A Uighur woman stands in front of police in Urumqi, Xinjiang, in protest.
Following the U.S. State Department’s finding that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committed genocide in Xinjiang, on January 29, theintercept.com website exposed a database of millions of police officers, revealing details of the CCP’s shocking and pervasive surveillance in Xinjiang.
Surveillance in Urumqi.
Police use the “anti-terrorist sword” tool to download data from Urumqi residents’ phones, sometimes 3-4 times a day.
-Uyghurs who have traveled to foreign countries and their friends and relatives are monitored to quench their desire for freedom or autonomy.
Authorities pay close attention to who attends the weekly “flag-raising” ceremony as a litmus test of loyalty to the CCP.
-There is reason for suspicion that contacts with areas outside of Xinjiang or with people in contact with those areas are widely monitored.
-The practice of Islam is considered a red flag and can lead to further investigation.
Facial Scans and DNA Biometrics
Authorities have made efforts to compel people to participate in a biometric program. Under the “health for All” program, citizens are required to scan their faces and analyze their voice signatures and provide DNA. documentation describing the program indicates that it is part of the policing system.
Bailer, an anthropologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said authorities have consistently denied that the “Health for All” program is for surveillance, saying it is simply a public health program. “The documents make it clear that this is part of the policing system,” Byler said. “It’s clear, it’s obvious, it’s part of their desire to control the population.”
Reports in the database show that Health for All works through police station “kiosks,” leading to citizen complaints about health conditions. (Convenience stations allegedly bring the community and police closer together, with amenities such as public Wi-Fi and phone charging, but they are the center of surveillance.) They also discuss how citizens who fail to submit biometrics are reported, face fines, and are sometimes forced to admit fault. Some of the documents on the program focus on immigrants or “ethnolinguistic speakers. One indicates that physical examinations of students are used for policing purposes.
Documents in the database also show surveillance of the public as they walk around, guided by the IJOP system, through the widespread use of facial recognition. One of the reports reads, “With 40 convenience stations in the Seven Ways Precinct, police searched 2,057 people using the anti-terrorist sword, conducted facial recognition on 935 people, and sent 237 intelligence reports.”
Some of the most intriguing evidence of personal data surveillance comes from computer programming code stored in databases that appear to be designed to generate reports. This reporting code references a large amount of material not contained in the databases obtained by The Intercept, so it is impossible to confirm how much material was actually collected by authorities or how it will be used.
Nonetheless, these so-called tactical or evidence-gathering reports provide clues about the information in the database. The report code includes references to online data such as Facebook, qq, MOMO, Weibo, and Taobao’s Ali Want Want, as well as actual phone recordings, photos, GPS locations, and lists of “high-risk words.
Monitoring WeChat and other social media
The documents also confirm police access to WeChat information. Discussions of WeChat monitoring appear in the minutes of Auxiliary Community Police meetings and police investigative records.
In an example of how police officers can document WeChat functionality, a document from the National Cyber Security Agency demonstrates a police search exercise in which an officer is flagged as a suspect for this purpose. He drove throughout the city while other police officers tracked his vehicle using his WeChat history and location data. Authorities appear to have read the mock suspect’s WeChat texts, one of which was a “WeChat analysis” in which “he said he was having lunch in a gasoline area.”
Much of the surveillance was aimed at curbing anything that might lead Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang to aspire to greater freedom or autonomy.
For example, the material confirms that Uyghurs are under surveillance outside of China, not only by those under surveillance themselves, but also by their relatives and friends.
Police in the Shuimoogou district of Urumqi investigated a young woman because her high school friend had gone to Stanford University and because the woman sometimes talked to her on WeChat. “Based on the investigation, we did not find any rule or law violations while she lived and worked in our area,” the 2018 report from the Weihu Liang neighborhood reads. “Although she resides in the area, she is actively involved in community work and is actively involved in other activities in the community, actively participating in the raising of flags ceremony in the community. We found nothing out of the ordinary and she was released from suspicion.” Bailer called the incident “an important confirmation of the “microscopic clues” about the way the country’s residents monitor foreigners and the suspicion that these links create.”
Another document from the Shuimangu Anping community mentions that the phones and computers of all workers visiting relatives outside the city should be checked for unauthorized content.
Strict Monitoring of Expatriates to Prevent Return
Communist authorities are concerned about outside influence on citizens in Xinjiang in connection with an initiative called “Fanghuiliu” (anti-return). The idea is to prevent the “return” of extremism or other nefarious ideas from abroad.
