Now does that really comes as a surprise to anyone? The monitoring system was uncovered by a group of Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers. Basically, the surveillance involves the tracking of internet text communications that feature banned words and phrases.

The primary target of this surveillance is the users of Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator and eBay , owners of Skype.

The human rights activists discovered the system about a month ago. Apparently, they found message logging server in China which contained more than a million censored messages. By analysing the messages they were able to put together a list of banned words that had triggered the system.  If you’re wondering how human rights activists managed to ‘just access’ servers in China it’s because the machine were, apparently, misconfigured. This allowed the team to simply download the logs.

Of slightly more concern is the report that the Chinese authorities also monitored conversations between Tom-Skype users and Skype users around the world (including user id’s).

Don’t forget that China isn’t the only nation watching its citizens. Intelligence networks around the world routinely collect internet based communications, albeit for reasons other than censorship i.e. counter terrorism.

Two final points for you - banned words found on the list included;  Falun Gong, Taiwan independence and the Chinese Communist Party, democracy, earthquake and milk powder. (Chinese officials are being slammed over their handling of earthquake relief and chemical laced milk powder.)

During the recent Olympic Games, China had an estimated that 30,000 or more “Internet police” monitoring online traffic, Web sites and blogs for political and other offending content!

Popularity: 48% [?]