“I’ll sell your ass to the cops for a nickel.” - Skypey McManwhore

Reuters reports that Skype has been recording conversations as part of its deal with the Chinese government. (ONI broke the news.)

(T)the eBay-owned firm had to apologize on Thursday after a report revealed that its Chinese service not only monitors text chats with sensitive keywords, which it had earlier admitted, but also stores them along with millions of personal user records on computers that could easily be accessed by anybody.

Skype added however that only messaging conversations where one or more people were using the Chinese software were affected.

The version of the VOIP service that partnered with a Chinese firm, TOM, is at the center of the issue. Chinese Internet users have steered clear of the hybrid version of the service for some time. Skype, like every social media service from MSN Spaces to Facebook that has been caught with its pants down minimized the severity of its actions.

Western, and I am sorry to say especially U.S.-based high tech firms, have consistently debased themselves faster and further than circumstances require in order to curry favor with their Chinese masters. I swear, if a single one of these companies were to maintain in public that they would simply not help to put their users in Chinese (and Iranian and Saudia and other) jails, then stuck to it, they’d walk away with a Noble prize, simply out of surprise.

“TOM, like every other communications service provider operating in China, has an obligation to be compliant if they are to be able to operate in China at all,” said Skype president, Josh…whatever. (Honestly. Do all the high tech firms have the same PR firm?)

In April 2006, Skype publicly disclosed that TOM operated a text filter that blocked certain words in chat messages, and it also said that if the message is found unsuitable for displaying, it is simply discarded and not displayed or transmitted anywhere. It was our understanding that it was not TOM’s protocol to upload and store chat messages with certain keywords, and we are now inquiring with TOM to find out why the protocol changed.

We also learned yesterday about the existence of a security breach that made it possible for people to gain access to those stored messages on TOM’s servers. We were very concerned to learn about both issues and after we urgently addressed this situation with TOM, they fixed the security breach. In addition, we are currently addressing the wider issue of the uploading and storage of certain messages with TOM.

It’s important to remind everybody that the issues highlighted in yesterday’s Information Warfare Monitor / ONI Asia report refer only to communications in which one or more parties are using TOM software to conduct instant messaging. It does not affect communications where all parties are using standard Skype software. Skype-to-Skype communications are, and always have been, completely secure and private.

So, let’s see. Skype already knew its Chinese partner helped Skype to censor its users and Skype was fine with that. Then, it turned out that partner (ie, Skype itself) was copying and storing the (allegedly only) IM conversations. And these conversations may “possibly” be at risk (as though the records aren’t instantaneously co-located at some Chinese government building and combed through.) And now Skype has “inquired” to find out why it allegedly changed. Wow. Talk about action. Talk about courage. (I’m being sarcastic, of course. I mean, who in their right mind is going to believe Josh? And even if he’s telling the truth, so what? The damage is done, will continue to be done, and Skype will do exactly fuckall about it.)

Hey, Josh, here’s an idea: Unless money is the only thing whatsoever that you give a rat’s ass about, stop operating in China. Too “extreme”? Then stop cooperating with China and leave if they insist you do. But do not rush, especially under the guise of a “partner” to please the censorious boobs of the Central Committee.

Click here to tell Skype what you think.

Or better yet, leave a comment for Josh. (Don’t expect him to respond, though. After 57 comments, he hasn’t yet.) Oh, wait! LOL. Here’s what it says at the Comments section for that post:

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