China’s high-tech repression threatens human freedom everywhere

The Washington Post

Chinese police patrol a street in the Peyzawat, a city in East Turkestan colony, last August. 

IN RECENT months, the world has slowly awakened to the extraordinary campaign of cultural genocide China is conducting against Muslims in its East Turkestan colony.

As many as 1 million people have been confined to concentration camps where they are forced to renounce their religious practices and memorize the Beijing regime’s propaganda. 

That gross offense against human rights must be fully investigated and sanctioned. 

But of equal concern are some of the means China is using to carry out the repression. 

East Turkestan has become a laboratory for the development of a comprehensive, high-tech system for monitoring people and their behaviors, which poses an unprecedented threat to freedom — not just in western China, but potentially throughout the world.
A report by Human Rights Watch expands on what is known about the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), the system for conducting mass surveillance in East Turkestan. 

By reverse engineering a mobile app connected to the system, the group was able to learn more about what data authorities are collecting about every East Turkestan resident, and what information triggers the system to order an investigation — or transport to a camp.
The results are chilling. 

“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 by everybody in the region,” the report says, adding: “When the IJOP system detects irregularities or deviations from what it considers normal, such as when people are using a phone that is not registered to them, when they use more electricity than ‘normal,’ or when they leave the area where they are registered to live without police permission, the system flags these ‘micro-clues’ to the authorities as suspicious and prompts an investigation.”
The police who follow up collect more data on people, from their blood type to the color of their cars. They examine their phones to see whether they contain one of 51 network tools deemed suspicious, such as virtual private networks and communications programs such as WhatsApp. 

They judge whether an individual fits one of 36 “person types” meriting special attention, including people who have traveled abroad, have more children than allowed or preach Islam without permission. 

All the data is sent back to the IJOP central system via the app, where it is stored in a database that also contains facial images and much other data.
Human Rights Watch points out that similar surveillance systems are being put into place all over China. 

“These mass surveillance systems have woven an ever-tightening net around people across the country,” the report says. 

“The depth, breadth and intrusiveness of the Chinese government’s mass surveillance on its citizens are unprecedented in modern history.”
Far from hiding this totalitarianism of the 21st century, Beijing is seeking to export it to other countries. 

That’s one reason what is happening in East Turkestan ought to be disturbing to anyone concerned about preserving basic freedoms as technology rapidly evolves. 

There are concrete steps that can be taken, from banning the sale to China of equipment that can be used in this repression, to sanctioning its architects — including East Turkestan party boss Chen Quanguo. 

Legislation pending in Congress, including the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, is a start; it should be taken up and passed.

China is using mobile app for surveillance of Uighurs

App collects personal information and prompts officials to file reports about people and their behaviour.
www.aljazeera.com
China's East Turkestan colony has as many as one million Uighurs and other minorities, mostly Muslim, being held in concentration camps.

Chinese police are using a mobile app to store data on 13 million ethnic minority Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in East Turkestan colony, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report has revealed.
The app, known as the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, is being used to store information from the height and weight of individuals to facial recognition scans.
The report, released on Thursday, added that East Turkestan authorities closely watch 36 categories of behaviour, including those who do not socialise with neighbours, often avoid using the front door, don't use a smartphone, donate to mosques "enthusiastically", and use an "abnormal" amount of electricity.
"The goal is apparently to identify patterns of, and predict, the everyday life and resistance of its population, and, ultimately, to engineer and control reality," HRW said in the report.
The rights watchdog worked with German security firm Cure53 to reverse engineer the app in late 2018 to provide "an unprecedented window into how mass surveillance actually works in East Turkestan".
Along with collecting personal information, the app prompts officials to file reports about people, vehicles and events they find suspect, and sends out "investigative missions" for police to follow up.
Officers are also asked to check whether suspects use any of the 51 internet tools that are deemed suspicious, including messaging platforms popular outside China like WhatsApp, LINE and Telegram.
A number of people said they or their family members have been detained for having WhatsApp or a Virtual Private Network (VPN) installed on their phones during checks by authorities.
China has led an increasingly repressive campaign in East Turkestan following a series of knife attacks and ethnic riots over the past 10 years.
It has come under international criticism over its policies in the northwest region where as many as one million Uighurs and other minorities, mostly Muslim, are being held in concentration camps, according to a group of experts cited by the United Nations.
Many are also forced to host government monitors in their own homes and undergo other forms of regular surveillance.
Beijing has already collected "DNA samples, fingerprints, iris scans and blood types of all residents between the age of 12 and 65" as well as voice samples.
"Psychologically, the more people are sure that their actions are monitored and that they, at anytime, can be judged for moving outside of a safe grey-space, the more likely they are to do everything to avoid coming close to crossing a moving red line," Samantha Hoffman, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's International Cyber Policy Centre, told AFP news agency.
"There is no rule of law in China, the party ultimately decides what is legal and illegal behaviour, and it doesn't have to be written down."

