Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers have uncovered a massive surveillance system in China that monitors Skype messages containing words deemed offensive to the Communist government.
Specifically, the technology is keeping track of messages TOM-Skype customers are sending. TOM-Skype is a joint venture between eBay (Skype’s owner) and a Chinese wireless company.
Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto, released an investigative report called “Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China’s TOM-Skype platform” this week to expose the issue.
Messages Scanned, Stored
Citizen Lab researchers report four key findings. For example, the text of chat messages of TOM-Skype users, along with Skype users who have communicated with TOM-Skype users, is scanned for sensitive keywords.
When those keywords — such as “Taiwan independence,” “the Falun Gong,” and “political opposition to the Communist Party of China” — are discovered in conversations, the information is uploaded and stored on servers in China.
What’s more, there is filtering in place to block text messages that contain these and other politically charged words. And these text messages, along with millions of records containing personal information, are stored on insecure, publicly accessible Web servers together with the encryption key required to decrypt the data.
“Our analysis suggests that the surveillance is not solely keyword-driven,” Citizen Lab said. “Many of the captured messages contain words that are too common for extensive logging, suggesting that there may be criteria, such as specific user names, that determine whether messages are captured by the system.”
The University of Toronto’s Information Warfare Monitor Web site archived more than 166,000 censored messages from 44,000 users in a two-month period. The researchers could not conclude who is operating the surveillance system, but suspect it could be the Chinese wireless company in conjunction with Chinese police.
Balancing Human Rights
Skype is not the…