smart, well done china!
smart, well done china!
For the first time, an internal document of the communist regime recognizes the tracking of personal information from 'software' installed on the phones of thousands of people.
What seems to be the classic happy story of a technological start-up has become a key chapter in the mass surveillance system used by the Chinese Government to identify, stop and imprison thousands of Uighur ethnicities, a Muslim minority, without prior trial. who lives in Xinjiang, in the west of the country. The secret documents leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with 17 international media (EL PAÍS, the only publication in Spanish and Portuguese) demonstrate the technological progress of the Chinese Government to monitor members of this ethnic group. And they reveal their potential: from the data of harmless applications, they manage to track "one by one" about two million people.
The mobile application mentioned in one of the filtered newsletters, of June 29, 2017, is Zapya (Kuai-Ya in Chinese). It is a software that allows you to share text files, photos and videos without the need for an Internet connection. Use the ability of any smartphone to become a Wi-Fi hotspot for another nearby device and quickly share any content. Something similar to what could be done with bluetooth , but much faster and without cost.
The application, developed by DewMobile Inc, has been created in Beijing, but most of its development was in California, with capital from private American investors. Designed for countries where Internet connection is poor, it has had great success in the Asian world. According to its founders, it has 480 million users in countries such as China, Myanmar, Pakistan and India. Through the social networks, the creators of the application often address the millions of Muslims among their users, encouraging them to celebrate Islamic holidays or share the Koran .
For the Chinese surveillance system, who disseminates such content in Xinjiang automatically becomes a suspect.
"It is necessary to put [the suspect] in the fields" It is not the first time that current mobile applications are related to the surveillance of China, but the trace of one of them in an official document is unpublished. One of the secret papers details: “ Zapya's analysis has discovered that from July 2016 to the present, the number of its users in Xinjiang is 1,869,100 [Uyghurs].” The authorities must find the “violent terrorists and extremists who have used Zapya to spread audio and video of a violent terrorist nature. ”
Among the users, the document follows, the system identifies 3,925 “unauthorized magnets” and 5,576 people “related” to them. According to reports from human rights associations and testimonies from journalists, the Government has demolished hundreds of mosques throughout the region.
The document with these details is signed by the then chief security officer in Xinjiang, Zhu Hailun, and is addressed to the secretaries of the Communist Party of China in various Commissions for Political and Legal Affairs, bodies responsible for complying with legislation at the local level. Its content is the thread that joins the mobile application and the Integrated Joint Operation Platform (IJOP), the surveillance system where the Chinese government stores data from millions of people.
The operation of the IJOP and how to access user data is not detailed in the leaked documents. But a Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigation showed that the system aggregates data of Uyghur citizens from dozens of sources, often without them knowing it, and stores it, allowing each “suspect” to be detected.
The work of this organization focused on shredding and recreating (a process known as reverse engineering in English ) the application that the Xinjiang police use to forward information to the IJOP. Police checkpoints, facial recognition cameras or software that many Xinjiang citizens have reported having been forced to install, but also information collected from personal IDs, have created a massive database used to identify each citizen.
Filtered documents complete that job. With the monitoring platform of the Chinese Government, a “one by one” control is carried out that allows tracking and tracking Uyghur refugees abroad. They detail with great precision that “40,577” of these users are already in several of the so-called education and training centers, before breaking them down one by one. For those who are free, the authorities must use “local security forces and IJOP to investigate and verify cases one by one”. When it is not possible to “eliminate the suspicion,” the bulletin continues, “it is necessary to put [the suspect] in the intensive training camps and continue with the analysis and reviews”.
The June 25 bulletin confirms, in the words of the Government itself, that data is stored in the IJOP and used to identify and detain Uyghur citizens. "In the week of June 19 to 25, the Integrated Platform of the four southern states of Xinjiang has notified local governments 24,412 suspects," says the leaked document. "15,683 has been sent to the education and training fields," he says.
“If you download Zapya , they stop you” Zapya's case is the first confirmation in an official Government document that several Chinese citizens already suspect. In several websites related to Uyghur exile and articles in some blogs, testimonies of Uyghurs are collected that have claimed to have been spied upon once this application is installed. In a forum of Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine, a user alerts about the use of this application: "If you download Zapya on your phone, the police stop you." The response of another user, in March 2019, backed by eight likes , confirms : "There are people who have downloaded Zapyaand have been sentenced to three years. Come to Xinjiang and ask people. It is better not to download it, I recommend not using it in Xinjiang "
In December 2018, an Uyghur businessman based in Istanbul told the French newspaper Le Monde that he had to spend 30 days as a “suspect” accused of having downloaded the Zapya application . The company that created the app , DewMobile, has not answered the questions of the ICIJ.
The storage of data from an application and sensors in the IJOP is part of the “Hits against violent terrorism” campaign against terrorism in Xinjiang, started in 2010. In August 2016, the Office of Public Security confirmed the creation of the IJOP to aggregate data from different sources and follow terrorism suspects. But this is the first time that it connects directly with arbitrary arrests and detention in the camps.
