Living with the Chinese surveillance spectre

[Entropy_Rising]

Chinese censorship and surveillance is a real thing that we all know of and we're aware of, but sometimes it gets jolted to the forefront of our awareness, when incidents like the arrest of Shi Tao or, most recently, the TOM-Skype spying hit the headlines. So when we're in China, we have to live knowing that surveillance systems are out there, operating.

In Orwell's poignantly relevant classic 1984 we learn through the protagonist that it's not actually surveillance that keeps people in line, but rather, merely the threat of surveillance, the simple possibility that you may be being watched at any moment. Big Brother's security apparatus obviously does not employ enough people to keep an eye on every single telescreen throughout Oceania, but an individual near a telescreen doesn't know if he's being watched at that particular moment and so will strive to moderate his behavior and appearance at all times.

And so I ask my fellow forum dwellers, how do you live with the Chinese surveillance spectre? It's incredibly tough to know the extent and the capabilities of whatever information systems the Public Security Ministry is using, but we've learned recently that if corporations are complicit, they can go so far as to recording entire IM conversations and sending them, along with identifying information, to remote servers.

So let's say you're talking with a Westerner friend on Westerner software. And your friend starts going off quite vehemently on a certain event that happened 19 years ago. Do you say to him or her, maybe we shouldn't talk about this? Do you just stay quiet, and throw out a few smileys and move on? Do you feel safe voicing your opinions? Do you join him or her in a stream of vituperative criticism? Would you rather move from instant messaging to a telephone call? Or VOIP? Would using a VPN tunnel make you feel safe enough, or no?

I'm curious to know because I think individuals may have a wide range of opinions on this matter. Some people may be particularly concerned about it and use code words or "symbols" (like the strategic use of @), if they decide to talk about it at all. I also know some people who have intricate encryption and firewall doohickeys set up and have told me they aren't worried at all about what they talk about in China.

Oh, and I assure you, I'm not a Public Security agent trolling for what techniques to learn to combat. (sh)

[vinhlong]

Western surveillance is no less then in China, a few years back there was some media coverage about the Echelon network here in Europe. This caused a bit of a stir, but died quietly. Here every phone call, email, etc. is scanned for keywords. Officially this is to intercept terrorist threats, but it is known to have been used for corporate espionage, and just plain entertainment for the employees who are listening to private conversations because some people's lives are like a soap opera.

We have no idea to what extend we are spied upon, where the information is stored, and what is done with it.

Honestly I'm wondering why Westerners make a big deal when China does it to their people, but not when we are spied upon ourselves. I should think, considering how they scorn China's practice of surveillance, they would be outraged, and have major protests against the Echelon network. However, for some reason this is not the case, and most people just live with it, or ignore the fact.

I know some people who are quite aware of it. I know someone who just tries to screw up the system by randomly adding keywords in casual or maybe stupid conversations, like 'Bush' 'Terrorism' etc. Just to 'overload' the system. His theory is that if everybody does this, it will stop making sense to listen in on us.

I'm not saying you should do that. It is probably meaningless, since they will just refine their system to filter out these type of conversations.

Do you really have the illusion that telephone, VOIP, VPN tunneling will prevent other's to listen in on you? Also, if spam filters can filter out Vi@gra, do you really think strategic use of "symbols" will do you any good?

I have always felt that private messages should be encrypted. Public key encryption has been around for many years, but for some reason people hardly use it. Of course, in Western countries you have to supply your private key to the government by law, so they can read your private stuff whenever they want to. And also be aware that exporting certain encryption software out of the US is a Federal offense.

Still, why make a fuss, if you don't even care to do it in your home country? In the west you also have to live knowing that surveillance systems are out there, operating.

[rezaf]

I am Iranian and comparing to my country China is the freedom paradise! So I try to enjoy the relatively high degree of social freedom that I have in China and I never criticize their government too much(maybe a little bit). I don't talk about China often but when I talk to my parents on the Internet about Iran I usually use code words for example "drinking water" instead of "drinking alcohol". Iran has a more dangerous surveillance system and I have heard that they have bought some parts of it from China. Experience shows that(in Iran) usually nothing happens to ordinary people talking a little bit about politics but there has been many arrests in Iran related to students' political movements and gay people as a result of the government controlling the Internet and mobile phones. If they use similar systems in China it means that some words might trigger something in their systems and it might be added to your profile in their systems. It might not affect your visa or anything but -maybe- in the future it causes some problems for you in things that you have no idea about right now. So better safe than sorry.

