“Big Brother is watching you” is no longer a scene envisioned by George Orwell in his novel “1984”, in China, due to the existence of “health codes” and other surveillance facilities, every move of the people is under the government’s ” In China, thanks to “health codes” and other surveillance facilities, every move of the population is under the close scrutiny of the government’s “Big Brother”. Not only in China, but in 2020, as the Communist virus epidemic rages on, many countries, including some democracies, are using digital technology for contact tracing to curb the spread of the virus.
Some human rights and privacy protection experts fear that these emergency surveillance measures will be difficult to eliminate even after the epidemic. The brief concessions and cooperation made by the public out of fear for their lives may end up swallowing a little bit of their privacy and freedom. They also warn that such digital “panoptic prisons” already exist in China.
Health codes in an era of epidemics, surveillance for all
“If you didn’t download the ‘health code’ in your phone at that time, you might not have been able to take a step into the community.” Xu Yi (a pseudonym), a resident of Hangzhou, China, told the Voice of America when asked why he had to download the “health code” to cooperate with the government in tracking himself.
Hangzhou, home to the headquarters of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba, was the first to launch the “health code” on Feb. 7. Chinese cell phone users apply for the “health code” on Alibaba’s Alipay platform, and based on the applicant’s personal health status, travel history and contacts, the system generates a QR code in red, yellow and green to determine whether the individual can go out and travel. Green is the lowest risk and red is the highest.
Chinese media reported that almost a month after Ali’s “health code” was launched, it is being used in more than 200 cities in 24 provinces across China. Tencent, another Chinese Internet giant, launched its WeChat “Health Code” at about the same time, covering a total of 1 billion people, more than 400 cities and counties, and more than 5,100 villages in China after 100 days online.
The Chinese government says that the “health code” policy is not mandatory, but since people are required to show a green code representing their health to enter and exit all public areas, from communities to workplaces and beyond, the “health code” has become a de facto necessity for people to travel. During the epidemic, the “health code” has become an electronic pass for Chinese people.
Xu Yi, a resident of Hangzhou, said he initially questioned whether the practice was 100 percent effective. “If a person who is a carrier or a patient of the CCP virus has never left Hangzhou and has no record of going to a medical institution, he or she will probably still have a green code and be free to enter and leave Hangzhou, even to take public transportation.”
Xu Yi believes that the main function of the “health code” is to track a person’s whereabouts. “Once you have left Hangzhou, your health code turns yellow and red, you will be immediately forced to isolate. …… you will be intercepted by the community security guards as soon as you leave the community, there is nowhere to run.”
Compared to the inconvenience that the “health code” brings to life, Xu Yi said his biggest concern is that his privacy is exposed to all. It’s scary when the government knows where you are and when you are,” Xu says. Also, it links all your personal data together.” Despite this, Xu Yi said, some of his friends support the government’s measures because they believe “it controls the outbreak after all.”
According to Chinese media reports, the information collected by the “health code” includes personally identifiable information, user names, cell phone numbers, ID numbers and even facial information. “The “health code” system is shared with the CCP police, and in some provinces and cities, the police are even involved in the creation and issuance of the “health codes.
The Hubei government website published “Hubei health code application guidelines and answers to frequently asked questions” shows that “the Provincial Public Security Department, the Provincial Health Commission in conjunction with the provincial government management office to build the province’s unified comparison database, according to the audit comparison results information issued Hubei health.”
In addition, the message also said that “if the misrepresentation of concealed health code application information will be included in the personal credit record.” Personal credit records had already controlled the way Chinese people traveled before the epidemic.
The peak of the epidemic in China is long past. Xu Yi said the use of “health codes” is no longer as strict in some places. But he has no plans to remove it. No one from the government has said it can be removed either. He said, “Who knows when they’ll use it again?”
Pervasive cameras, a population with nowhere to hide
Before the outbreak, China was already a surveillance powerhouse. In 2018, China had about 350 million more cameras, or almost one camera for every 4.1 people, according to calculations by research firm IHS Markit. The firm also predicts that by 2021, the number of cameras in China could be 1 billion.
Xu Zhangrun, a former professor at Tsinghua University Law School, recently wrote that he has nine surveillance cameras within a 50-meter radius of his home. The nine cameras are “ambushing him from all sides, being attentive, attentive, attentive, attentive, and attentive in every way.”
