You've probably seen at least one headline on it by now: China is adding Internet patrols to the list of police activities. It's not quite the thought police, but it's pretty dad gum close...

According to the Associated Press, "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." There are two animated Police officers - "Jing" and "Cha." Their names are a pun: they are named after the two Chinese characters that make up the written Chinese word for police.




The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently pointed out that the local Internet café is now the second most popular place in China. Home comes first, work comes third. Until recently work was second. Internet cafes are especially popular in rural areas.

The number of official Internet cafés has been capped and no new cafés can open in China at the moment. But it is very hard to regulate unofficial Internet cafés.

So, if you think you hated pop-ups before, now (at least if you're surfing the web in China) Jing or Cha may appear in a pop-up, ride a bike across your screen, and warn you that the site you're visiting is dangerously subversive because of its political content, unaccepably obscene, or something like that...

According to the AP, "The animated police appeared designed to startle Web surfers and remind them that authorities closely monitor Web activity."

One source predicted that China will continue to get tougher with illegal Internet content. The possibility of a software package something like a government sponsored trojan horse has been suggested - you'd need it to access any registered web site and it would log all sites a computer visited.

I suppose we'll see...