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China Forces Muslim Minority To Install Spyware On Their Phones (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: Chinese authorities in the province of Xinjiang are forcing locals of the Uyghur Muslim minority to install an app on their phones that will allow the government to scan their device for "terrorist propaganda," local media reports. In reality, the app creates MD5 hashes for the user's files and matches them against a database of known terrorist content. The app also makes copies of the user's Weibo and WeChat databases and uploads it to a government server, along with the user's IMEI, IMSI, and WiFi login information. The app is called Jingwang (Citizen Safety) and was developed by police forces from Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. Authorities launched the app in April, and also included the ability to report suspicious activity to the police. At the start of July, Xinjiang officials started sending WeChat messages in Uyghur and Chinese to locals, asking them to install the app or face detainment of up to 10 days. Police have also stopped people on the street to check if they installed the app. Several were detained for refusing to install it. Locals are now sharing the locations of checkpoints online, so others can avoid getting arrested.
Erm... you should know that the Uighurs are not foreigners to the land but natives.
They have been Muslims for centuries and before the formation of the PRC were semi autonomous.
However they are seen as a threat as they are not part of the Han ethnic group that the current chinese government comes from.
Perhaps you've never heard of a guy named Saint Peter, who denied knowing Jesus Christ three times because he was afraid of the laws and/or rules of this world.
See, John 18:13-27
You are welcome on my lawn.
You've hit the nail on the head. This actually makes the position of the extremists arguably easier. Now you don't have to second guess whether or not your phone is being monitored, you can count on it and work around it. And the solution doesn't have to be fancy or technical: you just setup a set of code word/phrases via snail mail using everyday common phrases, and instead of sending "proceed with the next stage of the operation", you send "pick up milk and rice from the store".
Which is to say: the point of eavesdropping on potentially dangerous individuals is negated by the idiocy of asking these people to assist you in their own eavesdropping by installing the required software.
But the Chinese are not dumb enough to not realize this, which means the real cause of this is something else entirely: first it's a PR move to appease the populace by appearing to do 'something' to react to the threat, but more importantly this gives the authorities a convenient reason to detain anyone for 10 days. I mean, all they have to do is 'inspect' the phone and remove the app and BAM the guy's away for 10 days while you go through and mic his apartment and car, and if need be plant some evidence so that he can be jailed for longer. Or they can just change the log files they have from the apps to include something suspicious and arrest anyone on terrorism charges on that grounds. It's not like the chain of evidence in the Chinese system is reliable: they control the log and the phones, so that means you provably said what they claim you said, after all that's what the records show.
So in the end this is just a way of making sure they have the ability to jail anyone at any time for any reason, which they've had all along, but usually it's been a slightly longer process, this seems to be just a step to make it easier and faster.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Yes, because a fictional character in Christian mythology is an indicator of how real Muslim exteremists act in real life.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
My understanding is that Japan doesn't allow many people to immigrate there, period.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.