China gets first Cyberpolice

Head of the Anhui Internet police, Tian Yangchang, said the main task of the group is to administrate and maintain order on computer networks.

Tian said his team has already helped some local banks to discover and plug loopholes in electronic-information networks and trained many volunteers as electronic security-guards.

The police task-force has also cooperated closely with the local media to alert computer-users of viruses and with scientific research institutes to develop filter programs for families with children.

China now has more than 17 million Internet users and the number is still growing at a speed of 100 per cent every year. However, the Xinhua report did not mention policing political content on the Internet, the main concern of China’s ruling Communist Party.

A leading Hong Kong newspaper recently reported that the Communist Party has authorised vice-president Hu Jintao to oversee the orderly growth of China’s Internet sector without compromising national security.

The party leadership is also setting up a monitoring group to scrutinise the political content of websites and enterprises, the paper said.

The inter-departmental unit under the politburo will have representatives drawn from public security, state security and information industry ministries, the South China Morning Post reported today.

The focus is on combating infiltration and sabotage, particularly when Net-related warfare breaks out with a hostile country, the report said.

China regularly blocks websites of major western media organisations, western human rights’ groups, Tibetan exiles and other sources of information it deems politically-sensitive or `dangerous’ for the Chinese people.

Members of the banned Falun Gong cult have also been arrested for using the Internet to spread information about their faith and about Government efforts to crush the movement.

Falun Gong’s New York-based founder, Li Hngzhi, has been using the Internet to give instructions to his followers. Chinese police has closed down several cult websites since the Government ordered massive nationwide crackdown on its followers in July, last year.