中英对照：微信审查用户内容的机制一点不透明

 

 

 

我在上一篇文章中介绍了海外技术专家通过测试发现微信会对微信海外用户之间的通信内容进行监控。这些测试证明，微信会分析这些海外用户之间传播的文件和图像的内容在中国的政治敏感度。测试发现，被认为政治敏感的话题会被用来私下培训和建立对中国国内微信用户的审查机制。

 

In my previous article, we described technical experiments which reveal that WeChat communications that are conducted entirely among non-China-registered accounts are subject to content surveillance. These experiments proved that documents and images that were transmitted entirely among non-China-registered accounts were analyzed for Chinese political sensitivity. Upon analysis, files deemed politically sensitive were used to invisibly train and build up WeChat’s Chinese political censorship system.

 

海外软件技术人员还根据微信公布的使用规则，与腾讯和腾讯数据保护部门接触，以评估微信是否确实对国际用户通信内容进行监视。结果发现，微信根本就不会向用户解释他们是否对海外微信内容的监控，以及是否会把海外的政治敏感内容用于对国内用户的监控。

 

Software technicians also conducted analysis of WeChat’s public-facing policy documents, made data access requests, and engaged with Tencent data protection representatives to assess whether those methods could also explain, or uncover, the content surveillance carried out towards international users’ communications. It was found that none of the information WeChat makes available to users explains the rationales for such surveillance or the transmission of content hashes from WeChat International to WeChat China.

 

微信承诺要让用户更容易上微信平台，并会修改和删除国际用户的内容，但当海外技术人员向腾讯提出问题时，腾讯员工最初使用自动数据导出工具来应付。这些工作人员不愿就更具体的数据做出回复。他们甚至懒得回答是否收到了问题，更不用说就提出的问题给答复了。这与其他社交平台的做法背道而驰。在世界各地运营的社交平台都会配备隐私和数据保护专业人员，以确保随时回答用户提出的问题。

 

Tencent staff were initially quick to respond to questions using an automated data-export tool associated with WeChat’s commitment to facilitate access, modification, and removal of international users’ content. The same staff were unwilling to provide any assistance or information on more specific data access request questions. The requests were never acknowledged, let alone responded to. This is contrary to common practices - Companies operating around the world staff their companies with privacy and data protection professionals to, in part, ensure that questions about companies’ policies can be addressed.

 

腾讯不仅没有向其国际用户解释如何使用海外通信内容来监督国内的用户，也没有解释或澄清国际用户的那些与中国政治敏感话题无关的通信内容是否也会被监控控。微信对在如何使用用户的数据，用户的数据是否会受到不同国家和地区的审查方面没有一点透明度。

 

Tencent has not only failed to explain to its international users how their communications content is being used to facilitate the censorship apparatus that is applied to China-registered WeChat accounts, but the company has also failed to explain, or clarify, whether international users’ communications content are subject to surveillance that is not associated with the censorship of content that is deemed sensitive in China. Users of WeChat are not provided sufficient transparency into how their data is used to understand whether and how their data enables political censorship in other jurisdictions (China).

 

海外软件技术人员的努力还是无法确定微信是否对海外用户之间交流的信息进行监控。微信会用关键词自动审查那些发给和来自中国用户的内容。但是目前，人们还是无法知道微信如何挑选关键词。这些关键词很可能是通过用户之间的交流内容生成的，类似于用户的图像和文档索引产生方式。微信是否只是用海外用户的信息来产生关键字还有待进一步研究。

 

The experiments cannot ascertain whether there is surveillance of chat message text sent entirely among non-China-registered accounts. WeChat automatically censors chat message contents from or to China-registered accounts if they contain a blacklisted keyword combination, but it is currently an open question as to how WeChat generates or maintains these keyword combination blacklists. These keyword blacklists may be generated from users’ communications similarly to how the hashes of users’ images and documents populate WeChat’s censorship hash index. Further research is required to explore if these keyword blacklists are built up from chat text sent among non-China-registered users in the same way as these users’ communications contribute to the document and image hash index.

 

以上所说的研究只是针对一个平台，即腾讯的微信。此研究确认腾讯使用海外用户的通信来建立其监控机制。这种监控方式是腾讯独有，还是其他在世界流行的中国社交媒体也采用同样的机制通过海外用户的数据来监控中国用户目前还是不清楚。

 

The research experiment only focused on one platform, Tencent’s WeChat, and found that Tencent uses non-China-registered users’ communications to build up its censorship system. Future work is required to understand if this behaviour is unique to Tencent or if it is common for internationally operating Chinese social media companies to use communications among their non-Chinese users to implement Chinese political censorship.

 

许多研究人员认为，逃避微信的监控可能比您想像的要简单：

 

Many researchers suggest that evading censorship on WeChat in China can be simpler than you might think:

 

多篇发表的论文介绍了中国公民如何可以绕过微信的监控的方法。

 

There are published papers on some of the straightforward ways in which Chinese citizens get around censorship on the country’s most popular social network.

 

一个窍门是，由于微信的服务器很容易对文字内容进行检索，但对图像检索却不那么容易。因此，用图像在微信上传播信息难以被微信监控。

 

The first tip is that text is relatively easy for the platform to scan for censored words. Images are more difficult to for computers to read, making it easier for banned images to slip through filters on WeChat.

 

另一篇研究论文表明，微信服务器似乎对被禁图片和上传到微信的内容之间的对比很粗糙。因此，用户可以通过修改敏感图像防止微信封杀，包括把图像变得更模糊，将图像旋转，添加边框或将多个图像合成一个文件。

 

Another research paper showed that WeChat seemed to use a relatively crude comparison between banned images and content uploaded to the site in order to decide what to block. There are ways in which users modified sensitive images to make them harder to catch, including blurring, rotating, adding borders, or combining multiple smaller images into one file.

 

目前，美国已经准备禁用微信，称微信给美国国家安全带来风险。作为“五眼大国”之一的加拿大会跟随其后吗？

 

At this time, USA is proceeding with banning WeChat from their country claiming that it poses a national security risk to that nation. Will Canada, as one of the “5 eyes countries” be far behind?