“It's about having a platform that filters people,” explains Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, an organization that has analyzed the IJOP. “It means passing Xinjiang residents through a technology sieve. I have seen police officers authorize the purchase of a second-hand vehicle only after checking the label affixed to the buyer in the IJOP. It is being used beyond incarceration, it has become a mechanism of prior control, with the possibility of monitoring anyone anywhere. ”
https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/11/24/actualidad/1574587603_671331.html
**For the first time, an internal document of the communist regime recognizes the tracking of personal information from 'software' installed on the phones of thousands of people.**
What seems to be the classic happy story of a technological start-up has become a key chapter in the mass surveillance system used by the Chinese Government to identify, stop and imprison thousands of Uighur ethnicities, a Muslim minority, without prior trial. who lives in Xinjiang, in the west of the country. The secret documents leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with 17 international media (EL PAÍS, the only publication in Spanish and Portuguese) demonstrate the technological progress of the Chinese Government to monitor members of this ethnic group. And they reveal their potential: from the data of harmless applications, they manage to track "one by one" about two million people.
The mobile application mentioned in one of the filtered newsletters, of June 29, 2017, is Zapya (Kuai-Ya in Chinese). It is a software that allows you to share text files, photos and videos without the need for an Internet connection. Use the ability of any smartphone to become a Wi-Fi hotspot for another nearby device and quickly share any content. Something similar to what could be done with bluetooth , but much faster and without cost.
The application, developed by DewMobile Inc, has been created in Beijing, but most of its development was in California, with capital from private American investors. Designed for countries where Internet connection is poor, it has had great success in the Asian world. According to its founders, it has 480 million users in countries such as China, Myanmar, Pakistan and India. Through the social networks, the creators of the application often address the millions of Muslims among their users, encouraging them to celebrate Islamic holidays or share the Koran .
For the Chinese surveillance system, who disseminates such content in Xinjiang automatically becomes a suspect.
"It is necessary to put [the suspect] in the fields"
It is not the first time that current mobile applications are related to the surveillance of China, but the trace of one of them in an official document is unpublished. One of the secret papers details: “ Zapya's analysis has discovered that from July 2016 to the present, the number of its users in Xinjiang is 1,869,100 [Uyghurs].” The authorities must find the “violent terrorists and extremists who have used Zapya to spread audio and video of a violent terrorist nature. ”
Among the users, the document follows, the system identifies 3,925 “unauthorized magnets” and 5,576 people “related” to them. According to reports from human rights associations and testimonies from journalists, the Government has demolished hundreds of mosques throughout the region.
The document with these details is signed by the then chief security officer in Xinjiang, Zhu Hailun, and is addressed to the secretaries of the Communist Party of China in various Commissions for Political and Legal Affairs, bodies responsible for complying with legislation at the local level. Its content is the thread that joins the mobile application and the Integrated Joint Operation Platform (IJOP), the surveillance system where the Chinese government stores data from millions of people.
The operation of the IJOP and how to access user data is not detailed in the leaked documents. But a Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigation showed that the system aggregates data of Uyghur citizens from dozens of sources, often without them knowing it, and stores it, allowing each “suspect” to be detected.
The work of this organization focused on shredding and recreating (a process known as reverse engineering in English ) the application that the Xinjiang police use to forward information to the IJOP. Police checkpoints, facial recognition cameras or software that many Xinjiang citizens have reported having been forced to install, but also information collected from personal IDs, have created a massive database used to identify each citizen.
Filtered documents complete that job. With the monitoring platform of the Chinese Government, a “one by one” control is carried out that allows tracking and tracking Uyghur refugees abroad. They detail with great precision that “40,577” of these users are already in several of the so-called education and training centers, before breaking them down one by one. For those who are free, the authorities must use “local security forces and IJOP to investigate and verify cases one by one”. When it is not possible to “eliminate the suspicion,” the bulletin continues, “it is necessary to put [the suspect] in the intensive training camps and continue with the analysis and reviews”.
The June 25 bulletin confirms, in the words of the Government itself, that data is stored in the IJOP and used to identify and detain Uyghur citizens. "In the week of June 19 to 25, the Integrated Platform of the four southern states of Xinjiang has notified local governments 24,412 suspects," says the leaked document. "15,683 has been sent to the education and training fields," he says.
“If you download Zapya , they stop you”
Zapya's case is the first confirmation in an official Government document that several Chinese citizens already suspect. In several websites related to Uyghur exile and articles in some blogs, testimonies of Uyghurs are collected that have claimed to have been spied upon once this application is installed. In a forum of Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine, a user alerts about the use of this application: "If you download Zapya on your phone, the police stop you." The response of another user, in March 2019, backed by eight likes , confirms : "There are people who have downloaded Zapyaand have been sentenced to three years. Come to Xinjiang and ask people. It is better not to download it, I recommend not using it in Xinjiang "
In December 2018, an Uyghur businessman based in Istanbul told the French newspaper Le Monde that he had to spend 30 days as a “suspect” accused of having downloaded the Zapya application . The company that created the app , DewMobile, has not answered the questions of the ICIJ.
The storage of data from an application and sensors in the IJOP is part of the “Hits against violent terrorism” campaign against terrorism in Xinjiang, started in 2010. In August 2016, the Office of Public Security confirmed the creation of the IJOP to aggregate data from different sources and follow terrorism suspects. But this is the first time that it connects directly with arbitrary arrests and detention in the camps.
“It's about having a platform that filters people,” explains Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, an organization that has analyzed the IJOP. “It means passing Xinjiang residents through a technology sieve. I have seen police officers authorize the purchase of a second-hand vehicle only after checking the label affixed to the buyer in the IJOP. It is being used beyond incarceration, it has become a mechanism of prior control, with the possibility of monitoring anyone anywhere. ”
https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/11/24/actualidad/1574587603_671331.html
(post is archived)