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China Begins Monitoring Billions of Text Messages
eldavojohn writes "The Telegraph is reporting that China has begun monitoring 'billions of text messages' in order to increase censorship. However, a People's Daily article claims they only monitor users who have been reported, and only shut down their message service if the complaints are true. Anything considered pornographic will require the user to bring a letter of guarantee to the local public security bureau promising to never again send such messages before service can be reactivated."
It all looks like Chinese to me.
I mean, seriously, the "right of speech shall not be infringed", etc...? Am I missing something here?
private text messages are being recorded in the US as well, by the government and possibly private enterprises too. Recall the text messages sent on 9/11, which was posted anonymously on wikileaks.org. The only difference between the west and china is that they act upon the monitored data more extensively, the breach of privacy is the same.
"Anything considered pornographic will require the user to bring a letter of guarantee to the local public security bureau promising to never again send such messages before service can be reactivated." So what has to happen to get your service back if you protest the government?
Ok, exactly how Evil is the Chinese government? I'm all for trade with them because it keeps our relationship stable so we don't actually start killing each other but my opinion of their government style is that it has to go. Their government is Evil from my value system and I would love to see the Chinese people do something about that. Hell, I would even provide material support electronically but I wouldn't go there.
Shh.
Where does the fear of pornography originate from in China?
This is easy to answer in the western world and other regions following an Abrahamic Religion. And trough Colonialism a lot of the then-present sentiment was exported and influences e.g. India to the present day.
But China was never under colonial rule per se, they were just being pushed around by the West. Still they look like 19th century Victorian prudes.
Also, the sex drive one of the stronger drives, people might get pissed (especially those 20+ million "excess" males that are around by selectively aborting female foetuses) at porn censorship much easier than than at political censorship.
It's unfortunate that the Chinese government continues to spy on the population. Many text messages that people send are quite personal.
Text message technology actually makes it easier to spy on people because you can just filter for words like "democracy" rather than actually having to pay an operator to listen to people's phone conversations. Many human rights activists in China had previously reported having their phones tapped.
about friggin time.
this really has nothing to do with porn. That's the cover story to provide justification to start seaching the people's messages. Make it sound like the government's protecting morality, when in reality it's another crackdown on dissenters and anyone who doesn't fall in line.
The Chinese government is clearly fixed upon the value of censorship. Censorship is what they're trying to promote, clearly. Cutting naughty or unacceptable words out of daily conversation is their endgame. They're certainly not monitoring billions of texts messages to identify and locate dissidents, increase their understanding of social networks that may work against them, or to increase their control over their citizens. Censorship is totally what they're after.
The Chinese government requires every Slashdot subscriber to send an official letter of apology, and promise never to read Slashdot again.
Be heard || Be herd
A solution is for users to increase the volume.
But in the us you don't go to jail for being a part of the religion that is not the one the sate forces you to be in.
Even focusing in detecting the pornographic, that is heavily dependant on context, specially when you try to say much in few words, Even if a image worth 1000 words you can still misunderstand it (as this soldier found)
Well, that's the last time I send ( o Y o ) to someone in China I guess...
Human rights and the well-being of their population, they probably wouldn't have half the dissent and problems they have now. Which would, in turn, require less effort to police the people and would result in much less of a need to 'control' their population. You cannot completely control a population the size of China's. If you want them to conform you have to win them over.
Here are some examples:
Down with CCP
Free Tibet
Free Xinjiang
Rule of law
Down with the Great Firewall
Human rights
Multiparty sytem
Accountability
Melanine
Children crushed by crumbling schools
Forced abortion
Chapter 08
You have nice pecks baby.
Just think of the children!!
before the people revolt and the blood of these assholes runs in the streets. Sadly, i'm leaning towards the believe that the people will probably take it. They know no other way.
Ethical concerns aside, it would be extremely interesting to see how censorship on this large of a scale is implemented.
I wonder how effective automated modern systems will be at filtering, and how much of the censorship will have to rely on human employees. Total cost? Effectiveness? Cultural implications?
I think it'd be hard enough for computers to decipher English LOL-speak, much less Chinese.
Sooo, who is going to offer the first hardware encryption in handsets...and how soon would THAT be forbidden?
I'm honestly not so sure about that. Try being a muslim in texas and stand anywhere near a crime scene ... (un)Surprisingly *you* will be the one picked up by the cop, out of a dozen people there.
