
Jailed for a Text: China’s Censors Are Spying on Mobile Chat Groups - NN88
https://www.wsj.com/articles/jailed-for-a-text-chinas-censors-are-spying-on-mobile-chat-groups-1512665007
======
magpi3
A chilling read. I use WeChat because I have a few friends in China. I am glad
I have read this. I have never talked to them about China's internal politics
for fear that something like this might exist. Now I know it is worse than I
even thought possible. I cannot even tell them this article exists.

I believe (hope?) that this will be the death of social media in the long run,
at least in authoritarian states. No one is going to use these forums if it
means they or their family members can be put in jail for a joke. This is
straight out of 1984, and that can be said with 0 hyperbole. When they start
using ML to detect dissidents who speak in coded language, we will truly have
a real live thought police. Christ almighty.

~~~
opportune
It's heading there in other countries, it's just not done by the government
yet except in extreme cases. I already can't do anything on social media which
could piss off my employer. It makes sense that I can't talk shit about them
or leak info, but I also can only share certain political opinions - for
example, while I'm sure my employer would be fine if I told them I voted for
Hillary and supported gay marriage, I'm not so sure they would be fine if I
told them I voted for Trump or was involved in union/labor politics. Of course
there would be no direct consequences to either, but HR and managers would
know (because they check) and it would affect their opinions of me negatively.

And now it's happening with advertisement too. Tell your friend you just took
a pregnancy test via FB messenger and now every advertiser on the internet
knows just what to sell you. Most people don't really care about this yet, but
most people don't realize that this kind of thing could be used in the future
for all sorts of dystopian shit. All this data is being stored. I think Google
is treating my data pretty responsibly at the moment, but I could see it being
used for anything from background checks (e.g. checking search history or
message logs for indicators of illegal activity) to blackmail.

On a tangential sidenote, I read an article about Snap recently about how
they're trying to position themselves as a different kind of social media
company. They don't (yet) perform highly sophisticated targeted advertising
and don't save a lot of actual content data. You typically are only connected
to your actual friends, not some random guy from your high school class, your
aunt, your ex-girlfriend, and your coworker. There's also no public profile
for employers to search for and snoop around. Of course these are typically
the case for any tool focused on direct messaging but I hope as Snap expands
they can be both successful _and_ keep these fantastic qualities.

~~~
codedokode
I don't see how a jail term can be even compared to losing a job and tracking
by Facebook to government surveillance programs. You can opt out of it just by
not using FB or by using a fake name. Go try to opt out of chinese censorship
program.

Regarding Snapchat - the company that cares about privacy wouldn't require so
many permissions (including a permission to receive SMS messages).

~~~
opportune
First, I'm not directly comparing losing a job to going to jail, I'm saying
that things are not so different here. Of course going to jail is much worse
than losing a job but when you consider all of the negatives of losing a job
(for an average person, not someone in tech) I'd still say it's one of the
worst things that can happen to you aside from being the victim of a crime or
natural disaster, losing a close family member or friend, and going to
jail/prison.

Also, you can opt out of Wechat just as you can opt out of FB, so I'm not sure
I see your point. Sure you can't opt out of chinese censorship in general but
the chilling effect in both cases is where I see the analogy. It's bad for
online platforms to do that whether by coercion or direct force.

~~~
soundwave106
Not that I disagree with you on the overall direction, but I guess the
question here is how easy it would be to opt out of this sort of thing in
China, given the extent of their "great firewall".

At present, in Western nations, it is somewhat easy to, say, self-host certain
social media platforms (from Wordpress to Mastodon) for friends and family and
whatnot that could be used for more private, less advertiser-monitored social
media interaction. Assuming you get buy in among your friends, this pretty
much avoids issues with advertiser and employer snooping that you have on
large social media sites. You can then keep your Facebooks and Twitters for
your "public face" (or ditch them entirely).

I don't know if the same applies in China.

~~~
codedokode
To host a website in China you need to get a permit [1]. You can host the site
outside, but I am not sure if it will be always accessible.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license)

------
50CNT
For whoever this is news to, check out this XinhuaNet[0] article on holding
group administrators accountable for things said in their groups. That they're
able to view things is implicit in that. Then check out the pushes for Real
Name Identification with online services[1] and phone numbers [2]. Check out
the social credit system[3], mandatory by 2020[4]. The national face
recognition system [5]. Its actually kinda incredible.

[0][http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-09/08/c_136592568.htm](http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-09/08/c_136592568.htm)
[1][https://ifex.org/china/2017/09/06/ban-anonymous-
content/](https://ifex.org/china/2017/09/06/ban-anonymous-content/)
[2][https://www.techinasia.com/china-start-enforcing-realname-
mo...](https://www.techinasia.com/china-start-enforcing-realname-mobile-
registration-government-claims#)! [3][https://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-
government-social-cr...](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-
social-credit-score-privacy-invasion) [4][https://investmentwatchblog.com/in-
china-every-citizen-is-be...](https://investmentwatchblog.com/in-china-every-
citizen-is-being-assigned-a-credit-score-that-drops-if-a-person-buys-and-
plays-video-games-or-posts-political-comments-online-without-prior-permission-
or-even-if-social-me/) [5][https://technode.com/2017/10/13/china-makes-
progress-on-its-...](https://technode.com/2017/10/13/china-makes-progress-on-
its-national-facial-recognition-surveillance-system/)

~~~
pc86
If by "incredible" you mean "a dystopian hellscape" then yes, it is. And with
this comment I probably just eliminated any possibility of a Chinese visa!

~~~
50CNT
See, that's why you just say that it's an incredible technological
achievement. Gotta work on those Social Credit scores.

------
songco
Not surprised by this, for a long time, China's official policy is: all UGC
must under control, or just blocked by GFW.

So the real-name system applied to weibo(twitter)/zhihu(quora)/wechat/phone
numbers/forums.....

------
bovermyer
Just one more bit of evidence that China's current government is anathema to a
peaceful, progressive world.

------
asquabventured
This article only highlights the importance of end-to-end encryption.

~~~
rqs
I'm not sure what you mean by end-to-end encryption.

It's a group chat, so it's more likely all messages are processed on server
and then relayed to every people in the group. The easiest way to monitoring
that kind of chat messages is .... install monitoring software directly on
server.

And as far as I know, many (If not all) commonly used domestic chat software
in China are monitored by the government.

So, it's a rather common sense in China to NOT chat on some specific topic
during some specific period (Or, don't talk about it at all) online.

It's not an end-to-end encryption problem, it is the problem of National
security (What ever that means to CCP) v.s. Individual freedom.

~~~
magpi3
OP must mean GPG or something like that (where users control their own keys),
but there is nothing to stop the government from holding you to demand your
private key and the passphrase you use to unlock it.

The only real answer is to avoid using the internet for any meaningful
political or community dialogue if you live in an authoritarian state that
might use that dialogue against you. That is a truly depressing thought.

~~~
rqs
If you look though the history, you will found democracy in the entire history
of China is very rare thing (Republic Of China is short lived).

So, I'm not so surprised that we Chinese end up with an authoritarian
government model we currently have here.

First, let me clear one thing: It's not saying you can't blame the government
for any wrong doing at all. In fact, I (and other people) do that all the time
on the online forum operated by local government (I consider our local
government is a fairly open one, so it's may not apply to other local
governments). But you have to learn to avoid some topic that may get you into
trouble.

This case is an example. If my guess is right: He's talking about a high
ranking official of central government, who recently got exposed by a guy call
GuoWengui[0] and been removed from a very important position.

In China, this kind of case by nature is very sensitive, CCP don't want to see
anyone talking about it.

I'm not saying everybody should follow CCP's No Talk Rule though, I believe
all kinds of censorship is bad. However, consider is very hard to change
people's (Including government officials) mindset after thousands of years of
authoritarianism, sometime it's better to save yourself from those troubles,
and let time do it's work to upgrade the society first.

The hope is that, through years of advancement on science and economy etc (in
short, productivity), the importance of individual can eventually out weight
authoritarianism, and force the government to reform to an more advanced one.

Until then though, that censorship will stay.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guo_Wengui](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guo_Wengui)

And, hey, there are lot's of places people can talk about those very sensitive
topic, like ... Twitter? Why doing so on a domestic online service and then
worrying about getting trouble because of that.

~~~
hutzlibu
Well, if you look into history if the west, you also find not soo much
democracy. A bit more and with the US a bit longer, but for the most parts we
have been under empire rule as well.

So it is good, that you are optimistic about things to change, but I also see
the other side, with smartphones acting as spying devices enabling true
surveilance everywhere, which could fortify authoritarianism, rather than
deconstruct it.

But in general I am also optimistic that eventually things will improve, even
if it takes some generations..

