China Surveillance

China is ramping up its ability to spy on its nearly 1.4 billion people to new and disturbing levels, giving the world a blueprint for how to build a digital totalitarian state......... The United States and other countries use some of the same techniques to track terrorists or drug lords. Chinese cities want to use them to track everybody. ...... The rollout has come at the expense of personal privacy. The Times found that the authorities parked the personal data of millions of people on servers unprotected by even basic security measures. It also found that private contractors and middlemen have wide access to personal data collected by the Chinese government...... The surveillance networks are controlled by local police, as if county sheriffs in the United States ran their own personal versions of the National Security Agency. ..... the Chinese surveillance state is spreading past its borders. ..... “Each person’s data forms a trail” .... “It can be used by the government and it can be used by bosses at the big companies to track us. Our lives are worth about as much as dirt.” ..... This single system is part of a citywide surveillance network encompassing license plates, phone numbers, faces and social media information ....... how China turned one city into a virtual prison. ..... Even for China’s police, who enjoy broad powers to question and detain people, this level of control is unprecedented. Tracking people so closely once required cooperation from uncooperative institutions in Beijing. The state-run phone companies, for example, are often reluctant to share sensitive or lucrative data with local authorities ....... In recent years, Chinese police made use of fears of unrest to win more power and resources. ....... In Zhengzhou, police can use software to create lists of people. They can create virtual alarms for when a person approaches a particular location. They can get updates on people every hour or every day. They can monitor whom those people have met with, especially if both people are on a blacklist for some kind of infraction, from committing a crime to skipping a debt payment. ....... Police are not hiding their surveillance push. Even the perception of overwhelming surveillance can deter criminals and dissidents alike. ......... At the complex in Zhengzhou, residents were unfazed when told that the cameras and boxes were part of a sophisticated surveillance system. .......... Across China, unprotected databases hold information on students and teachers in schools, on online activity in internet cafes and on hotel stays and travel records. ....... Online data leakage is a major problem in China. Local media reports describe how people with access to the data sell private details to fraudsters, suspicious spouses and anyone else, sometimes for just a few dollars per person. ........ A technology contractor called Shenfenbao, for example, had access to real-time records of every person staying in some 1,200 hotels in the southern city of Xiamen. ....... Mr. Lin, who added that his company also offered algorithms to flag women who check into multiple hotels in one night for suspicion of prostitution. ....... Signs of a backlash are brewing. In Shanghai, residents pushed back against a police plan to install facial-recognition cameras in a building complex. In Zhejiang Province, a professor filed a lawsuit against a zoo after it required mandatory facial-recognition scans for its members to get access. ........... In the Shijiachi residential complex, where the facial recognition replaced key card locks, the rebellion has been powered by wire and plywood........ Agnes Ouyang was heading to work in Shenzhen last year when two police officers told her she had jaywalked and would need to show them her identity card. When she refused, she said, they grabbed her roughly and used a phone to snap a photo of her face......... Within moments, their facial-recognition system had identified her, and they issued her a ticket for about $3. ......

the country lacks a strong court system or other checks against government overreach. But outside the realm of politics, Chinese life could be freewheeling and chaotic thanks to lax enforcement or indifferent officials.

...... “Under Xi Jinping, we’re seeing the flowering of a police state.” ....... Chinese police now boast that facial-recognition systems regularly catch crooks. At a tourist island in the picturesque port city of Xiamen, authorities say they use facial recognition to catch unlicensed tour guides. Shanghai police have begun using helmets with a camera embedded in the front. Databases and procurement documents also show they search out the mentally ill, people with a history of drug use or government gadflies. ...........

“I said, ‘how did you find me?’” Ms. Ouyang said. “He said, ‘it’s easy for the police to find a person.’”

........ she worries about her future in a country where everything is watched and controlled........ “You’re uncomfortable with it,” she said. “But if you don’t do it, then there’s no possibility of living a life. There’s no way out.”