China: Police use technology to locate protesters

Chinese police have deployed sophisticated surveillance tools, including face recognition and phone tracking to find protesters involved in recent protests and quell the historic wave of anger.

serious disappointment and prolonged sanitary restrictions to combat COVID-19 have sparked a popular uprising on a scale not seen in the Asian giant for decades.

protesters This weekend they also chanted political demands. Some have even called for the resignation of President Xi Jinping, who recently entered a third term.

The government has called for a “crack down” on the protests and has deployed a sizable arsenal of security equipment, including state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, to track protesters.

“Probably in Beijing, Shanghai D Canton the police are using very high-tech methods,” Wang Shengsheng, a lawyer who offers free legal aid to protesters, told AFP.

“Other cities seem to be using image tracking and facial recognition,” adds this human rights professional based in Shenzhen, southeast.

In the capital, Beijing, the police were able to use location data from mobile phones. He was also able to obtain this data by requesting taxis that transported protesters and controlled medical passes.

many people in Beijing “They didn’t understand why the police contacted them when they were just passing by the demonstration site and not participating,” the lawyer says.

AT Shanghaipolice called those they identified for questioning and confiscated their phones, “perhaps to extract all their data,” he adds.

fear and paranoia

AT CantonSome people assured the lawyer that their Telegram accounts were hacked after police checks during demonstrations.

accounts Telegram protesters detained in Beijing they were still active in the prison, friends of the latter told the lawyer, suggesting that the police had access to them.

On high alert due to reports of further arrests and police intimidation, protesters are messaging each other in encrypted discussion groups that can only be accessed through VPN software, which is illegal in China.

There, they exchange advice on how to avoid police infiltration, as well as legal advice on what to do if phones are interrogated, detained or confiscated.

It is important to erase any traces of participation in demonstrations from their mobile phones, including conversations, videos and photos.

This was told by a resident of the capital. AFP that two friends participating in protests in Beijing and Shanghai were detained by police on Sunday afternoon and Tuesday evening.

your friend in Shanghai He was released on Monday evening, but his phone remains in the hands of police, said the man, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

On the social networks Chinawhich are carefully monitored, any user who posts content about the protests can be easily found out because the platforms require their real name to subscribe.

“Phone content and social media messages are definitely monitored,” says Rui Zhong, China at the Wilson Center in Washington.

“No privacy!”

AFP saw several police officers film demonstrators during a Sunday demonstration in Beijing.

One of the protesters assured AFP that she and five of her friends were contacted by the police after they attended a meeting in the embassy area.

She said she was called to the police station on Tuesday but not admitted because she failed to take a recent coronavirus test.

In Shanghai, a journalist from AFP witnessed numerous arrests and watched police forcibly check a protester’s phone to see if he had blocked foreign social media. Chinawhich are used to disseminate information about the demonstrations.

“What is privacy? There is no privacy!” a police officer told a 17-year-old protester on Monday Shanghaiaccording to the record.

Advocate Wang Shengsheng regrets that “modern technologies are used” for “public demonstrations” and not “when people disappear or are killed.”

“If they can manipulate our phones however they want, log into our accounts (without consent), what is left of our freedom?” he asks.

AFP