We all need to be talking about China. Long-known as the world’s censoring superpower, the degree to which China has embraced modern surveillance technology and invaded the privacy of its citizens (and dissenters) is a glimpse into what a dystopian surveillance society looks like.
Part IV of the World War Privacy series, this article looks at some of the key elements of China’s attack on civil liberties, obsession with surveillance and destruction of privacy.
The Great Firewall of China
Censoring the internet has been the Chinese government’s passion project since the beginning of global communication networks. Online supression started back in 1997 by limiting access to materials seen to be ‘undermining national unification; distorting the truth, spreading rumors, or destroying social order’. This led to the formation of the Golden Shield Project in 2003 that formalised restrictions and employed tens of thousands of specialised police officers. The project spearheaded not only the technical firewall and censorship programme, but also comprehensive surveillance on Chinese citizens’ digital communications.
China has consequently developed its own digital economy, more easily monitored and controlled, which was an aspect of the project that was intentional. Individual citizens have found numerous resourceful ways to overcome the restrictions (primarily through the use of VPNs and Tor) but they face increasingly tough penalties for doing so. Attempts to circumvent these government controls lead to swift and severe punishment; ranging from deletion of social media accounts through to imprisonment and even internment in concentration camps.
Social Credit System
One of the more concerning developments in the past few years has been the rise of China’s social credit system. Unveiled in 2014 and coming online piece by piece in recent years, this system works on both local and national levels. Operated by different municipalities and private companies, at least for now, it speaks to the Chinese government’s commitment to overt surveillance and moral control.
What started with companies and local authorities has been legislated for wholesale use by the Chinese government by 2020, giving them “complete rein to mechanisms to encourage keeping trust and punish breaking trust”. Reading through the strategic documents themselves gives many more examples of this kind of zero tolerance, totalitarian approach to social control and subservience. The language used is assertive, blatant and without equivocation.
There are a number of different ways that this approach is deeply concerning. Firstly, it pits everyday people against one another. You can score points and raise your social standing by ratting out your friends and neighbours. Secondly, it promotes social isolation. You can lose points by associating or even just being loosely connected through social media with people with lower scores. Thirdly, it cuts access to basic needs such as transportation, insurance and even pet ownership. We’ve also seen the impact of this approach in stifling activism, particularly in the escalating situation in Hong Kong. This is extending globally, with users of the popular chat-app WeChat finding themselves censored and/or suspended when talking about the protests.
Western companies are assisting in clamping down on their own users and staff – such as the gaming company Blizzard as well as the NBA – in order to ensure they aren’t punished economically by the Chinese government. This kind of chilling effect decentralises the oppressive policies and acts as an extension of the social credit system with international reach, making everyone who follows along complicit in enabling these totalitarian structures to continue.
State-sponsored Cyberwar
Another development in recent years is that China has increasingly looked outwards in order to proactively censor and attack anybody – government, corporation or individual alike – that challenges their oppressive control. This really is World War Privacy, with attacks on infrastructure and dissemination of malware payloads prevalent and used by all the world’s superpowers; with China being one of the leading aggressors.
India has estimated in a recent report that over a third of the cyber attacks targeting their country originated in China, including the use of the Stuxnet worm (originally created by the USA and Israel) to compromise communication satellites and take down TV signals. It is also widely believed that surveillance tools originally developed by the NSA were obtained and subsequently used by the Chinese government to conduct massive intrusions on companies, universities and telecommunications networks around the globe for both political and commercial advantage.
Of course, the Chinese government are not the sole perpetrators of such wide-scale intrusions and state-sponsored hacking programmes; evidenced by the fact that many of their tools are NSA produced. However, when combined with the explicit and open strategies to ensure social control, it is clear that China will brazenly target foreign companies, political rivals and even individuals to ensure that their goals are ultimately achieved.
AI Surveillance
China is also at the forefront of using artificial intelligence to direct its surveillance efforts. The desired panopticon view is impossible to achieve through human-led initiatives alone, so the technology to monitor everyone, always, and profile individuals for closer scrutiny is a key component. China is particularly noted in this area for its focus and attention on facial-recognition technology, which is coming under increased criticism around the world but rising unabated within China’s borders.
The area of most concern here, and a warning for all other countries going down a similar path, is that this facial-recognition technology is being used predominately against ethnic Muslim communities. To say that this new ‘era of automated racism’ is unethical is a shocking understatement. It is a clear example of systemic human rights abuse that will almost certainly have catastrophic and potentially genocidal consequences.
Recent reports have also highlighted that Chinese companies are providing highly advanced AI surveillance technology to other governments, with at least sixty three countries signing up and making China the world leader in outsourcing AI surveillance. This technology doesn’t just cover facial recognition, but also speech recognition and ‘smart policing’ systems that detect law violations and continuously scan for suspicious (or undesirable by those in power) correlations between people, place, vehicles and movement.
China is outsourcing citizen repression to any regime interested in following in its footsteps. The fact that many of the companies manufacturing this technology for the Chinese government, such as SenseTime, have received huge amounts of funding from Western corporations (including Fidelity International, Tiger Global, Qualcomm Ventures and more) is truly an indictment of global capitalism’s sociopathic disregard for human wellbeing.
Conclusion
China is one of the most censorship-focused governments on the planet, which is a tragedy for its citizens and anyone else living within its borders that is subject to such oppressive controls. From the international perspective, what is perhaps more concerning is how China is becoming an example for how other governments and corporations could conduct themselves.
The Freedom on the Net 2018 report stated that ‘Chinese officials held trainings and seminars on new media or information management with representatives from 36 out of the 65 countries assessed’. As with AI surveillance and internet censorship technologies, what is developed in China will only spread elsewhere; becoming normalised globally and slowly inescapable. Whether that is direct surveillance and censorship of specific individuals, or the fact that our hardware is increasingly compromised by intelligence agencies and state-connected Chinese corporations at a fundamental level, it should receive strong and consistent pushback.
What’s perhaps even more concerning, though, is to see how companies around the world are investing in and profiting from these overt attacks on our basic human rights. There needs to be a sustained public backlash against any company directly involved in implementing the totalitarian infrastructure required to subject citizens around the globe to such inhumane treatment.
World War Privacy is escalating, so it’s important to inform and protect ourselves as much as possible; while pressuring government representatives to legislate greater protections for citizen privacy before it is too late.
Next time: World War Privacy will be taking a look at Mother Russia (and finally putting those rumours of my being a Russian asset to rest…)
Header image by Nicolas Raymond, Creative Commons