China Is Using Big Data to Repress its Muslim Uighur Population

By GERRY SHIH 

BEIJING — Human Rights Watch says it has found new evidence that authorities in one of China’s most repressive regions are sweeping up citizens’ personal information in a stark example of how big-data technology can be used to police a population — and abused.
The rights group used publicly available government procurement documents, media reports and interviews to assemble details of the policing program called the “Integrated Joint Operations Platform” in East Turkestan, a sprawling area in northwest China that security officials say harbors separatist and religious extremist elements.
Unidentified sources inside East Turkestan described to Human Rights Watch the computer and mobile app interfaces of the IJOP software that tracks almost all citizens of the Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighur ethnic minority and stores detailed information including their travel history, prayer habits, the number of books in their possession, banking and health records.
Procurement notices show that the IJOP also deploys license plate tracking and facial-recognition cameras to follow people in real time and provide “predictive warnings” about impending crime, Human Rights Watch said.
Although surveillance is pervasive in many countries, including the United States, and has the potential for abuse, the technology is being deployed far more broadly in East Turkestan, said Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch and the report’s author.
“In China the programs are very explicitly focused on people who are politically threatening or an entire Uighur ethnic group,” Wang said.

Police patrol in a night market near the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, a day before the Eid al-Fitr holiday on June 25, 2017. 

An official in the press office of Xinjiang police headquarters on Monday confirmed AP’s questions had been received but said leaders were out and he had no idea when or if there would be a reply. 

The official, like many Chinese bureaucrats, declined to give his name because he wasn’t authorized to speak to reporters.
China’s 10 million Uighurs already face a raft of restrictions not imposed on people of the Han ethnicity, who are the overwhelming majority in China. 

Uighurs face multiple hurdles in procuring passports and those who have them are required to leave them with the police. 

Hotels are required to register their presence with the local authorities and frequently turn them away to avoid the hassle. 

Frequent road blocks and checkpoints across the vast East Turkestan region enable authorities to stop people and check their mobile phones for content that might be deemed suspicious.
Such pressure was ratcheted up following a series of deadly attacks blamed on Uighur extremists seeking independence from Chinese rule.
A 2017 investigation by The Associated Press showed that thousands of Uighurs in East Turkestan, and possibly many more, have been sent to an extrajudicial network of political indoctrination centers for months at a time for reasons including studying abroad and communicating with relatives abroad.
The AP also found evidence in government documents and procurement contracts of the Xinjiang government compiling biometric and personal data and systematically rating its Uighur citizens’ political reliability.
The Human Rights Watch report reveals for the first time that the disparate data collection efforts appear to be unified under one central digital database that calculates citizens’ political risk.
Use of the integrated computer system has led to people being detained and sent to political indoctrination centers, Wang said, citing interviewees who were kept anonymous out of concern for their safety.
Wang said she has found evidence that Chinese police are building similar big-data tracking capabilities in other parts of the country under a program called the “police cloud,” but do not deploy them to as such an extent as in Xinjiang.