Jacob Aron, technology reporter
Dropped phone calls in the western world are usually the result of dodgy signal coverage, but it seems they indicate something more sinister in China. The New York Times reports from Beijing that the Chinese government is now monitoring phone conversations and automatically cutting the call when forbidden words are used:
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 couple of anecdotes don't make a conspiracy, but China was also accused by Google this week of disrupting the Gmail service. The search giant said that users experiencing difficulty with their email were suffering from "a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail", but spokeswoman from the country's foreign ministry denied the accusation and called it "unacceptable".
China has long been known for filtering web traffic through its "great firewall", but these latest attempts suggest a more sophisticated approach to monitoring its citizens. They also demonstrate the inherently neutral stance of technology, as the natural language processing techniques that detect a Chinese dissident's talk of protest are the same ones used to automatically translate a Libyan rebel's cry for freedom.
I would like to comment but I'm afraid who would be listening.