Chinese censors and cybercops

Online journalists—both Chinese and non-Chinese–who file for overseas websites can face great risk. The Chinese government has launched a comprehensive program to censor online speech and to monitor email and text-messaging. According to estimates cited by The Washington Post on December 26, 2007, the Chinese government employs 30,000 internet censors (or “cybercops”) whose job is to monitor web content and activities in China. “The Ministry of Public Security will be dispatching virtual cops to China’s major web sites,” boasted an April 24, 2007, article by the official Xinhua News Agency, one in a long string of such official pronouncements. “By the end of June, all major portals and online forums will be monitored.”

On Chinese websites, authorities will move to delete material they find offensive, such as denunciations of the president, coverage of pro-democracy activities, mentions of Falun Gong, exposés of corruption, reportage on the military, or even publishing photos of sleeping representatives at the National People’s Congress. If the postings find their way to international web sites, which cannot be controlled, far more severe action is taken.

The rise of internet journalism and its risks are evident in China, where 18 of the 26 journalists in prison as of May 1, 2008, had worked online, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ report, Falling Short. Some of the jailed Chinese internet reporters had written for US-based Chinese-language websites such as Boxun News, which theoretically operate beyond the reach of government censors.

China’s system of internet censorship and surveillance, popularly known as the “Great Firewall,” is the most advanced in the world. In addition to the cybercops monitoring the estimated 220 million web-using Chinese citizens, leading global information technology companies including Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft have also taken on the role of censor. Microsoft censors searches and blog titles to avoid sensitive political topics and has deleted or blocked whole blogs expressing peaceful political views. Google’s slogan, “Don’t Be Evil,” was called into question by users after it launched a censored search engine (www.google.cn) in response to Chinese government pressure. Skype’s Chinese software, distributed in partnership with a Hong Kong company, Tom Online, is configured to censor sensitive words in text chats without informing the user, which the company has justified as consistent with local best practices and Chinese law. Skype is also not immune to hacking, as recently experienced by a Chinese human rights activist whose computer may have been compromised with key-logging software or similar spyware.

Email monitoring might be the loosest brick in China’s firewall, but no one should assume that the penalties are light. See below for details of the jailing of Chinese journalist Shi Tao, now serving a 10-year sentence for “divulging state secrets abroad.”