Tyrannical Chinese censors take aim at texts

Subject: Tyrannical Chinese censors take aim at texts Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:23 am

CHINA has started scanning text messages in the latest move to step up censorship.

Customers of China's two largest mobile phone networks, China Mobile and China Unicom, have had their texting service blocked after sending risque messages, state media says.

The disclosure comes as China is embroiled in a dispute with Google. On Tuesday the internet giant said it might leave China because of concerns over censorship.

The United States Government will protest to the Chinese over the cyber attack on Google.

''We will be issuing a formal demarche [diplomatic protest] in Beijing,'' a US State Department spokesman, Philip Crowley, said.

Last year, the Chinese Government pledged to suppress pornography on the internet and appears to have extended its campaign to mobile phones.

China Mobile, the world's biggest mobile phone company, said it was complying with demands from the police to report ''illegal'' text messages that included pornography, violence, fraud, suggestions of terrorism, instigations to crime and gambling. It said a mobile phone would be blocked if a message breached any of its filters. It has more than 508 million customers and its network handles 1.7 billion text messages a day.

The Global Times, a governent-run newspaper, said: ''Everyone seems to be under watch.''

Even public servants have expressed reservations about communications censorship. ''We have a lot of private things in our mobile phones,'' one, named only as Mr Cao, told the Global Times. ''If they monitor the messages, a lot of private things would be leaked.''

The Southern Metropolis said a man from the southern city of Dongguan recently had his phone blocked. China Mobile told him their computers had detected lewd words in his messages and that he would have to take his identity card to the police to reactivate the phone. He also had to furnish a letter guaranteeing that he would no longer spread inappropriate messages.

Microsoft said yesterday it had no plans to pull out of China.

LNK

Tyrannical Chinese censors take aim at texts

Tyrannical Chinese censors take aim at texts

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