Don't forget:
No lead paint
No cadmium toys
... by the parallels between the Chinese and American right wingers' war on pornography. I'd think that the Chinese would be more intent on stamping out possible challenges to Communist rule (Falun Gong), independence movements (Tibet) and threats to national security. The American conservative logic is more understandable. The economic conservatives don't care about porn per se (its just another business after all), but in order to assemble a viable voting block, their 'deal with the devil' (the religious right) requires that they adopt their position that every ejaculation must have a name. The Chinese don't suffer from the same political pressures as the GOP does. There's no opposition party espousing sexual freedom that could benefit from the circulation of porn. Sitting at home wanking in front of the computer screen is not an activity around which groups tend to organize.
Although the battle cry of our right wingers has been "Godless Commies", it seems that these two groups share quite a bit of ideology.
Have gnu, will travel.
So what's chinese for "lol @ govt"
I believe that in the worst part of the USA you have about equal actual rights as the best part of China. Different worlds, most of the time I bet its ok to live in China but for the times when you piss someone off in power I'd much rather live in the USA.
Shh.
Why would a governement like china's care about porn or anything like that?
Cutting naughty or unacceptable words out of daily conversation is their endgame.
Look. What they are doing is persuading people to censor themselves, and to think conservatively. The endgame is behaviour modification.
You don't actually have to read every message. You simply tell people that everything they write or say is monitored.
It's literally FUD.
Deleted
China elect Bush? Well, it would massively drive up their debt for no real return.. So yeah! Gives us an advantage! ;)
Shh.
Anyone who doesn't think every SMS in the US (for example) is passed into the NSA is naive beyond belief. The difference is that in the west doing this snooping is still a 'dirty secret', while in china they see value in the people knowing they're monitored. Keeps everything calm. In the west being open about this would have the opposite effect, and we all want everything to remain calm, right? They all do it "for the people" of course.
The EU as a whole isn't there yet, but the infrastructure is coming up as fast as the laws can be pushed through.
Even if your local government quite dislike the idea of Total Interception, they'll still do it because information is the currency in the global military industrial information complex. If moscow will trade you information about Al-Qaeda for information about some chinesee dissident in your country...
Sheesh, nowadays you can't talk about the world we live in without sounding like a friggin nutcase.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Google Voice and other similar sites will be used to create generic SMS accounts that smartphones will then be programmed to send random 140 character junk messages at random intervals just to skew the results and make it more difficult to track individuals sending pornographic texts. We may not have privacy anymore, but what does that really matter when we can just hide in the torrent?
Can we get everyone in China with a phone to text the word FREEDOM to everyone they know just to bug the eavesdroppers? Personally, given a choice between the government reading all my electronic communication versus occasionally encountering porn, I'm sure I would choose porn. It must be horrible to be part of the government of China and be so afraid of your own people.
This should be modded insightful, not funny.
I think there is a lot wrong in China (I have never been there), but this lead/cadmium story is making me sick, it's to typical American. It probably went something like this:
American designs crappy toy.
American sends design to china for fabrication, specifications include the crappy plastics, flame retardants and paints to be used.
American importer: we want to pay less. is there anything you can do?
Chinese manufacturer: we could use cheaper lead paint instead...
American importer: Great! that will save at least 0.1 cents per sold item!
American government: Go ahead, if someone finds out about the lead paint we will help blaming it on the Chinese.
Let's txt some pr0n to some mayors and gov't officials to see what happens...
Does anyone, in any country use SMS for more than "meet in bar at 7"?
It's 140 characters.
Just ask any Twitter user.
Down with CCP
What does protesting the practices of the company running Eve Online have to do with anything?
No. They live in China, they don't have your fancy 1st Amendment.
You're right. All citizens of China have is Article 35, translated: "Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."
But of course, you are right, and they are wrong. Funny that, they also think EXACTLY the same thing.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I prefer open security practices instead of warrantless, and if you're tapping information...just do it discreetly and prevent abuse of personal information
Complete freedom to do it, and enjoy the consequences before, during and (if conscious) after!
I can't believe it! I'm so ticked off about this I could... oh, wait... only people that have "been reported?" Okay, then.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
The PRC is no farther up the evil scale than many other governments in the world, but they have more power to utilize their evil.
On the arrogance scale however, China probably holds a 10 out of 10.
