Cracking into the Surveillance State
Locked
Cracking into the Surveillance State
 
|
fyi.-tj Cracking into the Surveillance State
Jeffrey
Klocker (left) and his advisor, Assistant Professor Jed Crandall
(right), chat in one of UNM’s computer engineering labs. The two devised
a method to weed out words that can trigger Chinese government
censorship. By Andrew Beale — Thanks to researchers at the University of New Mexico, the world now knows which words to avoid during Skype sessions with China. Jeffrey Knockel, who’s pursuing a doctorate in computer engineering, uncovered keywords that activate surveillance of TOM-Skype, the Chinese version of the popular Skype program. The surveillance is conducted not only on users inside China, but also on foreign users making Skype calls into the country. Knockel and his advisor, Assistant Professor Jed Crandall, worked together on another project involving surveillance in China, uncovering censorship-triggering keywords in the Chinese chat program Sina UC. Crandall said the implications of their research are far-reaching. Skype, for example, is owned by Microsoft, and the company’s apparent willingness to secretly surveil and censor clients in China raises questions about their practices in other countries. “Not just speaking about Microsoft, but for any particular company, it’s easy to say they have different privacy standards for different countries because different countries have different laws,” Crandall said. -tj -- ==========================================
J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) Twitter: jtjohnson ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
| Free forum by Nabble | Edit this page |