Monday, January 11, 2016

Chinese censorship prohibits chat on handsets. Who uses software for … – Primaonline.it

      


  
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January 11, 2016 | 15:55

Chinese censorship prohibits chat on handsets. Who uses software for encrypted messaging can be a potential terrorist

In China, the police present at a checkpoint, in addition to the license may also request to inspect your smartphone to look for evidence of a hypothetical subversive activity: those who use the software for encrypted messaging, in fact, it is treated as a potential terrorist .

To communicate away from prying eyes, as we read on Repubblica.it, not enough even software-haven as WhatsApp and Telegram . The Electronic Frontier Foundation has always been committed to the defense of privacy, denounces the last practice of Chinese censorship: the removal request of secure software from your phone to be able to monitor the use which is made by the holders.

In the province of Xinjiang some residents were seen suddenly stop telephone service and, after the protests, were invited from suppliers of telecommunications to contact the local police, once contacted, he said that they had been brutally exposed in use of VPN, virtual private networks, or to download software for secure messaging. To regain connectivity citizens would have to remove the software in question.

Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur minority was formerly known as advanced laboratory of state repression also Internet, a crackdown that led to jail bloggers and journalists. In 2009 the Chinese authorities had come to isolate technically a very large part of this territory to prevent communication by cutting off the net six million Internet users with a measure of disruption of networks (kill switch).

Over the years, to bypass the virtual Wall of China, the citizens began to use various tools to circumvent censorship, as the exchange of pens USB or CD-ROM, and then, with the spread smartphone had landed in software as Telegram and WhatsApp. Now they can no longer do so.

If these facts testify to the enormous capacity for surveillance of Chinese organs of police, he had never arrived to censor software instead the specific content of the communication made with those software. And that in the absence of evidence of their unlawful use.

But the most serious fact is that now the police come to ask to see the phones during the inspections checkpoints motorway and, if there are software anonymisation or encryption, it can also seize. But only if you are an ethnic Uighur, because this is a subject of owner doubly dangerous: potentially subversive for ethnic reasons, definitely criminal because he uses Skype or WhatsApp.

According to the Eff, then, the Chinese censorship are not enough backdoor in commonly used software and operating systems, national, and not even enough to outlaw cryptography, now they want to prevent the ownership of software for general use, to also download it from network. The practice, furthermore, may soon extend to all Chinese people.

Reporters Without Borders has just published the World Press Freedom Index. The report sees China at the bottom of the ranking of freedom of the press and information, the 176 th place out of 180 countries surveyed, only the first of Syria, Turkmenistan, Korea and Eitrea.

 

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