However, as citizens become more familiar with the web, content will be even harder to regulate. The ability of users to send messages anonymously or from overseas creates overwhelming challenges for the government. In an article in the online zine The China Matrix , Kenneth Farrall explains the government's difficulty in controlling online content. The ability of China's security apparatus to identify, locate, monitor, isolate, and extinguish anti-government elements is being severely challenged, however, by the new realities of the Internet and cyberspace. Emergence of New Voices Despite the government's security measures, the scope of public discourse is definitely changing in China as individuals and alternative news publications become involved in the forum of the web.
Computer crimes involving politically sensitive speech are on the rise.
Some online magazines advocating free speech or democracy, such as Tunnel and VIP Reference , have obtained an unprecedented online circulation through email. The content of these magazines is packaged and sent to individual Chinese email accounts from the United States, although the content may originate in China. Some of these publications even end up in the inboxes of elite Communist officials. And the silent protest of 10,000 Falun Gong members in 1999 was organized through email, taking the government completely by surprise. These techniques may provide a foreshadowing of the methods of future political reform.