In the weekly column we take turns writing about innovation and economic trends in Asia.
(Photo: Klawe Rzeczy)
Beijing The excitement on China’s social media was so great that the search term “data leak” was blocked by the authorities after a few hours. For ten bitcoins, a hacker calling himself ChinaDan is offering a whopping 23 terabytes of private data on Chinese citizens.
The reason for the nervousness of the authorities: The information should come from the database of the security authorities in Shanghai.
Experts believe the data is real. Only whether they were actually stolen from police servers, as ChinaDan claims, cannot be verified.
It is not only the extent of the alleged hack that is worrying, but also how much data, some of which is sensitive, the Chinese authorities have collected. Not only information such as the name, address, date and place of birth or ID card number is included in the stolen data record – telephone numbers and criminal records as well as other incidents dating back to the mid-1990s were stored by the authorities.
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Some details are so special that, according to experts, they can only come from databases of the security authorities.
The alleged data theft comes just at a time when China recently promised to improve data protection. Last year, the government passed new laws designed to prevent tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent from abusing their data power.
Tech regulation was intended to put the platform corporations, which had now become powerful conglomerates, in their place. In addition, the authorities made it more difficult to transfer data abroad – which not only proved fatal for the taxi service provider Didi at its US IPO, but also posed major challenges for many foreign companies.
But while the state pretends to better protect its citizens from data-sucking tech companies or even hostile powers, the question arises: who protects China’s citizens from the state’s data collection frenzy?
China’s security agencies collect personal and biological data
Not only the alleged hack at the Shanghai security authorities gives an insight into how tightly the Chinese state controls its citizens. Data specialists from the “New York Times” found out last week with extensive research that the Chinese state not only collects a lot of personal data, but also biological data of its citizens. For this purpose, more than 100,000 official tender documents were evaluated.
The research also shows how China is adding eavesdropping systems to its network of an estimated almost one billion surveillance cameras, including facial recognition, in order to also collect voiceprints of citizens. An Iris database, used for the first time to monitor the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, is to be expanded nationwide. In addition, the Chinese security authorities are currently setting up one of the largest DNA databases in the world.
>>Read more about this: That’s how hard government regulations hit China’s tech companies
A tender from the eastern Chinese province of Fujian shows how large the amount of data collected is. Authorities were looking for a storage solution for 2.5 billion facial images. This should improve the “control and administration of people”.
Apparently there is still a problem in bringing together the data from the various authorities. But according to the tenders, the Ministry of Public Security is already working on a solution. The surveillance provider Megvii is said to have presented software that compiles all available data about a person into a dossier, which should then be accessible to security authorities across the country. Unusual behavior patterns can then be enough to trigger an alarm.
More: Why China’s reputation as a location for innovation is suffering massively.