Doth Protest

I'm a bit skeptical.

From the NYT...

If anyone wonders whether the Chinese government has tightened its grip on electronic communications since protests began engulfing the Arab world, Shakespeare may prove instructive.

A Beijing entrepreneur, discussing restaurant choices with his fiancée over their cellphones last week, quoted Queen Gertrude’s response to Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” The second time he said the word “protest,” her phone cut off. He spoke English, but another caller, repeating the same phrase on Monday in Chinese over a different phone, was also cut off in midsentence.

A host of evidence over the past several weeks shows that Chinese authorities are more determined than ever to police cellphone calls, electronic messages, e-mail and access to the Internet in order to smother any hint of antigovernment sentiment.

There's no question that the Chinese authorities are and have been undertaking massive efforts to surveil and censor information, I've experienced it firsthand. However, I have my doubts that the technology exists to identify "protest" in the hundrends of millions of phone conversations occurring at any given moment in China, but who knows.

Update: Others have doubts too.