UNM Scientist Reveals Data On Olympic Censorship

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Before the Beijing Olympics began a University of New Mexico computer scientist was monitoring the country's censorship of the internet, filtering what could and could not be searched by computer users within the borders of China.

Assistant Professor Jed Crandall revealed what he uncovered during the Games.

"What we saw was a significant reduction in the amount of censorship in Beijing while we were still able to find proxy servers to do our probes from within Beijing," Crandall said.

Crandall said his testing of the Internet within Chinese borders did show a lower level of censorship -- when it came to touchy political terms and names, it wasn't gone completely.

"One thing we saw during the Olympics, they are using key words that are specific to current events to stop reports of those current events," Crandall said.

He said there were a number of examples.

"Shang Shwee was an activist from Canada who tried to enter the country through Hong Kong to protest at the Olympics. She was arrested in Hong Kong," Crandall said.

But Crandall said Chinese Internet censors wasted no time in keeping people from talking about her.

"While that was happening we actually witnessed her name being on the blacklist the key words that they blacklist," Crandall said.

So why does Crandall think the censors apparently backed off during the games?

"My guess would be that they cared more about protests at the Olympics," Crandall said.

And as a result, people in Beijing had access to more information than normal, but what the Chinese certainly wanted to prevent and they did was another Tiananmen Square.

"I think they just targeted their censorship more specifically at protests during the Olympics to make sure the Olympics went off smoothly," Crandall said.

He said it seemed like the Chinese succeeded at letting the world see what they wanted us to see, and by most accounts they were a great Olympic games. He added that the world may never know are how or if any potential protests were foiled due to Internet censorship.

Crandall and his students have been working for almost a year on the project. They said they are hoping to secure a National Science Foundation grant so they can continue their work.