China Begins Monitoring Billions of Text Messages 178
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."
Why does China dislike porn so much? (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:Monitoring is universal (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone, in any country use SMS for more than "meet in bar at 7"?
It's 140 characters. It's expensive per tiny unit of information (UK). It spawned a whole degenerate sub language, and it's just about the lamest way that two humans can communicate.
In china it's cheap, but I still wouldn't use it for my revolution planning. Encrypted XMPP/self run multi-protocol gateway (MSN, ICQ etc)/VOIP over 3G FTW.
But in the us you don't go to jail for religion th (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Logistics (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
idk (Score:4, Interesting)
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 fascinated ... (Score:5, Interesting)
... 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.
Here's the deal. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Monitoring is universal (Score:2, Interesting)
Does anyone, in any country use SMS for more than "meet in bar at 7"?
Yes.
It's 140 characters.
You still have an ancient phone that limits you to 140 characters? Any phone will automatically split them up for you, and join them at the other end, it's been that way for years.
It's expensive per tiny unit of information (UK).
Yes that sucks, but the key words are per unit of information. The absolute cost is not necessarily expensive, depending on your network/contract/etc. E.g., my texts are 10p each, whilst Internet access is 50p flat rate per day that I use it. The latter is far better value for money per MB, but if I only want to send some texts, a text costs 10p, whilst sending just one email will charge me 50p for that day. (Not to mention that not everyone will have their phones set up to check email, plus it costs the receiver to check email, where as receiving texts is free - so in practice emails are not a valid replacement for texts.)
It spawned a whole degenerate sub language
So did the Internet, but that doesn't make the technology bad. If you limit your choices by what some other people do with it, that's rather poor decision making.
and it's just about the lamest way that two humans can communicate.
Does it come above or below talking via Slashdot, as you and I do now, on the lame-ness scale?
Re:US 1st amendment corresponds to their Article 3 (Score:2, Interesting)
Complete freedom to do it, and enjoy the consequences before, during and (if conscious) after!
Re:Doesn't this violate the 1st Amendment? (Score:2, Interesting)
No one posted that...it was a joke. Read the damn comments, there were only 2 of them that you had to go through, and based on the topic headliner, the one that got modded up wasn't a response to anyone.
Echelon? (Score:1, Interesting)
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?