Like the story behind the million-plus messages the Chinese version of Skype recorded on an unsecure server and likely shared with Chinese authorities.
While the explosive controversy surrounding the Skype logs has grabbed headlines around the world, the content of those logs has gone relatively unreported.
Barely mentioned in media reports was the fact that a substantial portion of the logs is about a grassroots movement to eliminate China’s communist dictatorship.
This movement is a result of an editorial series published by The Epoch Times called Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The series gives a detailed historical account of the CCP’s conduct from inception to today and advocates the withdrawal of Chinese people from the Party and its affiliated organizations.
The movement involves overseas Chinese, mainly practitioners of the spiritual practice Falun Gong, sending the editorials to China and encouraging Chinese citizens to withdraw from the CCP. To date, nearly 50 million have quit the Party.
One of the methods volunteers for “Party Quitting Centres” use to get those editorials into China is Skype.
“A lot of those messages were to do with that campaign,” said Nart Villeneuve, a researcher at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto who uncovered the fact that the Skype logs were being monitored and archived.
“When looking through the log files, that commentary critical of the communist party is being targeted.”
Villeneuve said he researched Tom-Skype because he suspected there was something untoward going on.
When people in China try to download Skype, the friendly software that turns your computer into a telephone that can call anywhere in the world without long-distance charges, they get redirected to Tom-Skype.
Tom-Skype is like normal Skype but it isn’t nearly as secure, and if you mention Falun Gong, Taiwan, communist party or a host of other words or phrases in your messages it records your conversation.
Typically, China’s regime uses information from web companies including Yahoo, Google and Microsoft to track down dissidents, some of whom have been arrested and sentenced to jail.
In one famous case, journalist Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years after Yahoo’s Hong Kong office shared his personal information with the authorities.
It’s nasty stuff, and it seems Skype has now joined a growing list of companies implicated in helping the Chinese regime monitor its own citizens’ online activity.
Villeneuve wouldn’t talk in detail about the discussions revealed in the logs in order to protect the safety of the people participating in those conversations.
This is also the reason why Party Quitting Centre volunteers in North America warn their chatters about surveillance, says Rong Yi, a volunteer with a centre in Flushing, New York.
“We are worried that once the Chinese government got hold of these peoples’ names, there might be a danger they could lose their lives.”
Rong Yi said volunteers are “very much concerned” as it seems no method of communicating is secure now.
“We can’t use Yahoo messenger, email is not safe, phones are not safe, and now Skype is not safe. We don’t know what to use.”
A report by Citizen Lab stated that Villeneuve’s findings should serve as a warning for groups engaging in political activism or using censorship circumvention technology accessed through companies that have compromised on human rights.
“What is clear is that Tom-Skype is engaging in extensive surveillance with seemingly little regard for the security and privacy of Skype users. This is in direct contradiction of Skype’s public statements regarding their policies in China,” the report said.
