Spiritual Saboteurs

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Followers of the Chinese spiritual practice Falun Gong often use high-tech tools to spread their message in China, where the sect is banned. But the group's latest tactic--overriding Chinese satellite Sinosat 1 and replacing its regular programming for 10 minutes last week with fuzzy text reading "Falun Dafa Is Good"--stunned government officials with its sophistication. (Falun Dafa is the name given to the group's beliefs.) To pull off the feat, the activists needed a nearly 30-ft. satellite dish plus about $1 million worth of equipment that would fire a perfectly tuned beam at Sinosat 1. Since two beams on the same frequency yield nothing but static, someone in Beijing had to shut down the official programming to let the illicit message through. The override was not a failure of Sinosat's encryption technology, says Ian Barnard, who runs China operations for the South African firm MIH, provider of the encryption software. So was it inept technicians? Or are there Falun Gong sympathizers somewhere in the state-run broadcasting industry? --By Matthew Forney