[Entropy_Rising]

Vinhlong, you make some excellent points. I do admit that in writing my post I was taking for granted whether or not espionage is conducted on telecommunications in the West. You're correct, just as I made the point that it's impossible to know the extent of surveillance in the PRC, the same could be said of many Western countries, as well.

Nonetheless, I can't help but insist (perhaps incorrectly - I admit to not being entirely educated on the subject) that regardless of how much or how little surveillance is being carried it in the West or in China, the motivations, the scale, and the consequences in the PRC are much more grave. How many citizen bloggers in the US, UK, or France have been indefinitely imprisoned for non-violent political opinions? So much so that it has become a quantifiable human rights issue? While I would feel shock and outrage ate people spying on my private conversations for corporate espionage and for just for kicks and giggles, it's a different arena when my conversations are monitored to carry out the self-preservation agenda of a relatively authoritarian regime, and when the executive consequences are far more real and brutal, such as harassment and imprisonment in the case of a PRC citizen.

Furthermore there is the capacity to be outraged which marks another difference. You wonder quite rightly why there wasn't enough outrage over the Echelon incident - but I think the fact that you can bring this up clearly draws another distinction between China in the West. You are outraged about the incident, obviously. You have passed this information on to me, and I join you in our outrage. If you wanted, you could've passed this information to a thousand other people with a time and a place, and organize a demonstration in front of Echelon's headquarters. I'm fairly confident that the same couldn't be done in China. A demonstration could not be held over the Skype incident, particular since unlike with the Sanlu milk scandal, the violation that TOM-Skype committed was done in order to comply with surveillance regulations that the government considers a vital part of its regime (which cannot be said of course of milk which gives kidney stones to babies). If you read the Citizen Labs report on the Skype incident, the word Skype itself was a keyword which triggered your conversation to be recorded, so the very act of being suspicious that Skype was monitoring your conversation would be monitored. So again, even if we start from "you are monitored in the PRC" to "you are monitored in the West," the consequences and potential reactions on behalf of the people are very different.

I think this could be underscored by your friend's "culture jamming," which I think is a great idea. Yes, add "Bush" and "explosion" to your conversations to jam the surveillance servers. But your friend does that with fairly confident knowledge that he isn't going to bring the secret police open himself and get the daylights beat out of him in a secret location. But I challenge you and your friend to go to China, download TOM-Skype, and type in Mandarin words like Hu Jintao, separatism, Taiwan independence, Falun Gong. I'm positive you and your friend would be far more reluctant to do that, for obvious reasons. There is a difference. If there weren't any, your friend probably wouldn't be more or less hesitant to do something similar in China. And if he isn't more hesitant... well, he's either very brave or very stupid.

As for me, I'm using a public key encrypted VPN tunnel.

[md1101]

When I was there I found it interesting when I tried to view 'sensitive' websites I would get a 'server not responding' screen. I never thought I might get in trouble for looking up these websites though. I figured its done automatically and they probably wouldn't get round to having someone view a log of what I did and then bother to question me. I also figured that since I'm a foreigner they'd deport me at worse. So I basically did what I want and wrote what I wanted in emails and forums etc. Not sure how ignorant I was being..

These days and even now I don't like to take chances. I try to avoid any overly sensitive words on this forum even though I'm in Oz coz I'm afraid that even though it's a tiny tiny chance it could somehow be linked to me and my next visa may not be approved. Plus I don't want this forum to be (sh) 'ed.

I was just thinking.. I wonder how monitored Xiaonei is. It's got so much personal information on it... I don't think I'll be signing up for an account.

[johnmck]

If one wants to be paranoid it is amazing what mass surveillance can be done very simply even here in Europe. For example most countries insist that mobile telephone companies keep logs calls and what GSM cells telephones have been in for at least 6 months if not years.

By looking at call logs it is possible to see who someone's acquaintances are. By comparing these people's GSM cell logs one can see when they are in the same GSM cells. In major cities GSM cells can be as small as 100m diameter, so one can assume that they are together. And if this is between the famous "cinq a sept" (5 to 7) hours in France, one can assume there is a high probability of an affair.

