If someone can listen in to such communicatios, there's a big opportunity for really hard to detect illegal stock-market trading with insider information they pick up from sales people in other companies.

It already happens in Britain

[jonbryce]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/03/text_punk/

And I'm sure it happens in the USA as well.

Re:Sounds like a need for encrypted SMS.

[tftp]

The encryption would be too cumbersome for most people. Secret key system would restrict you to point-to-point encryption, and you have to manage all the keys yourself. Public key system would work great, but it really must be built into the phone, and it isn't small.

Today one can use some Java app that runs on a Java-enabled phone. This way at least you know what you are running. But a generic solution would need to be built into all the phones, and that can't happen overnight.

Censored or Mindfucked? What's better?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's better to have some idea when you're being watched, if you live in a police state. If in a police state you're being watched and /not/ censored, you never really know if /you're/ the one being watched. If your messages start getting censored, well it would be obvious.

In some ways, China has a more honest approach with their barbarism than the US. China is at least very upfront about their intentions. They are watching and you may go into a gulag. It's pretty clear. In the US, you are being watched and instead of being clear coherent about it, they always try to mindfuck you. "For your safety. For the Homeland."

If there was ever a word that would come from a sociopath, it would be the word "Homeland". That is not a common word in the American lexicon.Words like this don't appear out of the blue. Lot of thought went into that. A lot of thought about thinking. Kind of like how Pavlov thought about his dogs.

All this bold and blatent meddling with the American psyche is starting to scare me. Such disrespect and careless tampering sends a message loud and clear. "We own you." And it's true. Americans, and most people around the world are owned property in so many subtle ways, that once you add them all together, there is no room left over for anyone (who desired it) to be free. Let's let debt be one of the less subtle methods to allowing yourself to become property. Consider cultures immense pressure to encourage debt for everyone. Consider what is happening to culture itself. No longer a free and natural exchange of information between human beings but a top down force-feeding of this sick "television culture" we have. You are composed of the information you allow yourself to be exposed to.

You fools will protect your computer with a firewall but when it comes to your own brain you feel invincible and plop down on the couch for hours on end and let an entire universe of sociopaths(a direct metaphor for marketing) have their way in any way they want with your own brain.

This is a sad and critical time in human history. I wonder what's going to become of us? Keep an eye on the television brain-washed crowd. I suspect whatever strange crap happens, they're gonna get it first. Think about it. You might consider life as some 70 odd years of crossing busy intersections. If you aren't paying attention the more subtle trucks will run over you first, followed by whatever else crosses your path when you're not looking.

What did your television tell you do do in the days shortly before the big internet/stocks crash. your television told you to buy. *splat*

This is common sense. Pull your heads out of your asses. Thanks.

The goals

[tftp]

Simply put, the Chinese government only wants to keep the country in one piece. Already people are allowed to do everything legal (and illegal) as long as it is not politics. If taken off the leash, the country will disintegrate in a moment (see USSR as a reference case.) But given that China has 10x more people, and a proportional volume of munitions of all kinds is stored everywhere, such a process is very risky (Does Yugoslavia ring a bell?)

If the leash is removed right now and the Party dissolved, only the worst types of people - the most despicable arch-villains, mobsters, aspiring politicians - will be on top, simply because they know how to wield power. It would be awfully reckless to give them the power. China will be torn into pieces, and every one will have The Bomb.

The Australian government has used Echelon taps.

[ozmanjusri]

In Australia during the Tampa "crisis" (when four hundred odd refugees were rescued by the contaainer ship Tampa Bay), the Defence Signals Directorate intercepted phone conversations between the Maritime Union of Australia and the Tampa, and passed on transcripts of the conversations to the government.

They were caught that time, but it's probable that they're routinely scanning both internal and overseas (the Tampa is Norwegian) conversations. The tapping was judged to be illegal, but no prosecutions occurred, and nothing has been changed to prevent a repetition.

Already happens in the UK

[nut]

Also from the Register;
Some guy gets picked up by Special Branch for sharing Clash lyrics by SMS.

I imagine this happens to most SMS messages in Europe. (Echelon conspiracies, yada yada) The US may have a less joined-up Big Brother, but that will probably have more to do with the general lack of integration of their mobile network.

Re:Don't be fools - look around

[bnenning]

I certainly wish we didn't have the Patriot act, but what are the alternatives? Citizen vigilance, or martial law. That's about it. How many terrorists have you caught today? Didn't think so.

James Woods (the actor) identified 9/11 hijackers on a flight they were using as a dry run. He got the information to authorities, who did nothing about it. (The link tries to spin this as a "Bush knew" conspiracy, but it's far more likely to be typical bureaucratic inertia and incompetence). Thanks to citizen vigilance, we had the information we needed to stop 9/11 without invasive laws like the Patriot Act.