Read our Special Report: The Internet in China: under high surveillance

No one enters the Chinese Internet market without making compromises on individual liberties in the country. Internet communications company Skype is no exception.

A report titled ‘Breaching trust’ published on Wednesday by Canadian communication experts Citizen Lab reveals yet another case of Internet censorship by Chinese authorities. TOM online, Skype’s Hong-Kong based partner in China, has been monitoring user messages deemed politically sensitive on the Skype network.

A filter system operated by keywords

Citizen Lab claims that the censorship process is triggered by keywords such as “Taiwan independence”, “Tibet”, “Tianamen”, and, more recently, “milk powder”. The messages are then stored in “insecure, publicly accessible web servers” along with “millions of records containing personal information”. The report goes on further to suggest that keywords may not be the only criteria for monitoring messages on Skype, and that specific usernames may also be targeted.

In a statement on Thursday, Skype’s president Josh Silverman admitted to having known that in April 2006, TOM online “operated a text filter that blocked certain words in chat messages”. Silverman insisted, however, that Skype was not aware of any activity concerning the storage of those messages.

“It was our understanding that it was not TOM’s protocol to upload and store chat messages with certain keywords”, Silverman said.

The TOM group responded tersely to the affair. “We adhere to the rules and regulations in China where we operate our businesses. We have no other comment”, a company spokesman told the press on Thursday.

The Great Firewall of China

According to Vincent Brossel, in charge of Asian affairs for the news organisation Reporters Without Borders, these revelations are not surprising. “We knew this for months, but this is the first time that a report provides concrete proof”, Brossel told FRANCE 24. “Chinese dissidents have been telling us for a while now that their communications (on the Chinese version of Skype) do not get through, or are subject to interference.”

Indeed, gaining access to China’s booming Internet market is impossible without the intervention of the government, according to Brossel. “One must bend to the will of the Chinese authorities. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, not to name others, have already accepted censorship and have publicly admitted to having done so,” said Brossel.

China’s heavy Internet policing and censorship has come to be called “The Great Firewall of China”. The government’s strict laws on Internet access came out into the spotlight during the Beijing Olympic Games, when journalists covering the events were not granted free access to the web.