So if one is suspicious of someone it is very easy to build up his personal network with relative strengths of acquaintances and their networks, simply by looking at telephone logs. If one has Big Brother tendencies, one could even image this running all the time with computers automatically highlighting when people reach a threshold of suspicion and should be investigated.

In the UK, people made a big thing of privacy concerns when the government suggested bring in satellite vehicle monitoring for road tolls. Yet monitoring GSM telephones is far more powerful and they accepted this without a whimper.

[lilongyue]

I completely ignore it. I bash and talk about everyone and everything when using IM programs. I've never gotten into trouble, although funny little things have happened now and again, and whenever anyone outside of China uses the gmail chat program to talk with me, their connection is constantly dropped. I get pissed off at having to use proxies to view certain websites, or when I can't find a proxie that will let me view certain content on a certain website.

[highlander Iain]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4882600.ece

[renzhe]

Complex issue with several aspects.

When it comes to censorship, all countries do it, only some countries do it much more than others, and China is kind of at the front of the pack when it comes to it.

When it comes to surveillance and spying on their citizens, the Western countries are probably even more efficient than China about doing it. Don't think that they aren't reading your mail or listening to your phone call if they have the slightest suspicion you may somehow be involved in politics. No warrant needed in many countries either. They can (legally) get info from your ISP, from your mobile phone provider (this gives them your exact location over the last few months), and if you frequent a public space that's "suspicious", these are probably bugged anyway.

The difference is in what can really get you into trouble. In most Western countries, you have some kind of legal/constitutional protection and some kind of semi-free press which can put pressure on the state, so the wanton abuse is kind of limited. You can hate on the president, meet dissidents and discuss how rotten the world is, etc, and the police will know everything about it and have a hefty file on you, but you most likely won't be harmed. Things are a bit less safe in China, as far as I know.

So the popular way to deal with annoying dissidents in the west (where you can't simply arrest them) is to confiscate their belongings as "potential evidence for terrorism", or to call their employer and ask uncomfortable questions. Most people give up quite fast.

[zhxlier]

No one cares what you talk about the event 19 years ago on IM, vituperative criticism or not. As long as you don't make a big deal in the Tiananmen Square, Peking Uni campus or newspapers, you are fine.

[johnmck]

In the West we have lost a lot of freedoms in the name of the fight against "terrorism". Problem is, everyone is a terrorist and every crime is terrorism these days. We have seen at the weekend how your political opponents who are running for the White House can suddenly become a terrorist. In the UK, walking on a cycle path can be considered a terrorist act (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article579334.ece). In Australia politicians have accused those who divert water as terrorists (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/15/2336850.htm).

Back in the days when the IRA were bombing the UK on a regular basis, people were outraged at the idea of arresting someone without charge for 2 weeks, now this has been extended to 42 days (6 weeks!!!). Twenty years ago, who would ever have believed this could occur in the UK? How many innocent men could survive 42 days and nights of interrogation without confessing?

Maybe I should start a thread entitled "Living with the UK surveillance spectre" ?

[simonlaing]

I think zhxlier has it right:

No one cares what you talk about the event 19 years ago on IM, vituperative criticism or not. As long as you don't make a big deal in the Tiananmen Square, Peking Uni campus or newspapers, you are fine.

As a teacher they told me not to talk about 4 topics Taiwan, Falun Gong, Tibet and Human Rights. I had some mormon preacher friends who were also doing teaching. They even convinced their school to use the Bible as an english text. Though the full sermons were restricted to the weekends.

It usually wasn't worth talking about these issues because there was only one opininon generally.

I don't think the government cares what you say to your western friends or a couple of Chinese friends. If you were to publish a newspaper or get on a soap box and start preaching Falun Gong cult they would however stop you.

In the UK there are video cameras everywhere in downtown areas.(I think because the weather is bad there) And people who start drunken fights can get barred from bar hopping in the downtown areas for life. Talk about restriction on freedom.

The police you see here are directing traffic or resolving traffic accidents. Generally you don't feel their presence.

I think the situation changes when you become a VIP or a Consulate officer. I heard of people working for the consulate having their apartments searched with underwear left out to let them know they had searched it. Several years ago I heard of a person's private phone call with a friend in France that was interrupted and they were asked to speak in English. (Guess they didn't have many French interpreters back then..)

If you get flagged you could have some issues. But if you're just making money they won't bother I think.

have fun,

Simon:)