KateYHuang
08-17-2004, 09:23 PM
China¡¯s Government Seeks to Censor Cell Phone Text Messages
If China¡¯s cell phone users thought that they could freely send messages to their friends and family through cell phones, they thought wrong. Chinese authorities are planning to implement new technology to monitor cell phone text messages, also known as Short Message Service.
Reporters Without Borders, a group based in Paris that is concerned with freedom of the press, issued a statement saying that the Chinese campaign is aimed at widening surveillance of dissent. The statement said that a Chinese company, Venus Info Tech Ltd., had started selling real-time surveillance systems for SMS messages.
From the statement, it appears that the product uses filtering algorithms created by the government-run Chinese Academy of Sciences to identify words or phrases that might be termed ¡°politically subversive.¡± The new surveillance system appears to be capable of automatically alerting police and keeping records of messages.
The Chinese Communist government already uses such advanced surveillance techniques to monitor e-mail, censor Internet chat rooms and block access to some foreign Web sites. SMS is a relatively newer technology, but it appears that the government is now wise to this technology and will be able to censor it.
SMS messages caused the government a major annoyance when SARS was running rampant in China in the beginning of 2003. During that time, the government arrested people on charges of ¡°causing panic¡± by spreading what it claimed were ¡°rumors¡± about the SARS epidemic through SMS messages.
As it turned out, SARS claimed many lives by the time the government acknowledged that it existed.
If China¡¯s cell phone users thought that they could freely send messages to their friends and family through cell phones, they thought wrong. Chinese authorities are planning to implement new technology to monitor cell phone text messages, also known as Short Message Service.
Reporters Without Borders, a group based in Paris that is concerned with freedom of the press, issued a statement saying that the Chinese campaign is aimed at widening surveillance of dissent. The statement said that a Chinese company, Venus Info Tech Ltd., had started selling real-time surveillance systems for SMS messages.
From the statement, it appears that the product uses filtering algorithms created by the government-run Chinese Academy of Sciences to identify words or phrases that might be termed ¡°politically subversive.¡± The new surveillance system appears to be capable of automatically alerting police and keeping records of messages.
The Chinese Communist government already uses such advanced surveillance techniques to monitor e-mail, censor Internet chat rooms and block access to some foreign Web sites. SMS is a relatively newer technology, but it appears that the government is now wise to this technology and will be able to censor it.
SMS messages caused the government a major annoyance when SARS was running rampant in China in the beginning of 2003. During that time, the government arrested people on charges of ¡°causing panic¡± by spreading what it claimed were ¡°rumors¡± about the SARS epidemic through SMS messages.
As it turned out, SARS claimed many lives by the time the government acknowledged that it existed.