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Massive Database Leak Exposes China's 'Digital Surveillance State' (eff.org)
Long-time Slashdot reader retroworks shared this EFF article:
Although relatively little news gets out of Xinjiang to the rest of the world, we've known for over a year that China has been testing facial-recognition tracking and alert systems across Xinjiang and mandating the collection of biometric data -- including DNA samples, voice samples, fingerprints, and iris scans -- from all residents between the ages of 12 and 65... Earlier this month, security researcher Victor Gevers found and disclosed an exposed database live-tracking the locations of about 2.6 million residents of Xinjiang, China, offering a window into what a digital surveillance state looks like in the 21st century...
Over a period of 24 hours, 6.7 million individual GPS coordinates were streamed to and collected by the database, linking individuals to various public camera streams and identification checkpoints associated with location tags such as "hotel," "mosque," and "police station." The GPS coordinates were all located within Xinjiang. This database is owned by the company SenseNets, a private AI company advertising facial recognition and crowd analysis technologies. A couple of days later, Gevers reported a second open database tracking the movement of millions of cars and pedestrians. Violations like jaywalking, speeding, and going through a red-light are detected, trigger the camera to take a photo, and ping a WeChat API, presumably to try and tie the event to an identity.
China may have a working surveillance program in Xinjiang, but it's a shockingly insecure security state. Anyone with an Internet connection had access to this massive honeypot of information... Even poorly-executed surveillance is massively expensive, and Beijing is no doubt telling the people of Xinjiang that these investments are being made in the name of their own security. But the truth, revealed only through security failures and careful security research, tells a different story: China's leaders seem to care little for the privacy, or the freedom, of millions of its citizens.
EFF also reports that a Chinese cybersecurity firm also recently discovered 468 exposed MongoDB servers on the internet, including databases containing detailed information about remote access consoles owned by China General Nuclear Power Group.
Meanwhile, ZDNet suggests that SenseNets may actually be "a government contractor, helping authorities track the Muslim minority, rather than a private company selling its product to another private entity. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain how SenseNets has access to ID card information and camera feeds from police stations and other government buildings."
Over a period of 24 hours, 6.7 million individual GPS coordinates were streamed to and collected by the database, linking individuals to various public camera streams and identification checkpoints associated with location tags such as "hotel," "mosque," and "police station." The GPS coordinates were all located within Xinjiang. This database is owned by the company SenseNets, a private AI company advertising facial recognition and crowd analysis technologies. A couple of days later, Gevers reported a second open database tracking the movement of millions of cars and pedestrians. Violations like jaywalking, speeding, and going through a red-light are detected, trigger the camera to take a photo, and ping a WeChat API, presumably to try and tie the event to an identity.
China may have a working surveillance program in Xinjiang, but it's a shockingly insecure security state. Anyone with an Internet connection had access to this massive honeypot of information... Even poorly-executed surveillance is massively expensive, and Beijing is no doubt telling the people of Xinjiang that these investments are being made in the name of their own security. But the truth, revealed only through security failures and careful security research, tells a different story: China's leaders seem to care little for the privacy, or the freedom, of millions of its citizens.
EFF also reports that a Chinese cybersecurity firm also recently discovered 468 exposed MongoDB servers on the internet, including databases containing detailed information about remote access consoles owned by China General Nuclear Power Group.
Meanwhile, ZDNet suggests that SenseNets may actually be "a government contractor, helping authorities track the Muslim minority, rather than a private company selling its product to another private entity. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain how SenseNets has access to ID card information and camera feeds from police stations and other government buildings."
Communists. Nuke em.
The glorious People's Republic and its loyal Communist Party has to keep track of all those evil conservatives somehow. We should learn from this.
China is really on its best way to get better than North Korea.
of how China oppresses it's people in creepy ways. I'm actually a bit surprised this didn't make /..
One thing I haven't seen is so much as a peep about this from main stream media or a single politician. Calling out China's gov't is up there with showing a picture of Mohammad or pissing off Vladimir Putin in the list of "Shit you don't do".
What annoys me is seeing folks call for "Regime Change" in Venezuela and Iran while they ignore China (and Saudi Arabia while we're at it). Hell, Xi has basically declared himself emperor for life and Trump didn't just say it was OK, he said we should do that too. Not a peep I tells ya.
I know it's all about money (oil and cheap labor), but damn it pisses me off. Not the hypocrisy (pay a man that much and he doesn't care if you call him a hypocrite), but how they always get away with it.
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More like, "Insecurity state."
I can't decide if this post is interesting, funny, insightful, or flamebait.
The most disgusting part, other than the fact that most people don't realize that the very same thing is happening "over here", is how you don't even need to be a brainwashed moron who walks around with a surveillance device anymore -- now it's all facial recognition, identifying your walking style and stuff like that. Things you cannot control without extreme measures. You simply cannot escape all these fucking cameras everywhere. It's literally making life a living nightmare. I cannot believe that so few of you care about this. It's completely beyond my comprehension.
W0t? The Chinese has a better surveillance system than the UK? Better get Crapita to do an upgrade, stet.
Searched on "cool mofo" and up I popped!
