news@dailylobo.com
UNM graduate student Jeffrey Knockel has a penchant for solving difficult homework assignments. In high school, he programmed his TI-83 calculator to do his calculus homework. And in 2011, he was tasked with finding out how China is using Skype to spy on its citizens.
When citizens in China attempt to download or use Skype, they are redirected to a product called TOM-Skype. While the programs are similar, Chinese online servers can survey and censor messages through TOM-Skype.
Knockel, who is working on his doctorate in computer science, began by downloading TOM-Skype and searching for the most common word leading to Chinese surveillance: the f-bomb.
“We knew that the ‘f-word,’ fuck, was on this list, so we did something called binary search to find out which line on this list of encrypted words was fuck,” Knockel said. “We delete half of this list and see if this still triggers surveillance messages based on that word. If it does, it must have been in the other half, if it doesn’t, it’s in this half.”
After he narrowed down the encryption for the obscenity, Knockel said he was able to play around with the given text, substituting his original word with “duck.”
“I was very pleased, once I decrypted this one word, I was able to decrypt this whole list of words and there were some startling words on there,” Knockel said.
Knockel finished his original list in three days, turning in his assignment to assistant professor Jedidiah Crandall. Since then, Crandall has worked with Knockel as he discovers new words with each TOM-Skype update.
Knockel has composed a list of more than 4,000 words and phrases, ranging from “cell phone eavesdropping software” and “police used electric batons” to “sex chat” and “two girls one cup.”
Crandall said Knockel’s work stands out from that of other computer science students in the department.
“In computer science, we tend to think there are systems people that can get really deep into the computer and understand, and then there’s theory people. He can hang out with the theory people and rival any of them in theory and he can hang out with the systems people and rival any of them in systems,” Crandall said.
Crandall, who teaches computer networking and introduction to cyber security, said Knockel’s work is part of a major larger movement against online censorship.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
“I think the more that we understand about how Internet censorship and surveillance occurs, the more informed we are when making decisions in the United States,” Crandall said. “We tend to see this pattern in Internet censorship where they use very crude methods, blocking websites completely, to get people to use domestic websites in the country. When people use domestic websites then that’s where you see the more advanced kind of filtering.”
Knockel said his work is being examined at the Citizen Lab in Toronto, where students are searching for the historical context to why each word or phrase is on the censored list. Knockel said he hopes his work raises awareness about surveillance work in China.
“I just hope to bring more transparency to the process,” Knockel said. “I want more people to know first that this is going on and what exactly is triggering surveillance and what information is actually being sent in these surveillance messages.”