During the Chinese Communist virus epidemic, the Chinese government used the previously ubiquitous surveillance cameras to the extreme. In addition to using “health codes” to control people’s travel, the CCP also used car recorders, or “eyes in the sky” at train stations, airports, and on the streets to identify people infected with the virus, contacts of people with the CCP virus, or people who did not follow the quarantine rules and traveled at will. In order to better monitor people in isolation at home, some communities in China have installed cameras in front of their homes, and in some cases in the living rooms of those in isolation.
In addition, the Communist government has used patrol robots to take to the streets to busily perform temperature taking tasks; drones with cameras and speakers to discourage mobbing, monitor quarantined places, and even remind people to wear masks. During the epidemic, Chinese artificial intelligence companies further refined their face recognition technology so that even with a mask on, you have nowhere to hide.
The “health code” and other surveillance tools are considered to have played an important role in controlling the epidemic in China, but they have also drawn widespread criticism for their gross violations of human rights and personal privacy. Some have pointed out that the “health code” under big data has turned China into a big prison, where everyone seems to be wearing an electronic shackle and is monitored everywhere they go.
The experiences of a fugitive surrendered murderer in Hangzhou in May and a girl diagnosed with the CCP virus in Chengdu, Sichuan in December vividly illustrate the “omnipresence” of surveillance and the “nowhere to hide” of those under surveillance.
Police in Hangzhou announced in May that they had arrested a man who had been absconding after killing a man 24 years ago. Police said he was unable to work or find a place to live because he didn’t have a health code. After wandering the streets for several days, he had to turn himself in.
On Dec. 8, Zhao, a girl diagnosed in Chengdu, was searched for her personal information and reposted on several social media platforms because the details of the government’s “epidemic roadmap” were so shocking that she finally had to apologize in a social media post, saying she “brought trouble to everyone and broke everyone’s peaceful life.
The “Panorama Prison” has arrived
Human rights groups say that the Chinese and Russian governments are expanding their surveillance capabilities and implementing various human rights restrictions that are not justified on public health grounds in order to contain the Chinese virus. Some fear that the Communist Party is simply using the current “health code” as an experiment in universal surveillance.
In an article published in The Atlantic in August, Ross Andersen, associate editor for technology at The Atlantic, noted that “in a complex digital system of social control, similar codes (health codes) can be used to rate a person’s political leanings.
In the article, titled “The Panopticon Is Already Here,” Anderson also notes that the Chinese Communist government is trying to use artificial intelligence technology to turn the entire country into a “panopticon” to monitor the movements of Chinese citizens. The panoramic prison, also known as the circular prison, is the work of British philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Jeremy Bentham, a British philosopher, proposed a prison design in the late 18th century. In such a prison, prisoners are under constant surveillance, so they have to regulate their behavior all the time.
“Big Brother is watching you” is no longer a scene envisioned by George Orwell in his novel “1984”; in China, thanks to “health codes” and other surveillance facilities, every move of the population is under the government’s “Big Brother” surveillance. In China, thanks to “health codes” and other surveillance facilities, every move of the population is under the close scrutiny of the government’s “Big Brother”. Not only in China, but in 2020, many countries, including some democracies, are using digital technology for contact tracing to curb the spread of the Communist virus epidemic as it rages.
According to the article, Xinjiang has become a laboratory for authorities to create “panoramic prisons. Checkpoints equipped with surveillance cameras are set up every few blocks, and the images captured by these cameras are compared with images of Uighurs’ faces taken by authorities during “health checks” to quickly identify them. When the Uighurs leave their neighborhoods, the automated system tracks their movements.
The news from China is not encouraging either. Officials in Hangzhou, where the health code was first introduced, met in May to discuss making the code a regular feature.
Chinese media recently reported that the health code will later be used in other areas as a “residual” measure. The report quoted Zhou Ping, director of the Information Technology Research Center of the China Electronics Standards Institute and one of the drafters of China’s personal health information code standard, as saying that when the “personal health information code” standard was first developed, a question was pondered: If a national standard is to be developed, will the health code exist in the long term? It is clear from the ongoing regulatory policies that health codes will exist for a long time.
Not long ago, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping even suggested that the Health Code be extended to the world. At the G20 summit on November 21, 2020, Xi proposed “establishing an international mutual recognition mechanism for health codes based on nucleic acid test results in the form of internationally accepted QR codes, with the hope that more countries will participate.
However, Xi’s proposal immediately drew opposition from Western human rights groups. Human rights experts warned against the CCP’s “international health code” proposal, which could be a “Trojan horse” in the name of health, resulting in “widespread political surveillance and exclusivity. This is similar to the social credit system already in place in China.
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