Yesterday Danny O’Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Deep Links blog posted a detailed report on new Chinese domestic surveillance software. O’Brien reports:

The Chinese Ministry of Industry and IT’s announcement that all PCs sold in China must include government-approved filtering software is a profoundly worrying development for online privacy and free speech in that country. While the application, “Green Dam Youth Escort”, claims to only block pornographic sites, the access to a home computer such filtering software requires means that it could also have the power to conduct all sorts of other surveillance and control — far more than China’s current monitoring and blocking systems at the ISP level permits.

On present day operating systems, government-controlled software that are granted such admin rights would be able to collect IM and email conversations, install keyloggers, relay microphone and webcam recordings. It could prevent or detect the use of web proxies (the primary method of Chinese citizens seeking an uncensored Internet), and scan for privacy-protecting software like Tor and PGP. Business users of Chinese PCs will be vulnerable to state-sponsored corporate espionage. Foreign users of computers in China will be unable to guarantee the security of their communications.

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But until now, such software has relied on duping its users as to its function or on the poor security of their operating systems. “Green Dam Youth Escort” will allow the Chinese state an automatic foothold on every Chinese PC, installing their own code remotely through automatic upgrades.

O’Brien notes that the movement of this spyware will be dependent in part on the extent to which American tech vendors agree to allow it. Dell, who was under fire yesterday from Credo Action for their assistance in Chinese government censorship, seems hesitant to install this spyware as-is and wants protections that it’s only for porn and can be disabled by users.

Stories like this are important because like China’s shutting down of Twitter and censorship of news sites around the Tiananmen Square anniversary, it’s yet another example of how scared the Chinese government is of their citizenry and what they are reading. These are hallmarks of a totalitarian society and should be massive warning signs for both Western technology companies who are considering working with them and Western governments who seek to prioritize economic relationships over advancing freedom and human rights. But this is simply unacceptable behavior for a government that aims to be a respected member of the global community and as long as it continues, China should be condemned.