A Beijing entrepreneur, discussing restaurant choices with his fiancée over their cellphones last week, quoted Queen Gertrude’s response to Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” The second time he said the word “protest,” her phone cut off.
He spoke English, but another caller, repeating the same phrase on Monday in Chinese over a different phone, was also cut off in midsentence.
A host of evidence over the past several weeks shows that Chinese authorities are more determined than ever to police cellphone calls, electronic messages, e-mail and access to the Internet in order to smother any hint of antigovernment sentiment. In the cat-and-mouse game that characterizes electronic communications here, analysts suggest that the cat is getting bigger, especially since revolts began to ricochet through the Middle East and North Africa, and homegrown efforts to organize protests in China began to circulate on the Internet about a month ago. - source
The interesting part is where the technology originates...
The open Internet's role in popular uprising is now undisputed. Look no further than Egypt, where the Mubarak regime today reportedly shut down Internet and cell phone communications -- a troubling predictor of the fierce crackdown that has followed.
What's even more troubling is news that one American company is aiding Egypt's harsh response through sales of technology that makes this repression possible.
...
The companies that profit from sales of this technology need to be held to a higher standard. One in particular is an American firm, Narus of Sunnyvale, Calif., which has sold Telecom Egypt "real-time traffic intelligence" equipment. - source
Wait... what did they just say "the dreams" have consisted of for years? So, I'm a wingnut, eh? Face it, a conspiracy is afoot - but that is nothing new. Thousands of years of human economic activity have yielded little more than this kind of barbaric plotting.
We're being played for fools, again."The dreams of securing and monitoring the overall network has been held by carriers, enterprises, and Governments for years," said Albert Lin, Co-Head Director of Research, American Technology Research. "It's not surprising to see a company like Narus attracting investors to accelerate the deployment of the necessary technologies to make these dreams materialize as fast a possible."
"Narus is widely recognized as an innovation leader in the security and management of carrier-class IP networks," said Greg Oslan, CEO of Narus. "This additional financing is a testament to the potential that investors see in the market, our business plan, and our intellectual property. We are extremely pleased that American Capital has chosen to be part of our team, and we look forward to working together with them and the rest of our investors to guide Narus through the next stage of our growth." - source
Of course this voice recognition is simple to defeat. Just employ a kind of Cockney rhyming slang, so 'protest' becomes 'hairy chest' :
"You'll be down at the hairy chest this weekend, right?"
That's a much more difficult problem for a computer to solve.
