(CJFE/IFEX) – In a 6 July 2004 letter to Mei Ping, China’s ambassador to Canada, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) expressed its concern over the Chinese government’s new campaign to put short message service (SMS) mobile phone text messages under surveillance. The campaign, announced on 2 July, would require private companies to install newly […]
(CJFE/IFEX) – In a 6 July 2004 letter to Mei Ping, China’s ambassador to Canada, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) expressed its concern over the Chinese government’s new campaign to put short message service (SMS) mobile phone text messages under surveillance.
The campaign, announced on 2 July, would require private companies to install newly developed technology that would monitor SMS transmissions. Officials will also be making daily inspections of SMS providers to ensure compliance.
This new technology not only allows authorities to read these SMS messages, it also automatically notifies the police when certain keywords are detected. The offending text and its author are then entered into a database. SMS providers are required to contact the authorities on a regular basis to have an up-to-date list of banned topics and keywords.
Similar surveillance of the internet by the Chinese government has resulted in widespread censorship and the imprisonment of more than 60 cyber-dissidents for their comments in e-mails and on the World Wide Web. SMS was one of the few remaining venues for electronic personal communication and news distribution not under heavy government scrutiny. During the SARS crisis in May 2003, SMS was used to relay information on the spread of the disease in spite of a government-enforced blackout of information on the growing epidemic. However, even without the aid of this new technology, approximately a dozen people were arrested for spreading “false rumours” about SARS through text messages.
