Who's been snooping in my room?

I just came back tonight to my Beijing hotel room after a long day of work. I sat down, set up my computer and tried to log onto my work e-mail.

An error message appeared, saying the connection had been interrupted.

My first thought: The Chinese censors are at it again.

We all know there are thousands of Chinese worker bees busily trying to block us foreigners in town from seeing all those nasty online nuggets that touch on those "sensitive topics."

We're talking about Tibet, Falun Gong, all the other stuff that will get you an error message if you even Google them.

As a newcomer to this Orwellian world, many of us thousands of visiting journalists don't know how this works. So every thing that looks out of place or every problem that turns up with the Internet or phone sparks paranoia. Is it those Chinese censors at it again? we think. Is this how this game works?

For example, I was trying to reach the advocacy group Human Rights in China on Friday in their Hong Kong office using my Skype, and the line kept dropping or the human rights guys couldn't hear me clearly. I had never experienced that with any of the other many calls I've made on Skype in China.

The group finally reached me by cell phone, but while we were talking, a beep would interrupt every 15 seconds or so. Again, I've never heard that before. The line was also pretty bad.

Now, was this those government leprechauns at it again? Or just an innocent problem with my Internet and phone line?

In this case, knowing how much the Chinese government worry about what Human Rights in China is up to, I would guess this was the real McCoy, some censors at work.

But that's a guess. It's all about odds. Never heard beeping before, never had problems with Skype in China, the only time I experience this is when I'm talking to a group Chinese authorities demonize. I vote for Big Brother's at work.

But then another visitor here told me he was talking to his wife back in the States a few nights ago and started hearing clicking on his line. His wife noticed and asked what was going on. He said it was probably the Chinese listening in.

Were they? What would they hope to learn from this guy's conversation with his wife? Who knows?

We've been told to expect surveillance at every turn, but I find it hard to believe the government is listening in on all tens of thousands of journalists in town for the Olympics.

Then again, this is a country of 1.3 billion people, so they've probably got some tens of thousands of leprechauns at work. Tens of thousands are nothing here.

In my case, I did, after all, write an article last week headlined "China fails to keep promises it made to win Olympic Games." I'm sure that didn't make the government happy.

But what would they hope to learn from listening in? They know who Human Rights in China is after all. Maybe they think I'm talking to some dissident they've spent months looking for. Or maybe they couldn't give a damn what I'm doing and no one's listening, looking, combing...

But the paranoia returns.

Another example: I usually lock my luggage when I leave my hotel room just in case someone untrustworthy is on duty that day.

Last week, however, the same day the story I mentioned came out, I returned and saw that my lock only ran through the hoop of one zipper on my suitcase and not through the hoops of both zippers, which meant my suitcase could be opened.

The questions again: Did I mistakenly only run the lock through one zipper or did the leprechauns come in and do a scan of my room and carelessly leave the lock in one zipper?

Or even more diabolically, did they intentionally put the lock in one zipper so that I would know they'd been here and know that they had their sights on me? Oh, what wicked logic these leprechauns wield.

What were you looking for then? Did you sift through my dirty underwear? Was it you who organized the newspapers I left lying around on the floor? Are you watching me write this now? Are you outside my door listening in?

Or how about this: What are you so afraid of? What could I or any other journalist here possibly write or see online that would threaten your nearly 60-year hold on power? Isn't it about time you opened the doors completely and let the world in?

-Jack Chang