Governments are rarely evil, in real life they are misguided trying to do what they think is the right thing but going about it wrong.
Terry Pratchett's "May you life in intresting times" touches on it briefly. A rebellion is forming in the counterweight continent (china) seeking to overthrow the government and liberate the peasants... and who will then lead those peasants? The leaders of the rebellion, who will for the greater good of the peasants tell the peasants how to lead their life, how to farm, despite those peasants have hundreds of years more experience with farming.
Leaders have a plan for the future, they see it not working, human nature then tries to find something that is wrong without looking at the plan itself. China needs it people to work hard, without demanding more then can be given, and do so effeciently and properly within the limits of society and available resources. This is all perfectly sensible and reasonable. Take the one-child policy. Westerners often critize it, but what else are China leaders supposed to do? Have the population explode? Invade other countries to be able to feed its out of control population? Allow mass starvation? The one-child police, with all its problems is the only workable solution. But it only works if everyone follows it, to many exceptions and things break down and you MUST control it. What happens if you do NOT control your people is clear, look at the US where the average citizen consumes 9 times the average amount of a world citizen. People starve because americans binge eat (europeans do the same but slightly less). The US has the resources to have this happen, China does not.
And when you got a plan and are convinced the plan is right and the people don't follow your plan, you start looking for reasons. Any reason. Maybe they are being subverted by hostile agents (the examples are countless. Recently shown in Iran but of course the famous McCarthy witch hunts in the US are very much the same. Later anti-vietnam protests could only have been organized by communist agents, free will of the people? Only when they do what you want them to do, the Chinese ain't unique at all).
Sex, sex is just one of those things where people are very disruptive, almost no idea about sexual activity held by the ruling elite is correct. 30+% of children are not of the father that thinks he is the father. The fast majority of teenage girls got an STD... these are not the figures you want when you are plotting the future of your country.
Sex, drugs and Rock&Roll are the enemy of the planners all over the world. Every leader who has had a vision for the future has sought to control them. And in a way, you got to. Take again, the one-child policy. Would be a far greater problem with rampant teenage pregnancy. Women who have children by multiple fathers are a problem in a one-child culture. Would you marry a woman who already has a kid if she is not allowed to have yours?
This is why a clamp down on sex and drugs and music is always a part of a government that has a plan for its population. Check history (and don't forget to check your own) and you will this is true.
And history has also shown that there is precious little opposition to it.
Else, why did the US not rebel after nipple-gate? You are probably an American, protesting about censorship in a country where the word "fuck" is not just bleeped out, but a mosaic put over the mouth of the person who said it. Why does the US government fear porn?
It has nothing to do with decency of puritanism, it has to do with the idea that it is corrupting/influencing the population away from the destiny you have planned for them.
China is undergoing great changes, and the government seeks and needs control to keep it all together. Don't forget that China KNOWS its own history. Almost conquered by the Japanese a tiny primitive nation that was so insignificant that it never developed its own language. 2000+ years it was nothing and then it almost steam rolled over them. The
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
With a project of this scale, and with the wallet and determination of the Chinese government, it's more than likely that an advanced Western IT company is going to be helping out with this monitoring task. They helped out with Iran, after all, which is much more taboo than helping out China.
There is a good side, now the hackers that attacked google will be busy sifting through billions of texts saying,
"DOOD, too much rice-wine! just had sex with a goat! gonna hurl..."
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
Semi-related: I've heard that you can disconnect Chinese WoW users advertising in-game for gold selling services, by whispering "Free Tibet" to them. Don't know if it's true or not.
Porn and freedom are both seen as bad things from outside. The perception is that if you get one you get the other.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
But in the us you don't go to jail for being a part of the religion that is not the one the sate forces you to be in.
Give us time. Soon we'll be able to send you to jail for using too much fuel or electricity or driving the wrong type of car or not buying health insurance. The difference between China and the US is that China tells you what religion you can or can't be where the US government is becoming its own religion.
There's no place like
Sent from Longh Whang...
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
You mean unless you’re a muslim, or vaguely belong to religion that some “terrorist” belongs to...
Hey, you know that the US is having the most active terrorist training camp on the planet? ;) :(
It’s called Gitmo, and I heard it’s still not closed yet.
Or rather:
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Careful, the first one's always free, then they jack up the price. That's how they get you.
