Chinese authorities are using a mobile app designed for mass surveillance to profile, investigate and detain Muslims in Xinjiang by labeling “completely lawful” behavior as suspicious, a Human Rights Watch report said yesterday.
Beijing has come under international criticism over its policies in Xinjiang, where as many as 1 million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are being held in internment camps, a group of experts cited by the UN have said.
Human Rights Watch has previously reported that authorities in Xinjiang use a mass surveillance system called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP) to gather information from multiple sources, such as facial-recognition cameras, Wi-Fi sniffers, police checkpoints, banking records and home visits.
However, the study, titled China’s Algorithms of Repression, worked with a Berlin-based security company to analyze an app connected to the IJOP, showing specific acts targeted by the system.
Xinjiang authorities closely watch 36 categories of behavior, including those who do not socialize with neighbors, often avoid using the front door, do not use a smartphone, donate to mosques “enthusiastically” and use an “abnormal” amount of electricity, the group found.
The app also instructs officers to investigate those related to someone who received a new telephone number or are related to others who left the country and have not returned after 30 days.
“Our research shows, for the first time, that Xinjiang police are using illegally gathered information about people’s completely lawful behavior — and using it against them,” Human Rights Watch senior China researcher Maya Wang (王松蓮) said.
“The Chinese government is monitoring every aspect of people’s lives in Xinjiang, picking out those it mistrusts, and subjecting them to extra scrutiny,” Wang said.
The rights group obtained a copy of the app and enlisted cybersecurity firm Cure53 to reverse engineer it and examine its source code.
As well as collecting personal information, the app prompts officials to file reports about people, vehicles and events they find suspicious, and sends out “investigative missions” for police to follow up on.
Officers are also asked to check whether suspects use any of the 51 Internet tools that are deemed suspicious, including foreign messaging platforms popular outside China such as WhatsApp, Line and Telegram.
A number of people said that they or their family members have been detained for having software such as WhatsApp or a virtual private network installed on their phones during checks by authorities, the report said.
The rights group said that its findings suggest that the IJOP system tracks data of everyone in Xinjiang by monitoring location data from their phones, ID cards and vehicles, as well as electricity and gas station usage.
“Psychologically, the more people are sure that their actions are monitored and that they, at any time, can be judged for moving outside of a safe gray space, the more likely they are to do everything to avoid coming close to crossing a moving red line,” said Samantha Hoffman, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre.
The IJOP app was developed by Hebei Far East Communication System Engineering Co Ltd (河北遠東通信系統工程), which at the time of the app’s development was fully owned by China Electronics Technology Group Corp (中國電子科技集團), a state-owned technology giant, Human Rights Watch said.
Washington last year imposed export controls on key Chinese companies, including Hebei Far East, citing risks to US national security and foreign-policy interests.
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