Skype Messages Monitored In China

Pickens writes "Human-rights activists have discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives Internet text conversations sent by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator and eBay. Researchers say the system monitors a list of politically charged words that includes words related to the religious group Falun Gong, Taiwan independence, the Chinese Communist Party and also words like democracy, earthquake and milk powder. The encrypted list of words inside the Tom-Skype software blocks the transmission of these words and records personal information about the customers who send the messages. Researchers say their discovery contradicts a public statement made by Skype executives in 2006 that 'full end-to-end security is preserved and there is no compromise of people's privacy.' The Chinese government is not alone in its Internet surveillance efforts. In 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency was monitoring large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of an eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. 'This is the worst nightmares of the conspiracy theorists around surveillance coming true,' says Ronald J. Deibert, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. 'It's "X-Files" without the aliens.'"

Comments

In end-to-end security...

[sam0737]

...the last thing to trust is closed source implementation or even worse, proprietary protocol.

though I think real paranoid people won't trust something like Skype, right?

Re:In end-to-end security...

[Simon (S2)]

This is not about real paranoid people. The real paranoid people (like me) never trusted skype (encrypted, closed source binary blob).
This news is for the non-tinfoil-hat people. Now they too know, like us paranoid people, that their conversations are tracked, recorded, monitored and archived. For real. And now they know, if they read and understand the news, that what skype sad to us all ('full end-to-end security is preserved and there is no compromise of people's privacy.') was a lie. Skype (eBay) lied, maybe one time, maybe on other, more important things too, and maybe they will do it again.

Open source

[DoofusOfDeath]

'This is the worst nightmares of the conspiracy theorists around surveillance coming true,' says Ronald J. Deibert, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

This is also an argument in favor of using open source software. I've been dubious in the past about claims that closes-source vendors couldn't be trusted, but apparently I was being naive.

Sounds like the FSF got this one right.

Not the worst nightmare at all

[CSMatt]

'This is the worst nightmares of the conspiracy theorists around surveillance coming true,'

No. The worst nightmare would be when this comes true and no one cares.

Re:Not the same

[megamerican]

That's only if you trust the government's claims. They have a pretty bad track record. Just do some research on COINTELPRO or Mockingbird. Or realize that the FBI was openly recruiting people to spy on protest groups in Minnesota before the RNC.

Also remember that the patriot act has been used 1000's of times against people who have done nothing terror related. Elliot Spitzer was caught because of the patriot act. It has mostly been used to get drug dealers and shut down strip joints.

Re:Submitter is a troll

[EaglemanBSA]

No, the fact of the matter is that Skype, when they stated that their software was encrypted end-to-end, lied. The question then remains, with the ongoing domestic spying operations in the United States, what is to keep software like Skype from applying such policies to all their closed-source software?

I think the poster's point is that Skype is enabling this behavior, and Skype, in case you haven't noticed, has a presence all over the world.

Re:Shocked, I am

[evilviper]

This doesn't sound any different from how the United States operate.

The US taps phone calls in an attempt to uncover evidence of violent crimes, to prevent them from happening, and to prosecute and jail those responsible.

China taps phone calls so they can find out who is speaking out against the one-party government, or bringing up other embarrassing subjects, so that they can send police to drag them out of their house, and put them in front of a firing squad.

Clearly, the two are not at all different.

Re:Shocked, I am

[R2.0]

Don't bother.

The First rule of Slashdot (and US liberalism in general) is that it's ALWAYS the fault of the US.

The Second rule is that if it isn't the fault of the US, what he US does is equally bad or worse.

The Third rule is that, if a situation arises that doesn't fall neatly into the rules above, see the rules above.

Re:Shocked, I am

[gstoddart]

I honestly don't understand why people think the Falun Gong is great. They're honestly crazy

Other than your assertion, got anything to back that up? Certainly, other than China saying it, I see no evidence whatsoever of them having any aspects of being a cult.

I've known several people who were practitioners, and they were some of the nicest, kindest, straight up people I've known. I've skimmed their literature, and I don't see anything in it that I would classify as crazy.

We take the Dalai Lhama's word as gospel, even though he definitely has his own incentive to distort the truth.

But, the vast majority of what he says about the situation in Tibet is documented, historical fact. And, we listen to what he says because if you read the huge volume of Buddhist writings he's done, he's a very smart guy with a very broad and inclusive world view.

It's awfully hard to come to the conclusion that he's any of the things that China paints him as in light of the rest of the way he has lived his life. Even though it might appear that he has an incentive to distort the truth, the whole package makes it a little implausible that he's secretly evil and sneaky.

Cheers