Thought police who patrol for thought criminals are no longer just the stuff of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984.
A growing army of tech-savvy police officers on the mainland patrol cyberspace around the clock, gaining instant knowledge of a Web user's location and even personal details.
While the existence of these shadowy officers is widely known, they rarely speak publicly about their work. However, the Sunday Morning Post has talked to one experienced internet officer in Guangdong, on condition of anonymity.
'We are increasingly saddled with tasks handed down from our bosses,' the 31-year-old says. 'Our workload has surged as the use of the internet has become more and more popular in the last few years.'
Monitoring internet cafes, tracking down anti-government comments, and fighting the spread of pornography are part of his everyday work. Hundreds of internet cafes are registered in his city of three million; they all fall under his eagle eye.
To see who is surfing the internet and from which cafe, he has only to turn on a computer programme, open a file, and click on the name of a cafe. Details of people in the cafe are instantly available. This is because users must present their identity cards for registration.
