China's Net Nannies have been busy

This was brought to my attention a couple of months ago by one of my HP colleagues, just never got around to posting anything.

"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." Read more...

"The Great Firewall of China" is described in a short chapter in my book Virtual Shadows. What they refer to here as "Internet police" are also rather quaintly referred to as "Net nannies" ;-)