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Chinese government dropping phone calls if forbidden words are said

41 pointsby kouiskasabout 14 years ago

13 comments

JonnieCacheabout 14 years ago
I was under the impression that running realtime voice-recognition on all the open phone lines at any one moment would require so much computing power that there would be no way you could hide it?<p>You'd need datacentre after datacentre after datacentre, surely?<p>Also, state of the art voice recognition is still flakey in a silent, echo free room using a condenser mic. Imagine how flakey its going to be going over chinese copper and GSM codecs. False positives ahoy! Even the chinese govt. has a maximum acceptable false positive rate for this kind of thing.<p>I haven't believed in this rumour all my life so far when it's been the US govt. claimed to have been doing it, and I don't believe it now that its switched to being the chinese govt. Not without some evidence.<p>It doesn't even make logical sense. Assuming you could actually do this, why cut the calls off? Why not record them as part of wider evidence gathering?
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zkochabout 14 years ago
I live in China, so I did a quick test with my coworkers. 4 people. Two phone calls each. Each conversation we dropped the word 'protest' in both English and Chinese. No magical dropped calls for us.
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yahelcabout 14 years ago
I think AT&#38;T has this same policy. I'm not sure why 'Hello' is a forbidden word, though.
arkitaipabout 14 years ago
If this actually is true: silly bureaucrats, don't they know that this month's word for protest is obedience?
LostInTheWoods2about 14 years ago
Dear Chinese Government (and other petty dictatorships):<p>Your time is coming to an end. You can try to initimidate, and beat down dissent all you want. But in the end, freedom will prevail. But to hell with it, Neo said it better:<p>"I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you."
ceejayozabout 14 years ago
This would be pretty useless, even if true.<p>"We're having the happy fun obedience rally at six PM."
tgrassabout 14 years ago
MYTH <a href="http://shanghaiscrap.com/?p=6481" rel="nofollow">http://shanghaiscrap.com/?p=6481</a>
smokeyjabout 14 years ago
Who writes the software that enables phones to be tapped into? Even the U.S taps into phones, how is this feature protected? I imagine code has to be written to allow someone to listen in your convo, is that IN the droid OS or iOS?
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xsterabout 14 years ago
The british arrested scholars for acquiring al qaeda literature. Cutting a phone call is quite child play in comparison but there's no sense of western ethical superiority mocking the british so it's less fun.
goombasticabout 14 years ago
There must be a way to overload the system. A protest named like verb maybe?
d2zoabout 14 years ago
tl;dr:<p>A-&#62;B: "pickles is the new word for f-r-e-e s-p-e-e-c-h. free speech."<p>&#60;forbidden word detected: free speech. call terminated&#62;<p>B-&#62;A: "So, we were talking about pickles... "
tyngabout 14 years ago
From the article, I can't tell whether the word "protest" is filtered, or Shakespeare is filtered - two anecdotes don't make a conclusive evidence.
sharemeabout 14 years ago
I have a question..<p>In the Middle East forbidden words and topics get their own 2nd secret language to avoid censorship.<p>I assume that in China the same cultural effect is in play so what idiot would use the full non allowed words?<p>The story sounds somewhat questionable..<p>That is why in the Middle East class are recorded and not dropped as everyone is using a 2nd secret language to talk about forbidden subjects.