The Chinese Communist Party is running Eve Online?
to compare what a western government does to its citizens to what a country like china does to its citizens?
western governments are democracies, they rule by consent. therefore, there is a natural limit on what their citizens will tolerate before the government is voted out. china is an autocracy. a small select class of elites rule by fiat. fear and force is therefore how they rule. it doesn't matter what the citizens think, it matters only what a few grumpy technocrats in beijing think. furthermore, china has no promises on free information. everything is subject to censorship and control of all media is centralized. meanwhile, the west has a long standing cultural, legal, political and social obligation to protect the free flow of information, by law and by popular decree
fact: no government, historical, present day, or hypothetical, will not snoop for one reason or another, good or bad
therefore, that you can find some snooping a government does is therefore without probative value. they all do that, and they all always will. so you are left instead with an examination of the SCALE of the snooping, WHY people are being snooped on, and what kind of PUNISHMENT those who are snooped on receive
only then can it be said that you have some sort of intellectual honesty about your opinions. until then, it is simply a matter of intellectual charity to explain to you why what the chinese government does to its citizens is far, far worse than what any government in the west does to its citizens
please, by all means, let this be your invitation to recite the usual litany of the crimes of the west. and completely miss out on those amazing elementary school level concepts most of us learned, like compare and contrast
quantitative and qualitative fact: the crimes of the west are NOT equivalent to the crimes of china. china is FAR, FAR worse to its citizens and you have FAR, FAR less freedoms as a citizen of china than a citizen of any western country
that you do not understand this simple obvious truth is merely a mark of profound ignorance, bias, or propagandization on your part
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
other places make you buy health though taxes and jail has free health care.
You forgot the following addendum...
"Except where we decide otherwise."
> But in the us you don't go to jail for being a part of the religion that is not the one the sate forces you to be in.
The Chinese government forces you to be atheist, though. Atheism is a lack of a religion. You'll find quite a few people online who feel that religion is inherently harmful and that makes it okay.
you forgot "execute mentally ill person" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/debates/6905283/China-executes-Akmal-Shaikh-was-the-execution-justified.html I find China deeply worrying on so many levels, I just wish when I go out to buy a new laptop of mp3 player I had a choice not to buy stuff from china. But I don't even more worrying.
What the fuck are you talking about? Do you even know anything about China? There is no state enforced religion. Goddamn fuckwit.
The current administration is still working on this.
To really screw with them, just set up a program that automatically sends all the phones in China text messages related to Tibet, Tiananmen Square, porn, Amnesty International...etc.
Put those bot-nets/spammers to good use. ;-)
(e.g. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/what-does-china-censor-online/)
I find your argumentation to be borderline strawmanish and succumbent to the very intellectual dishonesty you accuse me of.
>fact: no government, historical, present day, or hypothetical, will not snoop for one reason or another, good or bad therefore, that you can find some snooping a government does is therefore without probative value.
So you're saying it's the will of the people to be under mass-surveillance, because you just said:
>western governments are democracies, they rule by consent. therefore, there is a natural limit on what their citizens will tolerate before the government is voted out.
Ergo we are snooped on because we want it? Therefore we deserve it and shouldn't complain? Wait, why is this being done in secret again?
No. I reserve the right to complain about mass surveillance, no matter the 'grade of hell' it reaches on your scale. That the Chineese happen to be a few years ahead of the west in 'enforcement' doesn't give me any great feeling of superiority.
>it is simply a matter of intellectual charity to explain to you why what the chinese government does to its citizens is far, far worse than what any government in the west does to its citizens
Ah, condescention. The hallmark of the intellectual superior!
There are clearly differences in how the information produced by the mass data mining operations are used. That's not something I was trying to hide.
To just accept mass surveillance as inevitable and then squabble about degrees of repression to me is giving up. If that's where you need to go to find your intellectual honesty, then I want nothing of it.
