> The article below from NYTimes.com
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> China Is Filtering Phone Text Messages to Regulate Criticism
>
> July 3, 2004
> By JOSEPH KAHN
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> BEIJING, July 2 - China has begun filtering billions of
> telephone text messages to ensure that people do not use
> the popular communication tool to undermine one-party rule.
>
>
> The campaign, announced on Friday by the official New China
> News Agency, comes after text messages sent between China's
> nearly 300 million mobile phone users helped to expose the
> national cover-up of the SARS epidemic last year. Text
> messages have also generated popular outrage about
> corruption and abuse cases that had received little
> attention in the state-controlled media.
>
> It is a sign that while China has embraced Internet and
> mobile phone technology, the government has also
> substantially increased its surveillance of digital
> communications and adopted new methods of preventing people
> from getting unauthorized information about sensitive
> subjects.
>
> This week, government officials began making daily
> inspections of short-message service providers, including
> Web sites and the leading mobile phone companies. They had
> already fined 10 providers and forced 20 others to shut
> down for not properly policing messages passing through
> their communication systems, the news agency said.
>
> The dispatch said the purpose was to stop the spread of
> pornographic messages and false or deceptive advertising as
> well as to block illicit news and information.
>
> All such companies are being required to install filtering
> equipment that can monitor and delete messages that contain
> key words, phrases or numbers that authorities consider
> suspicious before they reach customers. The companies must
> contact the relevant authorities, including the Communist
> Party's propaganda department, to make sure they stay in
> touch with the latest lists of banned topics, executives in
> the industry said.
>
> Although text messaging is still in its infancy in the
> United States, it has become a primary means of
> communication in China. Chinese mobile phone users sent 220
> billion text messages in 2003, or an average of 7,000 every
> second, more than the rest of the world combined, China
> Telecom data shows.
>
> Many people with mobile phones like text messaging because
> it is quieter and less expensive than making phone calls.
> Messages can also be sent to multiple people at once and,
> at least until recently, were considered too unimportant or
> technologically difficult to monitor.
>
> The authorities have become increasingly attuned to the
> threat posed by mobile messaging, as it has become not only
> a convenient way to talk and gossip, but also a competitor
> in the news business.
>
> Phone messaging is faster and easier than using chat sites
> on the Web, which have also become forums to disseminate
> information and opinions. China had already taken steps to
> monitor Web sites more carefully and had arrested several
> dozen "cyberdissidents" for posting articles or expressing
> views on the Internet that the authorities deemed
> unacceptable.
>
> New regulations on messaging appear to have been phased in
> during recent weeks. Some mobile phone users said they had
> had trouble sending ordinary text messages around the 15th
> anniversary of the June 4, 1989, crackdown on democracy
> demonstrations in Beijing, perhaps because of tighter
> policing of the service.
>
> One user said that messages he sent that included the
> numbers 6 and 4 close together were never delivered,
> perhaps because they were screened as a possible reference
> to the date of the crackdown.
>
> Wang Hongwei, a 25-year-old air-conditioning technician in
> Beijing, said he got up to 100 text messages every day -
> from friends, colleagues and news sites. He said he had
> found the service slower and less reliable recently,
> although he had not heard of the new monitoring orders.
>
> "I don't think there's any justification for filtering
> every single message," he said. "The government should not
> be deciding what people say to each other."
>
> Industry experts say message filtering technology is
> relatively straightforward, much like programs to block
> junk e-mail. The challenge is to provide robust software
> that can process enormous volumes of text messages without
> reducing their efficiency.
>
> "You can filter as much as you like, just like a list of
> words," said Wang Yuanyuan, a sales manager at Venus Info
> Tech, which sells filtering software to Chinese messaging
> service providers.
>
> She said the new rules would lead to heavy demand for her
> company's product.
>
> "I think with the new rules the government will be
> expecting service providers to govern their content in a
> more regularized way, and this is what our system can do,"
> she said.
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/03/international/asia/03chin.html?ex=10902227
96&ei=1&en=eb5e06176846f2ea
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