China Is Forcing Minority Citizens to Install Spyware on Their Phones

Chinese authorities are reportedly forcing some of the country’s ethnic minorities to install intrusive government surveillance software onto their devices, according to a new report.

The intrusive surveillance efforts are taking place in Xinjiang, a region in western China that’s home to much of the country’s Muslim minority. Last week, local authorities in the area sent a notice to residents instructing them to install a “surveillance” app on their phones, and announced that they would be making spot checks to ensure that locals complied with the order, Radio Free Asia reported. Users who deleted or did not download the app could be detained for up to 10 days, according to local social media reports.

新疆各部手机检查安装净网卫士官方软件，短信通知十日内安装，临检发现没安装拘留十天，科技倒退，逼老百姓用老年机，什么叫禁锢，这种全面监控就是禁锢。回到长毛时代 http://pic.twitter.com/zUnLXc9tFA

— 即时中国大陆映像✊✊✊ (@o66071443) July 18, 2017

The instruction was sent via WeChat to residents in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. It was written both in Mandarin and Uyghur, a language spoken by the Uighur ethnic population in the region. The notice contained a QR code that would download an app called Jingwang, which authorities claimed would “automatically detect terrorist and illegal religious videos, images, e-books and electronic documents” stored on a device. If any banned content was detected, the app would urge residents to delete it.

Local analysis shows that Jinwang scans for the digital signatures of media files against a database of illegal “terrorist-related” media and content, Mashable reported. The app also records copies of Weibo and WeChat data, as well as a device’s IMEI number, SIM card data, and Wi-Fi login data. This data is apparently logged and sent to an unknown server. The app is similar to a previous “citizen safety” platform developed in-house by Urumqi police which allowed users to report suspicious activity.

The move is just the latest in a longer trend of surveillance ramp-up in the region. Xinjiang is home to about 8 million Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic minority who have long complained of being oppressed under the communist Chinese government, according to the BBC.

Want a FREE iPhone 7? Click here to enter our monthly contest for a chance!
Follow us on Apple News by pressing the (+) button at the top of our channel

from iDrop News http://ift.tt/2txGEdm
via IFTTT