p2pnet.net News:- China is to censor mobile phone messages in real time.

Guidelines called ‘Self-Discipline Standards on Content in Mobile Short Messaging Services’ have been issued aimed at "weeding out pornographic, fraudulent and illicit messages".

ISPs and other "Internet-related organizations" across the country have already been told to sign self-discipline pacts to protect online intellectual property rights and "prevent cyber crime, the spread of harmful information and unhealthy competition".

Now, says Reporters Without Borders, China’s Venus info Tech Ltd claims to have permission from the Public Security Ministry to market its real-time surveillance system for SMS (mobile phone text) messages, going on:

"The new technology will allow the authorities to filter messages using key words and to pinpoint ‘reactionary’ text-senders."

Internetpolicy.net has raised the alarm about the new system because, "if this product works as claimed, and if its price is as low as Chinese products usually tend to be, exports to other countries may soon followit", states RWB.

Venus info Tech Ltd says its surveillance system would allow it to home in on ‘false political rumours’ and ‘reactionary remarks’ among others, says RWB: "It works through filtering algorithms created by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, based on keywords and combinations of key words.

"It generates automatic alerts to police and saves information about suspect texts - date of sending, sender of a message and so on - for 60 days," says the story.

"It could also be used for surveillance of other types of electronic messages such as emails. The website Internetpolicy.net, specialised in press freedom issues on the Internet, has raised the alarm about the new system, "if this product works as claimed, and if its price is as low as Chinese products usually tend to be, exports to other countries may soon followit", it said.

According to the same press release, China currently has 2,800 SMS surveillance centres.

"These specialised departments came under great pressure during the Sars crisis, in May 2003, to monitor messages sent about the epidemic," says RWB. "Around a dozen people were arrested as a result for having spread "false rumours" through their mobile phones."

China Mobile Corp, China’s largest mobile phone service provider, will "contract out the policing and filtering of short messages for content deemed unhealthy or fraudulent," says China Daily.

So far 10 companies have begun policing 20 categories of content detailed out in an earlier ‘treaty’ on content between the government and Internet Service Providers, it states, going on that more than 220 billion text messages were sent in China in 2003, comprising about 55% of the world’s text messages.

One in four Chinese people will have a mobile phone by the end of the year, it adds.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 3rd, 2004 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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