>that you do not understand this simple obvious truth
<eye-roll>
Belief is the currency of delusion.
say the dutch or the swedes
right now, the dutch and swedish government are monitoring information and any chatter within its borders. terrorist cells, mafia organizations, pedophiles, and other possible criminals they have leads on. this is normal, this is status quo, and this will always be the case. why do you have a problem with this?
right now the chinese are monitoring chatter as well. the scale of the monitoring is many orders of magnitude larger than the liberal governments (adjusted for population even), and it is aimed at EVERYONE. what they consider criminal is: any pornography, simply saying negative things about the government, agitating for the rights of minorities in the fringes of the imperial empire, like tibet and xinjiang, or even just religious proselytization
in the liberal western governments, any potential criminals caught by surveillance methods will have an open trial, with free and vigorous representation, open handling of evidence, last as long as necessary, and then will receive a sentence that tightasses in the west always grumble is way too light. in china, the potential criminal will have a quick kangaroo court with mystery evidence where everyone in the room is a representative of the ONLY legal political party, and then the sentenced will get something like 11 years hard labor simply for asking for human rights, or death for shoddy business practices. meanwhile, the west bails out their asshole corporate sleazebags, and tolerates deranged lunatics protesting at funerals saying god is punishing the west for tolerating gays. THAT'S the difference between china and the west
chinese free speech:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/25/china-jails-liu-xiaobo
chinese corporate punishment:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/4315627/Two-sentenced-to-death-over-China-melamine-milk-scandal.html
western free speech:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church
western corporate punishment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup#Federal_bailout_2008
now, when you mention chinese surveillance in the same breath as western surveillance, YOU LOOK LIKE A MORON for not realizaing these obvious massive differences in METHOD, PURPOSE, EFFECT, and CONTEXT
do you really want to continue down this retarded road of yours? go ahead. you're obviously a highly propagandized fool. let's put it this way: in china, criticizing the chinese government the way you are criticizing the west right now is grounds for a reprimand, and if you continue, incarceration. i have a strong feeling if you were in beijing right now, a chickenshit like you would not writing what you are saying
i know someone that just took a teaching position in shanghai. they made her sign a piece of paper saying she wouldn't criticize the government. chinese students can come here and write anything negative about the west they want. the west is not afraid of criticism. china is. we rule by consent, not by force. THAT'S the difference between the west and china. you are a moron for not understanding the OBVIOUS differences in scale and purpose
but you know what, you keep talking. i'll keep calling you a moron. i think you're a low iq cretin, but i support the principles of tolerance that exists in the west, so i support your right to type as much of your ignorant mental diarrhea as you want. we tolerate deluded wackjobs with deranged ideas in the west like westboro baptist church, and you. in china, its jail or death. know the fucking difference, fucktard
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
they are all control freaks. every society has control freaks. its psychologically inevitable that a regular dribble in any society will consist of zealous control freaks absolutely fearful of losing control over... who knows what. their bowels i guess. its the trailing end of the bell curve, what can you do? just look at all these low iq tea bagger morons in the usa. too bad their so goddamn loud
they all rally around a banner, and the banner is always the magical past. the real past was full of just as much sin/ apostasy/ disharmony, whatever drives them nuts. but in their historical myopia, these conservative, communist, and fundamentalist assholes believe for some reason that going backwards in time will make the world a better place. you know, when we had open slavery, frequent starvation, deadly pandemics, etc
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
promising to never again send such messages
Whatever you might think of China's government (I think they're corrupt, murderous, robotic slaves to fascist communism, the greatest economic fraud in world history), I'm enchanted by their rhetoric, having once been allowed to leave tucson, AZ solely on the basis of my word to repay a debt. I did too.
The Ministry of Truth issues the announcement and extols the high minded well meaning intent of messaging censure. The Ministry of Love will "help" those citizens sending naughty messages. Does each Chinese citizen also have a telescreen if they are not Proles?
A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding...
Funny nobody mentioned Echelon?
So the Chinese has finally caught up to where the US was, maybe, 20 years ago?
Where was the outrage in the US over Echelon in past 20 years? May be the US citizens are more ok with US govt spying on them, than for Chinese govt spying on Chinese people?
Here are some examples:
Down with CCP
Free Tibet
Free Xinjiang
Rule of law
Down with the Great Firewall
Human rights
Multiparty sytem
Accountability
Melanine
Children crushed by crumbling schools
Forced abortion
Chapter 08
You have nice pecks baby.
Just think of the children!!
well then maybe we should write a program to automatically use those naughty words as a footer for all text mesages and emails to saturate their capability to monitor textws
No, you don't understand. In China, you have the right to speak freely. The government has the right to arrest you without reason. They just happen to do it when you say something they don't like.
What's not to love about more government?
Oh, that's right, I forgot- no true communist government would do such a thing.
Support the FairTax
Citizens of China also have Article 51:
"The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens."