China Expanding Censorship to Text Messages

China's already repressive regime is moving to increase censorship, ordering carriers in the world's largest cell phone market to filter the billions of messages sent in the country every day.

According to the state news agency Xinhua, if the government identifies one of 13 different types of vulgar content -- including sexual content, inappropriate pictures and provocative headlines -- cell phone companies like China Mobile and China Unicorn will disable a user's text-messaging services.

Preventing the spread of pornography is a common thread in China's censorship, explains Abbe E. Foreman, a professor with the computer and information science department at Temple University's College of Science and Tech.

"They've been doing this type of censorship for some time," she said, adding that "5,000 people in China were arrested on pornography charges last year. I'm guessing they found them all through some sort of censorship program."

But many believe the government is looking for more than pornography. Kan Kaili, a professor of telecommunications at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication, told The New York Times that the new measures appeared broader, more intrusive and more punitive than previous limitations.

"They are doing wide-ranging checks, checking anything and everything, even if it is between a husband and wife," he told the newspaper. "I don't think people will be very happy about this."

It's unclear whether the lockdown on text messages is a new regulation, or merely the expansion of a current system that automatically monitors messages and suspends a user's account if it detects illegal content. The Wall Street Journal tried to clear up the confusion, noting that Xinhua's latest report said text messaging services would be suspended only for users who've had multiple complaints filed against them for sending pornographic mass-text messages.

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