One example is the imprisonment of Chinese scholar Feng Siyu, who entered the Folklore Research Center at Xinjiang University in February 2018. Feng, a Han Chinese, originally hails from Hangzhou. But police intelligence from October 2017 in the database recorded that she had studied abroad, including Amherst College, SOAS University in London and Indiana University, and was therefore of interest to Urumqi police. The record states that Feng had “alien obfuscation software” on her OnePlus smartphone. The note further states that the software was provided with the smartphone and that Feng did not use it.
Feng is believed to have been sentenced to two years in prison in February 2018. Information can be found on the shahit.biz (Xinjiang Victims Database) website.
Anthropologist Steinberg said he believes Feng came under intense scrutiny because she traveled between the United States and Urumqi and spoke fluent Uyghur, and because of her work at the Center for Folk Studies and its founder, Rahile Dawut, a prominent scholar who collected ethnographic data, including folk tales and oral literature from southern Xinjiang, as well as information on Sufi Dawut disappeared in December 2017 and is believed to be in detention.
The push for “anti-return” is also reflected in the identification of security threats to those leaving China. A report from Sema Field, a Uighur stronghold in the Urumqi History Center, discusses former residents who have left the country and applied for political asylum from terrorists, confirming reports that Uighurs are under surveillance outside of China.
Baylor said, “There is solid evidence that allegations of terrorism or extremism do not meet international standards for terrorism or extremism.” “By most definitions, applying for political asylum is not a sign of terrorism, but in this case (the Chinese Communist authorities consider) it to be terrorism.” It also proves that the authorities maintain detailed information about Uighurs abroad.
Ayup’s story
Ayup has experience with such surveillance. While in Kashgar, he ran Uyghur kindergartens and promoted Uyghur language Education. After 15 months of detention, he fled China. He was interrogated and tortured during his detention. After leaving the country, Ayip said he joined the Chinese Communist Embassy’s WeChat group. “When I went to the Chinese Communist Embassy, they asked me to join their WeChat group, and after I joined, the Chinese Communist spy in Urumqi found me; he spoke to me and threatened me.” Ayip said.
Passport possession is also considered suspicious. Database documents show that Uyghur passport holders are checked more frequently by authorities than those without passports.
Any knowledge of Life outside of Xinjiang was flagged as suspicious. For example, a police officer named Weihuliang noted in the weekly report that four people had gone to Beijing to reflect on local issues and therefore “needed special attention,” while “others had never left the area, so they were considered safer.” Baylor said.
Even phone or text chats involving outside countries require scrutiny by Xinjiang authorities. Authorities in Tianshan reported that a professional driver was sent for “re-education” after making a call to a “key country. According to Zentz, “key countries” are among the 26 predominantly Muslim “priority” countries monitored by authorities. According to a Human Rights Watch report, authorities in Xinjiang have targeted people with ties to these countries for interrogation, detention and even imprisonment. These countries include Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Laesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
Artificial Intelligence Surveillance
Database information also shows that artificial intelligence has been increasingly used for surveillance in recent years. Documents from authorities in the Tianshan and Shuimangu regions of Urumqi show that IJOP sent push notifications to guide local police in their investigations. One document shows that one police precinct alone received 40 such notifications in 2018.
A screenshot of a U.S. media “intercept” shows a police smartphone App used by Urumqi police stations or checkpoints to identify people. There are 13 items of information, including search results; name; gender; ID number; identifying characteristics; processing results; face database: long-term residents; notes; details; date of birth; ID number; and identity: “anti-return” border control theme. (Indicates that the person is flagged as part of the effort to curb the influx of dangerous ideas from abroad. ; processing: if this is the person, arrest immediately, otherwise collect information.
“The data suggests that it has started to be automated in some way, particularly in terms of facial surveillance,” Byler said. “If they’re using 900 checkpoints around facial surveillance, they’re using AI to a large extent now,” he added, referring to the 935 facial sweeps conducted in a week in the Seven Ways Bay area.
Police also added a lot of checkpoint data to IJOP, including the content of calls downloaded from Counterterrorism Sword, the documents show. 2018 and 2019 documents show an increasing number of push notifications from IJOP. “It’s clear that the system is starting to alert them and guide their policing in new ways,” Baylor said.
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