On Oct. 28, Dave Aitel, a former employee of the US National Security Agency, and Jordan Schneider, an adjunct fellow at the Center for New American Security, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with the title “If You Play Videogames, China May Be Spying on You.”
“Forget WeChat and TikTok. China’s hold on the global video gaming market is the most pressing security vulnerability when it comes to Chinese consumer tech products,” they wrote.
They said that Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd has invested in, or fully acquired, many of the world’s largest video game companies — including Activision Blizzard, the parent company of World of Warcraft; League of Legends publisher Riot Games; Fortnite developer Epic Games; Clash of Clans creator Supercell; and the online communications platform Discord. This poses a major threat to the US.
These two information security experts also said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has gained information from hundreds of thousands of gaming installs, such as user names, fee information, actual locations and fixed voice samples for in-game chats.
“Knowledge harvested from video games may very well be exploited way more simply than TikTok information,” as such data are saved on servers in China, they wrote.
In addition, many video games include obligatory “anti-cheat” software that runs on your computer with the same privileges as your antivirus software, allowing the CCP’s intelligence agencies to upload files to your computer.
Not long ago, the media reported that the UN plans to set up a geospatial center in Deqing County in China’s Zhejiang Province, and a research center for big data from UN member states in the province’s Hangzhou City, where Alibaba Group is based.
On Oct. 7, Hudson Institute adjunct fellow Claudia Rosett published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled “China Uses the UN to Expand Its Surveillance Reach.” In the article, Rosett said that Beijing is using the UN to collect global big data in a fight for the power to frame new international standards.
In the name of the UN, China is likely to quickly and legitimately duplicate its “governance technology” across the world, and keep people of all nations under censorship and surveillance.
In the past, the CCP used the so-called “Great Firewall” to restrict its people from surfing the Internet, while monitoring, controlling and censoring the public’s online activities.
In recent years, it has launched the overall surveillance system “Golden Shield Project” and developed various kinds of software, such as facial and gait recognition programs, to tighten complete surveillance of its people.
As a result, in Freedom House’s global assessment of Internet freedom, China has ranked at the bottom for six consecutive years, scoring lowest among the 65 countries on the list.
Beijing is even using the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to expand its online surveillance, data collection and speech censorship, as it attempts to control society through high-tech means.
China already relies on technology to consolidate its authoritarian rule and to suppress its people’s freedom of expression. Now, it wants to use the establishment of the UN’s geospatial center and research center for big data as a legitimate way to extend its surveillance and censorship to the world.
Countless video game players are falling into the CCP’s Internet trap without even knowing it. The Taiwanese government must stay alert and strengthen its national security framework so as to ensure that it does not infringe on Taiwan.
Chen Kuo-fon is a dentist.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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