Canadian researchers say Chinese officials are monitoring messages sent through a local edition of Skype’s text service. They’ve uncovered evidence that the government is storing copies of messages which contain particular trigger words.

The news emerged in a report from the Information Warfare Archive written by the University of Toronto’s Nart Villenueve. It turns out there aren’t just political concerns: the flagged messages are stored on publicly accessible servers complete with the encryption key needed to decrypt the messages.

That’s a major security issue because the millions of messages and records now visible include personal details. These include details from Skype users worldwide who’ve conversed with people in China. The report also claims the servers have been breached before, at one point being used to host pirated movies and torrents.

The researchers analysed the censored messages on the servers and found a disproportionate number of references to particular phrases and words. These included ‘communist’, Falun (an outlawed spiritual practice), Hu Jintao (the Chinese leader) and ‘Taiwan independence’.

The Chinese service is a partnership between Skype and TOM-Online, a Hong Kong company. Skype says it was able to fix the security flaw after seeing a copy of the report. However, it’s not stopping the actual government snooping. A spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that the Chinese government “monitoring communications in and out of the country shouldn’t surprise anyone”.

It’s not the first time Skype’s dealings in China have raised concerns. In April the firm admitted installing filters to censor certain material at the request of the Chinese government. Chief Executive Niklas Zennström defended the action as a necessary part of complying with local law.

At the time, he claimed “One thing that’s certain is that those things are in no way jeopardising the privacy or the security of any of the users.” That claim is now looking pretty shaky.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 1:49 pm under Legal, Security.

Read more entries by John Lister.
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