China?s anti-pornography software that will be loaded in all personal computers sold in the country blocks anti-government Web sites and restricts users from typing in keywords unrelated to sex, a researcher said.
?Green Dam-Youth Escort?restricts access to websites about the 1989 Tiananmen Square military crackdown and the banned spiritual movement known as Falun Gong, said Issac Mao, a fellow at Harvard University?s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The software also shuts down word-processing applications and Internet-chat services when some keywords are entered.
The unadvertised features of Green Dam indicate China?s stepping up its censorship efforts as the government grapples with surging online use, according to Hong Kong Polytechnic University Associate Professor Korris Chung. China bans online pornography, gambling and politically critical content by requiring all domestic Web sites to be registered and by blocking access to foreign sites such as Google?s YouTube. ?Having screening software installed on individual computers will really reinforce? attempts to control Internet use in China, said Chung. ?China already bans certain Internet sites via network gateways, but there are ways for users to get round them.?
China will require all PCs sold in the nation to include the Green Dam software starting July 1 to block Internet pornography and other unhealthy online content, the ministry of industry and information technology said on its website last week. The move is part of an effort to ?strengthen earlier achievements in cracking down on vulgar Internet content,? according to the statement.
The Chinese software filters out pornography by recognising images deemed to be showing excessive skin, as well as through a list of banned websites that?s updated by Jinhui Computer.
Typing ?F-a-l-u-n D-a-f-a,? an alternate name for the Falun Gong, on Microsoft Word will result in an automatic termination of the word-processing programme. Similar shutdowns occurred with Microsoft?s Internet Explorer, Notepad, Wordpad and MSN instant-messaging service, he said. ?They are monitoring keystrokes and making a decision based on a word it sees,? said the security research and communications director at Avert Labs. Also, installing the Green Dam software will automatically load its files inside the main Windows directory of a computer, hindering a user?s ability to distinguish which files are from Microsoft?s operating-system programme and which are from Green Dam.
?In this case, we agree with others in the industry and around the world that important issues such as freedom of expression, privacy, system reliability and security need to be properly addressed,? said Kevin Kutz, Microsoft?s director of public affairs.
Twitter?s social-networking service and Microsoft?s Bing.com were inaccessible in China in the week preceding the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro- democracy demonstrators. China ranks first worldwide in online censorship, according to Herdict.org, a project of the Berkman Center at Harvard, which compiles reports of Web outages.
