China and Its Super Filter Idea
January 20, 2011
“New Controls on Text Messages” caught our attention.
Even if we completely disregard legality, how is it possible to filter every text message for a country that houses over a billion people. That’s more than a billion text messages every day. Alright, now I may be a little confused but I just don’t see how it is going to be possible for China Unicom to make this happen. The story says:
“This is a requirement being imposed by the telecoms [service provider], that these keywords cannot be sent. If they are sent, then they will not be received by the user.”
Though it is quite obvious that the Chinese government seeks to ban communications of certain words in order to sustain peace and control it’s also blatantly obvious that it will probably not work. It’s like giving a child a piece of candy and then telling him he has to wait until after dinner to eat it.
Though I digress, there have been banned words in the past however the list has never been quite so large. All told around 800 keywords that cite references from historical figures to sex were banned including some English words and important historical dates.
I have to wonder, how is this going to affect daily communications? And search? What about search? Objective search results seem to be a notion from the distant past.
Leslie Radcliff, January 20, 2011
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