Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China New York Times (10/02/08) P. C1; Markoff, John
as it appeared in the October 3, 2008 edition of ACM TechNews.
Researchers have uncovered a large surveillance system in China dedicated to monitoring and archiving certain Internet text conversations that include politically charged words. The system tracks text messages sent by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator and eBay, which owns Skype. Researchers in China estimate that more than 30,000 people monitor online traffic, Web sites, and blogs for political and otherwise offensive content as part of the Golden Shield Project. Activists at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto discovered the surveillance operation last month, which includes a cluster of eight message-monitoring computers in China that contain more than a million censored messages. The researchers examined the text messages and reconstructed a list of restricted words, including words related to the religious group Falun Gong, Taiwan independence, and the Chinese Communist Party, as well as words such as "democracy" and others related to the recent earthquake and tainted powdered milk. The list also works as a filter on text messages, blocking transmissions of those words and sending a copy of the message to the server. The Chinese servers retain personal information about the users who send such messages, and record chat conversations between Tom-Skype users and Skype users outside China. The system also recorded text messages and Skype caller identification, but not the content of Skype voice calls. Click Here to View Full Article
