You might want to stop taking in so much NaCl. It's bad for the blood pressure, hardens the arteries and makes you drink too much ginger beer.

The restrictions on the mainland over gateway access to the internet are both legendary and real. It should be of no surprise that cellular messaging also would fall into the Beijing government's hands as a control issue.

More so than any other regime, the PRC's Communist Party understands that the only way to stay in power is by preventing or strictly controlling all means of independent communication and all means of independent access to information.

It would be hard for the central government to deny to their own citizens that there is an AIDS epidemic in China (and there is one) or that the students who were killed in Tien An Men Square were NOT violently demonstrating until the People's Army troops were sent in unless they had the assurance that news or communications to contrary is adequately stifled.

<Edit>

.... Have you finally got yourself that aluminum collander?

Edited by - Indy11 on 7/3/2004 7:28:13 PM

we should ban mobile phones outright! (i havn't even looked at the article)

---

Beijing already screens e-mail, censors Internet chatrooms and blocks access to foreign Web sites considered subversive. But mobile phone messaging known as short-message service, or SMS is a newer technology, and the government has struggled to develop ways to control it.

---

So basically they're bringing more control, into their society ?
More like dictatorship ........

Edited by - Neo_Kuja on 7/3/2004 10:00:43 PM

lets not go to extremes kimk. i find them useful for keeping my parents happy.
-:-
Vi

so what's wrong with that? it's perfectly legitimate for a socialist govt to monitor the communications of it's citizens, who should know the score anyway. Any means are justified in defending the Revolution. I'd do exactly the same.

if there is an AIDs epidemic in China, it's been introduced by corrupt Westerners, thus demonstrating once again that you cannot sully the purity of the proletarian Revolution by accomodation with the class enemy.

of course, if it was a Western govt doing the monitoring, I'd be screaming blue murder...

Edited by - Tawakalna on 7/4/2004 2:07:11 AM

Anything to further the designs of the PDRNS, eh Taw?

Indy - I'm working on it. I'm thinking of using this one .

wow,.china monitor sms!! ok dats unfair.... i sms to china sum times...

This all proves a very big point that was brought up in another thread. The privacy issue of text is non-existant. That court case was looking to get a coppy of the text messages, which proved they were recorded. Now China is doing a similar thing. Bottom line, ANY country can monitor your messages. Privacy is truly out the window.

Edited by - Finalday on 7/4/2004 8:45:09 AM

Me too, nothing but rice..."Oh no!, Not rice again" etc. etc. etc. and all.

Final - It is true, privacy is a thing of the past . That's why I say we should encrypt every phone call and email. I probably would try to encrypt my phone calls if I could; just for the hell of it. Hmm, maybe Taw knows a way...

KS is on the "happy" pills again *shakes head*.

actually I do know several ways, but I can't tell you because they're illegal let's just say that I haven't forgotten everything I learnt as an RN Leading Signalman, and the stuff you need is freely available if you know where to look. And that's all I'm saying on the matter..

..She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love...

So I guess that a PGP-encrypted email asking about it is out of the question then? *Sigh*

Taw said:

---

if there is an AIDs epidemic in China, it's been introduced by corrupt Westerners

---

Actually not known how it was introduced for the same reason that most folks in China don't have much in the way of accurate information about the epidemic.

But it is hitting the peasantry the hardest. Mao's putative heros of the revolution are the ones suffering from it the most. The means of its spread also is rather telling about the "failure" that is known as Tawakalni....er Communism: Being poor and in need of every way possible to make a buck, peasants gave blood regularly for cash. The local commissariat that run the health clinics regularly took blood from one person, took the needles and gave them a cursory rinsing before re-using them on the next donor. Thus tainting both blood supply and donor.

Also, the epidemic isn't just AIDS. As you can well imagine other diseases are being communicated this way. Hepatitis which already is a known epidemic killer in Tawakalnis...er Communist China is just continuing to take off like a wildfire.

this truth busineess of yours is really rather annoying. Can't you just ignore facts and concentrate on promotong Marxist dogma? it's much easier, and you can have a purge every now and then and take everyone's mind off things.