Censorship fears over China spam curb

IBM has developed a system for the detection and analysis of spam text messages for China Mobile that would help the world's largest mobile operator track social networking groups and their messaging habits.

The initiative comes in response to a large-scale government campaign to root out SMS spam and increase monitoring of text messaging flows. Although IBM said the tool's purpose is to fight spam, analysts expressed concerns that its design could also make it yet another instrument for censorship. It is revealed just a day after Google confronted the Chinese government over censorship by redirecting Chinese users to its uncensored Hong Kong website. Thomas Li, chief technology officer at IBM Greater China and director of IBM Research in China, said China Mobile's new programme relied on the analysis of messaging patterns instead of content filtering.