Tibet: Big Brother is Watching You!

(The Big Brother in the movie "1984")

As reported by Xinhua News Agency, all Internet, fixed line and mobile phone users in Tibet have provided service operators with their real names, as required by a 2011 local regulation, local authorities said Monday.

By the end of 2012, 2.76 million fixed line and mobile phone users and 1.47 million web users in Tibet had registered for services under their real identities.

Local authority declared that the real-name registration is conducive to protecting citizens' personal information and curbing the spread of detrimental information. Nyima Doje, deputy director of the regional communications administration, said that since the registration rules were implemented, the number of spam messages sent via the Internet and phones in Tibet has declined by more than 40 percent.

However, to control the spam messages is just an excuse for Tibetan officials to demand users registered their real names. Because in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai which are more vulnerable to spam messages, the real-name registration is not a requirement to internet users.

Considering Tibet is a place where many so-called rebellions take place and lots of people (especially local monks) are unwilling to obey to the Communist Party, we can draw a conclusion that the real reason of real-name registration is information-censoring, message-controlling and mostly important, public-monitoring.

Tibet is the first region where the Big Brother is watching the people, we may find out that the Big Brother will watch the people in the rest of China soon.