Chinese database is tracking cellphone usage, car location and even electricity usage of Xinjiang residents
Chinese database is tracking cellphone usage, car
location and even electricity usage of Xinjiang residents
Gerry Shih, The Washington Post Published 5:13 am EDT,
Thursday, May 2, 2019
Chinese authorities in Xinjiang are building a
comprehensive database that tracks the precise locations of its citizens, their
mobile app usage, their religious habits and even their electricity and
gasoline consumption as part of a technology-driven crackdown that has interred
an estimated 1 million Muslim citizens, according to an analysis of Chinese government
software by a U.S. rights group.
In the last two years, a growing body of testimony by
former Xinjiang residents and a trove of government procurement documents,
directives and state media reports have painted a picture of oppression in the
region, where Chinese authorities have relied on far-reaching electronic
surveillance to help dictate its mass internment program.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said Thursday it gained
a new level of insight into precisely what information the Chinese government
collects by examining a mobile app that Xinjiang officials use to input data
into a database called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform.
The IJOP system, which keeps track of practically the
entire Xinjiang population, alerts authorities when a person unexpectedly
crosses virtual "fences" by driving past a certain checkpoint or
checking into a hotel, according to the rights group. It tracks citizens'
smartphones, their national identification cards and GPS devices on their
vehicles, which have been widely installed under new government regulations.
After denying their existence for a year, Chinese
authorities have recently argued that Xinjiang's network of detention centers
are built for educating and de-radicalizing a Muslim population that became
increasingly influenced by extremist Islamic ideology.
International rights groups and Western countries say the
limited extremist threat does not warrant the vast scale of the internments, a
suffocating surveillance regime and a law enforcement approach that punishes
seemingly lawful behavior or standard religious practice.
While the broad outlines of Xinjiang's surveillance
effort was previously known, the Human Rights Watch provided technical proof of
Chinese authorities tracking a litany of lawful behavior. The IJOP system
tracked, for instance, whether a person's phone was turned off for a long time,
and whether a car's owner or different person was filling up at a gas station,
said Human Rights Watch researcher Maya Wang, the report's author.
A person who avoided use of their front door would raise
alarms, as would someone who avoided socializing with his or her neighbors or
raised unusual amounts of money for a mosque, Wang's analysis found. All told,
Wang found the Xinjiang database kept logs of 36 types of behavior seen as
suspicious, and a total of 51 mobile apps that were blacklisted - including
WhatsApp, Telegram and virtual private networks.
The Xinjiang model could be a testing ground for the rest
of China, where law enforcement authorities are currently building a national
"Police Cloud," Wang said.
But the Xinjiang example also carries profound global
implications in an era of big data, artificial intelligence and high-tech
policing.
"This is not just about Xinjiang or even China, it's
about the world beyond and whether we human beings can continue to have freedom
in a world of connected devices," Wang said. "It's a wake up call,
not just about China but about every one of us."
The app analyzed by Human Rights Watch was created by
China Electronics Technology Group - a government contractor that also produces
facial recognition machines and identification card scanners widely deployed in
Xinjiang. It was publicly available for download at one point, Human Rights
Watch said.
Chinese state-owned contractors and private start-ups
have been making significant advances in facial and gait recognition
technologies that are being increasingly deployed in China's airports, train
stations and hotels.
U.S. legislators led by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., have
called on the Trump administration to levy sanctions against Chinese
surveillance equipment manufacturers and restrict their access to U.S.
financial markets.
The United Nations, the European Union, the United States
and Turkey are among dozens of governments that have criticized the crackdown
in Xinjiang.
In March the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
Michele Bachelet said she was pressing for full access to Xinjiang to conduct
an independent investigation into reports of "wide patterns of enforced
disappearances and arbitrary detentions," but an agreement has not been
reached with Beijing on a U.N. visit.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres raised the issue
again with top Chinese officials in Beijing this week, a spokesman in Geneva
said Monday.
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