CENSORSHIP IN China is being extended to mobile phone text messages, as state-owned mobile telecoms operators say they will block any SMS messages that do not meet the strict requirements of the country’s net nannies.
China’s has 384 million web users and is the world’s largest internet market by users. The news of tighter control of mobile phones is significant because most of China’s new legions of web users use their mobile phones to access the internet.
China’s three major telecoms operators, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, will block text messages that contain “vulgar or indecent” text messages. China has 750 million mobile phone subscribers.
More surveillance of text messages is part of a broader campaign aimed at restricting access to the internet.
Facebook, YouTube and other popular websites are banned in China because of their potentially seditious content, and the government has made it illegal to set up personal websites without registering domain names with a state agency first.
News that China is tightening its grip on electronic content further comes weeks after Google, the world’s most popular search engine, said it was thinking about quitting China after suffering a sophisticated cyber-attack on its network, focusing on rights activists.
Google also said it was no longer willing to filter content on google.cn, its Chinese-language site.
China Mobile, the world’s biggest mobile phone operator by market value, said text messages would automatically be scanned for “key words” provided by the police to see if they contained “unhealthy” content. China Mobile subscribers sent more than 600 billion texts in 2008.
The text message content will be screened to see if contains any of the 13 banned terms listed by nine government departments, including the description of sexual acts or human sexual organs or any type of sexual innuendo.
China Unicom said text messages would only be blocked on cell phones if the number of indecent messages reached a certain amount or if other users submitted complaints.
Mobile phone users are worried that their privacy may be violated by the new rules. The Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of correspondence, while only in cases of criminal investigations can the public security bureau censor correspondence between people.
However, given the levels of state surveillance that are allowed in China, there is unlikely to be a big fuss.
Since an anti-smut campaign was introduced last year, human rights activists have complained that the anti-pornography drive is also being used to monitor dissenting voices in China.