China recruits volunteer net porn police

The Chinese government plans to recruit tens of thousands of volunteers by the end of the year to report "lewd" content and "uncivilized" behavior on the internet.

Government-run news agency Xinhua reports volunteers will be registered under the auspices of China's Capital Civic Enhancement Committee Office (CCECO). The government will also enlist "supervision volunteers" to patrol internet cafes for vulgar content and to prevent minors from accessing the computers.

The People's Republic definition of "lewd" includes violence, pornography, libel, or any other material that violates a tensile definition of standards of public decency.

"The aim is to shield minors from unwanted harm they might be subjected to on the internet," a CCECO director told the news agency.

China's government commonly attributes internet pornography with powers to harm both the physical and mental health of young people.

Google gated

Plans to recruit internet supervisors comes as the government announced it ahs begun blocking some Chinese-language results on Google.

The blocks were instituted over renewed concerns the search engine is linking to pornographic material.

Xinhua reports government officials summoned the executive in charge of Google China on Thursday to reprimand the business in person. The official apparently apologized for the porn and vowed prompt action to rectify the problem.

China's blockage reportedly affects Chinese-language results from any country, but not English-language searches. The office also reportedly asked Google China to stop searching foreign sites to supplement the porno ban.

Google and Baidu (China's dominant search engine) were also both publicly shamed in January over porno links. The flogging was part of a larger government crackdown on internet pornography, which has thus far resulted in more than one thousands web sites getting blocked by Chinese authorities. ®