I'm not saying we can fix China (as you point out we haven't exactly done gangbusters "helping" Venezuela) but we can give them a nudge in the right direction. That's what diplomacy is for. As it is we're ignoring that responsibility for the sake of a fast buck.
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China is just too big to take on, so they can do as they please. And hey, if China can do it, then maybe politicians elsewhere can use that tech to keep the plebes under their thumb, so why pick that fight? There'll be useful cheap surveillance tech to buy later.
I think we (as in the people living in ostensibly free countries) need to be very wary of what sort of surveillance tech gets rolled out and right now China is leading the pack in sheer scale and pervasiveness. "Our" politicians like what they see, so don't expect them to make a stink, especially not since China's so big and so easily ticked off. "We" shouldn't count on "our" politicians here, we should count on ourselves.
It's not just Trump. Your elected presidents have been doing the meddling elsewhere thing for the last 80 years or so, and before that you lot already had a habit of doing stupid stuff first, not thinking later. So stop your politician-du-jour-bashing. The maga-hat-man isn't nearly as interesting as you think he is. He'll be gone in at most six years. It's the tech that's the problem. If it's here it won't go away ever, and it's coming to your general location too, and soon.
Societies, like any other living thing, must be able to evolve and adapt to new conditions or they die. What China's Big Brother are doing doing gives their powers-that-be all the tools they need to suppress any social change they disagree with. Historically, the powers-that-be see ANY change as threatening to their monopoly on power. Rulers always try to stifle change, but in the long run, it's the ones who fail (cf. American Revolution, 1776) who benefit most. (cf. World War II, Britain vs. Nazi Germany)
China is putting social change into a deep freeze. In the long run, that will destroy their empire.
The real people of public are NOT obsessed w/ privacy, unlike what EFF & similar self-appointed "Privacy Advocates/Watchdogs" trying to portray!!!
We live in an age when almost everybody carrying (video) camera/mic built-into their phones everywhere & public is ok w/ that!!!
Do you know who really really really care about privacy (against government surveliance)?
Criminals!!! People who are always trying to use internet/smartphones for illegal actions!!!
& IMHO, those are the real people, ANTI-GOVERNMENT (aka) ANARCHISTS, like EFF & ACLU & similar self-appointed/elected "Privacy Advocates/Watchdogs" trying to really protect always!!!
(If any public info databases left unprotected by any governmnet, then, that is just a technical problem to fix!!! Private companies also often make similar mistakes; not only governments!!!)
Wrong bullhorn.
Apathy is not the issue here. Cynicism is not the issue here.
The Chinese authorities have an outright death wish for the individual freedoms of China's many citizens.
Chavez took the oil money and used it to modernize his country instead of pocketing it all for himself. That's up there with George Washington turning down the position of King of America for WTF moments in the history of leadership. And yeah, I'm sure Chavez did a lot of awful things to get in and stay in his position. Venezuela was a hell hole before the oil money, but the fact that he didn't just keep it all for himself and his cronies (they way the Sauds do) deserves praise.
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China's leaders seem to care little for the privacy, or the freedom, of millions of its citizens.
There's no "seem" about it - they don't care, and everybody and his dog knows it. I'm sure even the most naive of Chinese citizens are under no illusion that their government gives a rat's ass about their welfare at all, much less their privacy or freedom.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Seems like there's a kind of like... cost benefit kinda thing that actually makes these things more expensive than the list price, but many times over... and as a bonus none of the population trust you after the tech mistakes start becoming obvious.
It's not always the edge cases, but damn those edge cases are almost all going to bite them.
In the U.S., Trump is sucking up all the oxygen into his dumpster fire, and in Europe, Brexit and Syria are dominating international diplomacy.
And all of these trace back to Russia in one way or another, so people's attention is there.
When the cat's away, the mice will play.
China knows an opportunity when it sees one, and it's aggressively using the one it has now to flex its muscles in various ways and establish a new norm for its behaviour.
It's China.
has somehow devolved into a Trump bashfest.
I don't blame Trump, per se. I blame the ideology that put him in power and the people that promulgate same. Steve Bannon. The anti-tax guy. John Bolton. The absolute hatred the American right has for any semblance of a social safety net. The fact that the US is the only developed nation that has citizens that go broke to get "health care". I grew up in Europe, and while it's not perfect over there, life in Europe has a better and higher quality to it. I live in the US now, and I've seen both sides. Both have advantages and disadvantages. I'll take America's freedoms and Europe's social aspects. If we could only combine the two.
China is what it is because China specifically, and Asia in general, embrace Confusianism. China's leaders are in love with the legalist philosophers like Han Fei Zi and others, and their leadership reflects this. In fact, Xi is a great admirer of people like Han Fei Zi. Once the west understands the underpinnings, it's easy to grasp. I spend almost 10 years in the American Marine Corps. Sun Tzu's Art of War was required reading in NCO School. The Marines quoted him like Baptists quote the Bible. Norman Schwarzkopf based his battles on elements from the Art of War. The Chinese see the west as weak because we don't hold the the legalism principles they hold dear.
Hilary would have had an effective strategy on exactly this.
Something something Don't Be Evil.