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A group of Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers has discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives 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, the Web auctioneer that owns Skype, an online phone and text messaging service.The discovery draws more attention to the Chinese government’s Internet monitoring and filtering efforts, which created controversy this summer during the Beijing Olympics. Researchers in China have estimated that 30,000 or more “Internet police” monitor online traffic, Web sites and blogs for political and other offending content in what is called the Golden Shield Project or the Great Firewall of China.
There are ways to encrypt IM traffic through encryption plug-ins, but both parties often have to be using the same client and plug-in. The only major IM package to offer secure IM connections that I know of is ICQ.
Another option would be to tunnel IM traffic through to a VPN.
Skype, eBay Inc's Web communications unit, admitted on Thursday that TOM-Skype, its China venture with TOM Online Inc, had been monitoring and storing some of its users' text messages without Skype's knowledge.Skype apologized after a report revealed that the Web service monitors text chats with politically sensitive keywords and stores them along with millions of personal user records on computers that could be easily accessed by anybody -- including the Chinese government.
"When these keywords are found, the messages and information, such as usernames of subscribers, are stored on publicly accessible Web servers along with an encryption key that could be used to unlock the data, according to the report."
[reuters.com...]
