Phones may no longer be bought anonymously in China. The administrative regulations proposed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the Ministry of Public Security is waiting for the approval of the State Council, according to Beijing Business Today.

It has been said that the policy is aimed at eliminating spam short messages (SMS). Currently, mobile phone SIM cards, along with the carried telephone numbers, are commonly sold by street distributors at relatively low price and at the same time anonymously. With proper devices, spammers are capable to send thousands of SMS every hour. The service providers have promised to take measures, but efforts were unfortunately insignificant. Some people thus doubt that those providers are involved in the value chain of spamming and hence policy related to the providers shall not be expected to be successfully carried out.

Another usage of the identification was said to be evidence for high-tech crime prosecution. Although these may be effective, there is concern of privacy as a survey figured out that half of the respondents are concerned with this risk. Since SMS has a high frequency of usage in Asia, and people are used to send private messages and to make private conversation over mobile phone, the policy is expected to meet resistance in its application.

The Great Firewall (often cited as GFW in Internet communities in China) is on its constant evolution, while recently popular content-control software, the Green Dam, is believed to be part of the censorship project.

As explained by Williamlong, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) of the PRC currently monitor and administrate Chinese Internet by deploying Cisco’s IDS and IPS systems, but the solution is not satisfactory. According to Williamlong, the security products by Cisco can only analyze packets of text, rather than images and video clips. A second concern is made around national security issues as the government is worried with the backdoors of the Cisco products. However domestic network solution providers are not capable to develop products of so large a scale. Therefore, as Williamlong estimated, MIIT decided to adopt the distributed structure, i.e. pre-installation of the Green Dam to computers, to break the monopoly of Cisco.

Although the government may not necessarily have been aware, they are utilizing the advantages brought about by distributed computing, as enormous amount of calculating tasks required by image identification have been distributed to individual personal computers. Another contribution the popularization of the Green Dam will make is the reduced pressure on IDS and IPS systems with which domestic alternatives are possibly capable.

While the distributed structure is theoretically beneficial to Internet traffic in China, consequential catastrophe may arise if the software is not programmed properly. Unfortunately, it has been discovered to have several loopholes with which attackers may easily obtain control of thousands of personal computers in China. Whether the national security will be strengthened (as intended) or weakened is yet unknown.