Inside China’s nightmarish spy state with cameras checking emotions and phone data heists as Winter Olympians warned
CHINA has developed a shocking surveillance system watching the every move of citizens – with athletes landing in Beijing for the Winter Olympics even warned to watch their backs.
With streets filled with cameras and super high-tech systems, the Communist regime has been accused of running “an Orwellian surveillance state” that “touches every part of life” and “endangers privacy”.
Highly advanced and “invasive” digital technologies have become a central part of the Chinese state – with people both online and offline kept under constant observation as the government tightens its controlling grip.
And while the eyes of the world turn to China as the Winter Olympics get underway, it’s feared athletes landing in Beijing will have unwanted eyes snooping on them too.
Security expert Will Geddes, founder of International Corporate Protection, told the Sun Online that China’s Big Brother-like surveillance is a “huge concern” for competitors.
“Inevitably, when you go overseas to somewhere like China, the moment you get off the plane your phone will be intercepted,” he said.
“If I’m sending any clients out to China, I will generally send them out with a burner phone, so it will be a phone which will be sterilised.
“It won’t have all their precious life and secrets on it. When we bear in mind we have our inhabited on our phones nowadays – we have all our emails, social media, our messages, our notes, our emails – our entire lives are encapsulated within this small device we keep in our pockets.
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“You think you’re connecting to the local network, but the moment you do you’re actually connecting via this man in the middle interception – which will then start harvesting all of your data. All your conversations and communications will be monitored.”
Athletes have been urged to leave their personal phones at home and instead use a burner device as the state could use advanced technology to monitor calls and texts while worryingly tracking their movements.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz told the Sun Online: “The Chinese Communist Party runs an Orwellian surveillance state that touches every part of life inside China.
“There is no doubt that they will leverage their infrastructure to endanger our athletes’ privacy.
“We should take the potential threat to our athletes very seriously and take every precaution possible to ensure their safety and their privacy.”
The FBI has warned athletes’ phones could be at the centre of cyberattacks amid concerns their devices could be hacked via an app developed for the Games called My2022 – which everyone attending has been told to download.
“The FBI urges all athletes to keep their personal cell phones at home and use a temporary phone while at the games,” the agency said in a statement.
“The National Olympic Committees in some Western countries are also advising their athletes to leave personal devices at home or use temporary phones due to cybersecurity concerns at the Games.”
The agency has told athletes to stay “vigilant” – citing possible “malicious cyber activities” as the reason behind their warning.
According to Toronto’s Citizen Lab – where researchers have analysed the app – it contains security flaws that make it vulnerable to hacking and privacy breaches, with safeguards designed to make sure data is kept between trustworthy devices not functional.
Meanwhile, some 200million cameras are plastered along streets in both cities and villages – working out at around one per seven citizens – as the no-holds-barred Chinese state develops facial recognition software that “reads” people’s emotions, identifying whether they might be a threat to the state.
The Chinese Communist Party runs an Orwellian surveillance state that touches every part of life inside China
Ted Cruz
Mr Geddes says facial recognition and AI technology will be at the heart of the regime’s future developments to keep a close watch on anyone who sets foot in the country.
“One of the things China was very quick to do, pre-Covid-19 implications as Asia is pretty used to people walking around with face masks on, is adjust facial recognition to be able to detect people’s faces even though half their face is maybe concealed,” he added.
“Which means fundamentally they can track you, they can breadcrumb your life in terms of movements and activities.
“People complain about privacy intrusion here in the UK – but it is no where near as intrusive as it is in China.”
Nightmarish plans by the regime also involve using artificial intelligence to calculate a person’s “social score” which will determine benefits or punishments.
The sheer level of surveillance already installed and being developed is straight out of the dystopia created by author George Orwell in his book 1984, where the eyes of the state – Big Brother – are always watching you.
But now it is being made easy with 21st-century spy technology – with dire consequences for anyone who the party deems to have broken their rules, with some sent to hellish “black jails”.
Alkan Akad, China researcher at Amnesty International, told the Sun Online: “Activists, human rights defenders and government critics in China are systematically subjected to monitoring, harassment, intimidation, arrest and detention.
“Police detain increasing numbers of human rights defenders outside of formal detention facilities, sometimes without access to a lawyer for long periods.
“In recent years, the Chinese authorities have increasingly used ‘residential surveillance in a designated location’ to detain dissidents.”
Human rights organisations have blasted the state for threatening rights to privacy and freedom of speech through such strict monitoring of every little movement.
Amnesty’s Mr Akad added: “Mass surveillance projects such as ‘Skynet’ and ‘Sharp Eyes’ are rolled out to keep people under constant observation across China.
“Beijing’s public security agencies are key players in developing this unprecedented expansion of surveillance. Biometric surveillance is ubiquitous in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
“Biometric surveillance tools, including facial recognition software, are among the most invasive digital surveillance technologies that enable governments to identify and track individuals in public spaces or single them out based on their physiological or behavioural characteristics.
“These technologies pose a clear threat to the rights to privacy, freedom of assembly, speech, religion and non-discrimination.”
Former diplomat Roger Garside says human rights are “deeply disregarded” by the regime – with anyone who sets foot in the country being monitored.
“Visitors to China are being watched too,” he told the Sun Online.
“Human rights are deeply disregarded by the regime. This is a totalitarian regime, not an authoritarian one – the difference is very important.
“A totalitarian regime is one which asserts the right to exercise authority over every sphere of life – public and private -and it does so to the extent feasible.
“Any rights that are exercised, be it in business, culture or any other sphere of life are lent out to the population – they have no inherent right to them.”
Mr Garside – who previously worked as a Professor of China Studies at the US Navy Post-Graduate School – says China is the “most advanced techno-totalitarian state the world has ever seen” with “very extensive censorship”.
“The regime has equipped itself with high-tech means of surveillance and it aims to gain total control over the population using facial recognition technology, monitoring telephone conversations, social media and digital communications of every kind,” he added.
“It is very advanced in developing and applying these systems.”
And it’s thought people living in China “persuade themselves they’re content” with their lives despite draconian measures limiting their freedoms out of fear of the state.
“What I have been told by people who have grown up in mainland China and have relatives still living there is that while people might prefer to live in a free country, they know they’re not living in a free country and many of them have adjusted to that fact and persuaded themselves that they should be content with what they’ve got,” Mr Garside said.
“They persuade themselves that they are content with their lot. I do not believe this amounts to deep loyalty to the regime – it certainly doesn’t amount to human happiness.
“I visited China for 30 days in 2017, held meetings with 58 people, and I was struck by what an uncertain sense of their own identity everybody I met had.
“And I contrast that with the Chinese from Taiwan I meet. I find people from Taiwan are extroverts, they have a good, comfortable sense of their own identity.
“But in China, I find people very, very uncertain.”
