Cuban Government Reportedly Filtering Certain Text Messages

Companies like WhatsApp pride themselves on having end-to-end encryption, meaning that even if messages were to be intercepted, the person intercepting them won’t be able to decrypt them and read them. This means that if you’re worried about your government reading your text messages, finding and using a secure platform is probably a good idea.

However over in Cuba, it seems that the government is intercepting messages and actually preventing them from being delivered to their intended recipients, at least that’s according to reports from local blogger Yoani Sanchez and journalist Reinaldo Escobar. It seems that there are certain keywords that the government is filtering for.

According to Eliecer Avila, head of opposition youth group Somos Mas, about 30 keywords have been identified, such as “democracy”, “human rights”, and “Somos Mas”. “We always thought texts were vanishing because the provider is so incompetent, then we decided to check using words that bothered the government. We discovered not just us but the entire country is being censored. It just shows how insecure and paranoid the government is.”

It is unclear as to how long these filters have been in place, but when asked to comment, Cuba’s state telecommunications monopoly ETECSA could not be reached.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Cuba, Privacy