Skype Text Messages Under Surveillance in China

A group of Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers has unveiled a large surveillance operation in China which monitors and collect certain Internet text conversations.

The system monitors text messages sent by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture of eBay which owns the online phone and messaging company Skype and Tom-Skype which is a Chinese wireless operator.

This is yet another example of the Chinese government’s Internet oversight and filtering policy. It is estimated that at least 30,000 “Internet Police” participate in this so called Golden Shield Project or Great Firewall of China.

The activists, based at the University of Toronto, have reconstructed a list of messages containing restricted words such as democracy, earthquake, and milk powder.

The encrypted list of restricted words was part of the Tom-Skype software which would block the communication of the words and send a copy of the message to a server which would retain personal information about the sender. The content of Skype voice calls was not found to be recorded.

The information on the Chinese computers was ironically, improperly protected, which allowed the activists to download millions of messages and analyze them. More than 166,000 censored messages from 44,000 users were found for the time period of 2 months.

The discovery seems to contradict a public statement made by Skype  in 2006 where the company’s executives stated the conversations were protected and private.

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