Slashdot Mirror
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."
What annoys me is seeing folks call for "Regime Change" in Venezuela and Iran while they ignore China
China is a superpower. America is responsible to a large extent for what is happening in Venezuela and has long been the driving force in regime change in Iran, often through extremely direct intervention. We can't fix China (although we could stop enabling them so much) but we are responsible for much of the mess in the other countries you mentioned.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I cannot believe that so few of you care about this. It's completely beyond my comprehension.
Actually there are a lot of people who care and and the ones that don't seem to care are not incomprehensible. Just stupid.
Most people don't have the time to fight to try to roll back the security state. It is very easy to slide into complacency and shrug it all off (for now) with two bromides: 1) I'm a law abiding citizen so I have nothing to hide and 2) it is just bits in a computer somewhere that no human will look at anyway.
I know from your post that you know why this shouldn't be acceptable but the vast majority of people crave security. They want the government to take care of them and be a force for "good" against the "bad" guys. To them this is just the police being better, higher-tech police.
I'll bet that anyone reading this could not recite all the titles of the movies, TV shows, thriller novels they have seen where the hero caught the bad guy with some high-tech data system run by the government. Something that would totally appall the founding fathers of the U.S. who created laws against anyone opening your mail.
drinkypoo opined:
America is responsible to a large extent for what is happening in Venezuela and has long been the driving force in regime change in Iran, often through extremely direct intervention. We can't fix China (although we could stop enabling them so much) but we are responsible for much of the mess in the other countries you mentioned.
Let's see now:
According to Wikipedia, venezuelanalysis.com has been funded by the Venezuelan goverment since it was founded in 2007 (when Hugo Chavez was president), despite claiming on its website since 2014 (after Maduro took over) that it is funded exclusively via donations from its readers. And the wife of its founder, Greg Wilpert, was appointed Consul General of Venezuela's New York consulate in 2008. So, it's hardly an objective or disinterested source.
Wikipedia's article on mintpressnews.com highlights several ongoing controversies over issues of journalistic integrity (including falsely attributing co-authorship of an article on nerve gas attacks on Syrian citizens to a respected journalist who denies having co-written that article, and who has repeatedly demanded her name be removed from it, as well as falsely reporting an annual Shiite religious pilgrimage to Kerbala as a "march against ISIS"). The publication's masthead prominently features conspiracy mongers (including a strident proponent of the false and defamatory claim that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged, with actors hired to play the part of grieving parents, and that no children were actually killed there). Its sources of funding are undisclosed, although Mnar Muhawesh, its editor, now claims to be its sole investor, and that it is self-financing, via ad revenue (an extremely dubious claim, as anyone who is familiar with the paucity of legitimate advertising income available for online-only journalism ventures will attest). Her claims in this regard are impossible to verify, because, since 2015, she's made it impossible to contact her.
The only even-faintly-legitimate source you cite is cepr.net, which is a self-described "progressive" think tank. But the actual link you provide is to an editorial piece, which is, by definition, an expression of the author's personal opinion, not actual reportage.
In sum, you give us two propaganda outlets and an opinion piece in support of your argument that the USA is the party most responsible for "repressing" the people of Venezuela.
Now, I'll grant you that we embargo oil imports from Venezuela, in continuation of a policy that dates back to the G. W. Bush administration. That, in itself really doesn't affect the country's economy, because it has plenty of other customers elsewhere. What does, very much, affect it is the crash in world oil prices over the past 3 years or so - and that is entirely due to Arab countries (led by Saudi Arabia) overproducing. So, supply and demand is the cause of Venezuela's financial woes.
Well, that, and Maduro's insistence on printing money in an attempt to make up for the revenue shortfall, which has resulted in a disastrous hyperinflationary spiral that rivals Weimar Germany or modern Zimbabwe.
Chavez was a charismatic charlatan, who was able to provide Venezuela's poor with a whole range of "free" benefits only because oil revenues were at historic highs during his reign (again, driven purely by supply and demand - although rampant speculation by commodity traders had a significant hand in that). Maduro, by contr
Check out my novel.