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

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: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.