Chinese Internet Police: We are Watching You

We all hate popup ads.  Most of us also hate flash animation ads that block out web articles we are trying to read, and we get pissed off more when we have problems finding the “close” button to make the ad go away.  Now imagine that you get those popup ads every 30 minutes, and there is no close button.  Now imagine that its the Internet Cops.  As if living in a communist country didnt suck enough-

From the AP here:

Police in China’s capital said Tuesday they will start patrolling the Web using animated beat officers that pop up on a user’s browser and walk, bike or drive across the screen warning them to stay away from illegal Internet content.
 
Starting Sept. 1, the cartoon alerts will appear every half hour on 13 of China’s top portals and by the end of the year will appear on all Web sites registered with Beijing servers.

China stringently polices the Internet for material and content that the ruling Communist Party finds politically or morally threatening.  The animated police appeared designed to startle Web surfers and remind them that authorities closely monitor Web activity.

How much more big brother can China get with their intrusive web monitoring?  Well, actually, they are likely to get much tougher soon.  I predict that China will institute mandatory host-based monitoring.  A government-sponsored trojan horse program will be required to access any registered web content-  like a decryption key of some type.  The downside of this is that the trojan also monitors directly for illegal content.  Its coming, you mark my words.