~~~
rqs
I'm optimistic because I believe in the future, people are the most important
element of productivity.

So as long as that won't change, all country will eventually lean towards
democracy if they want to survive in the global competition.

Surveillance or spying devices won't stop that trend.

------
microcolonel
If you intend to spend any time in China, and your friends are intelligent and
decent people, your friends are probably already censoring themselves (even
outside of China), fearing it may have repercussions toward you.

------
mtgx
Paywall bypass:

[https://archive.is/20171208003957/https://www.wsj.com/articl...](https://archive.is/20171208003957/https://www.wsj.com/articles/jailed-
for-a-text-chinas-censors-are-spying-on-mobile-chat-groups-1512665007)

------
danjoc
It's not just China,

[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27616696](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27616696)

------
ojbyrne
Currently in Beijing traveling and I’m surprised HN isn’t blocked. The link
(obviously) is.

~~~
vfulco
or slack or github for that matter although intermittent outages are part of
the hair pulling fun

~~~
ojbyrne
Or (amazingly) reddit.

------
bhhaskin
Not sure why this is any surprise. It is only a matter of time before it is
done in the US as well (at least done openly)

~~~
alexasmyths
The NSA is watching, but they are not censors.

~~~
code_duck
The NSA collects the data - they're not the ones who take action about it.
They supply the info to the CIA, FBI, DEA, and so forth.

Their data sharing was expanded just before Obama left office:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-
more...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more-
latitude-to-share-intercepted-communications.html)

"Previously, the N.S.A. filtered information before sharing intercepted
communications with another agency, like the C.I.A. or the intelligence
branches of the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The N.S.A.’s
analysts passed on only information they deemed pertinent, screening out the
identities of innocent people and irrelevant personal information.

Now, other intelligence agencies will be able to search directly through raw
repositories of communications intercepted by the N.S.A. and then apply such
rules for “minimizing” privacy intrusions."

~~~
alexasmyths
The CIA, FBI, DEA etc are not 'censors' either.

They are law enforcement.

Censorship of US citizens for the purposes of state propaganda is a whole
other different thing than anything the CIA/FBI/DEA does. And FYI the CIA may
be proactively involved involved in propaganda, like helping some Hollywood
movies ... but they are not running around tell you not to say bad things
about Trump on Facebook, is my point.

~~~
code_duck
My point is that if there were to be any censor/like actions conducted by the
government, it would not be the NSA carrying it out. It would be law
enforcement.

------
gurkendoktor
I can't figure out how to get past the WSJ paywall. In any case, here is
another relatively high-profile case of being detained for using WeChat:

[http://www.zeit.de/feature/freedom-of-press-china-zhang-
miao...](http://www.zeit.de/feature/freedom-of-press-china-zhang-miao-
imprisonment)

------
katastic
But what if it's for a good cause, like deplatforming Nazis?

Oh, I see, what's going on, nevermind.

~~~
cuckcuckspruce
Tencent is one of the backers of Discord, a service that os very...flexible
about who the rules are enforced on. Now i think we can see why.

------
piiswrong
the US is already shutting down "Russian-backed" twitter accounts that tries
to "sabotage the government".

Who is to decide what's backed by Russia, eh?

~~~
kercker
In a democratic country like U.S., they will not jail you for your tweets that
try to sabotage the government, besides closing your account.

You can say anything in a democratic country, except when you are forced to
shut up.

~~~
thedoctor79
In US, if you say anything bad about US leaders, maybe you have trouble at the
border when you go on holiday. In Russia, you can say anything about US
leaders, and nobody will care.

------
icsrutil
It's not a big deal in China. We all said "Big brother is watching you guys.".
The first thing occurred to my mind that somedays ago I posted a thread for
R.I.P someone, and you know what? Account have been banned just a few seconds.
WhatsApp & telegram & VPN are blocked in China for a very long time. WeChat is
the most popular app in China, the chat group is oversaw by the brother for
some reason named "for country and people security". What a big joke. YES,
Apple is helping spying people for the GOV :(

