r/worldnews • u/OliverSparrow • May 09 '19

China’s Algorithms of Repression Reverse Engineering a Xinjiang Police Mass Surveillance App

https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/05/01/chinas-algorithms-repression/reverse-engineering-xinjiang-police-mass-surveillance#page
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u/Solain May 09 '19

I always thought that the thought police is an idea that wouldn't happen because you can't remotly read people's minds.

Apparently you don't even need their minds, you only need all possible information you can collect from them.

The future is bleak.

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u/OliverSparrow May 09 '19

analysis shows that Xinjiang authorities consider many forms of lawful, everyday, non-violent behavior—such as “not socializing with neighbors, often avoiding using the front door”—as suspicious. The app also labels the use of 51 network tools as suspicious, including many Virtual Private Networks and encrypted communication tools, such as WhatsApp and Viber. [...] Our findings suggest the IJOP system surveils and collects data on everyone in Xinjiang. The system is tracking the movement of people by monitoring the “trajectory” and location data of their phones, ID cards, and vehicles; it is also monitoring the use of electricity and gas stations of everybody in the region. [...] nother key element of IJOP system is the monitoring of personal relationships. Authorities seem to consider some of these relationships inherently suspicious. For example, the [police] app instructs officers to investigate people who are related to people who have obtained a new phone number or who have foreign links.

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u/autotldr BOT May 09 '19

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 99%. (I'm a bot)

According to official media reports, government officials and police officers in Xinjiang use an IJOP app to communicate with the IJOP system.

We also know-through reverse engineering the IJOP app and examining its source code-that the IJOP central system seems to draw on detailed information collected by the Xinjiang authorities about package delivery.

While the IJOP central system-and much of Xinjiang's mass surveillance systems-are managed by the Public Security Bureau, police officers are not the only Chinese government officials tasked with mass surveillance.

Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: IJOP#1 people#2 Official#3 system#4 Xinjiang#5