___ Dave Farber +1 412 726 9889 ...... Forwarded Message ....... From: "Alan A. Reiter" <aareiter@gmail.com> To: David Farber <dave@farber.net> Date: Sat, 03 Jul 2004 10:33:10 -0400 Subj: China filtering SMS messages Hi Dave, When Howard Rheingold wrote "Smart Mobs," he discussed how wireless communications -- such as SMS -- can be a force for change. Apparently, the Chinese government wants to ensure SMS is not a force for changing the existing political system. The "New York Times" today published an article today that leads with, "China has begun filtering billions of telephone text messages to ensure that people do not use the popular communication tool to undermine one-party rule. "The campaign, announced on Friday by the official New China News Agency, comes after text messages sent between China's nearly 300 million mobile phone users helped to expose the national cover-up of the SARS epidemic last year. Text messages have also generated popular outrage about corruption and abuse cases that had received little attention in the state-controlled media.... "The dispatch said the purpose was to stop the spread of pornographic messages and false or deceptive advertising as well as to block illicit news and information. "All such companies are being required to install filtering equipment that can monitor and delete messages that contain key words, phrases or numbers that authorities consider suspicious before they reach customers. The companies must contact the relevant authorities, including the Communist Party's propaganda department, to make sure they stay in touch with the latest lists of banned topics, executives in the industry said." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/03/international/asia/03chin.html Alan ----------------------------------- Alan A. Reiter, president Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing E-Mail: reiter@wirelessinternet.com Phone: 1-301-951-0385 Weblog: http://www.CameraPhoneReport.com Weblog: http://reiter.weblogger.com Website: http://www.wirelessinternet.com ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]