China's Surveillance State Hits Rare Resistance From Its Own Subjects:
Chinese artists have staged performances to highlight the ubiquity of surveillance cameras. Privacy activists have filed lawsuits against the collection of facial recognition data. Ordinary citizens and establishment intellectuals alike have pushed back against the abuse of Covid tracking apps by the authorities to curb protests. Internet users have shared tips on how to evade digital monitoring.
As China builds up its vast surveillance and security apparatus, it is running up against growing public unease about the lack of safeguards to prevent the theft or misuse of personal data. The ruling Communist Party is keenly aware of the cost to its credibility of any major security lapses: Last week, it moved systematically to squelch news about what was probably the largest known breach of a Chinese government computer system, involving the personal information of as many as one billion citizens.
The breach dealt a blow to Beijing, exposing the risks of its expansive efforts to vacuum up enormous amounts of digital and biological information on the daily activities and social connections of its people from social media posts, biometric data, phone records and surveillance videos. The government says these efforts are necessary for public safety: to limit the spread of Covid, for instance, or to catch criminals. But its failure to protect the data exposes citizens to problems like fraud and extortion, and threatens to erode people's willingness to comply with surveillance.
"You never know who is going to sell or leak your information," said Jewel Liao, a Shanghai resident whose details were among those released in the leak.
"It's just a bit unusual to see that even the police are vulnerable too," Ms. Liao said.
[...] In addition to basic information like names, addresses and ID numbers, the sample also featured details that appeared to be drawn from external databases, like instructions for couriers on where to drop off deliveries, raising questions about how much information private companies share with the authorities. And, of particular concern for many, it also contained intensely personal information, such as police reports that included the names of people accused of rape and domestic violence, as well as private information about political dissidents.
The government has sought to erase nearly all discussion of the leak. At a Cabinet meeting chaired by China's premier, Li Keqiang, last week, officials made only a passing reference to the question of privacy, emphasizing the need to "defend information security" so that the public and businesses could "operate with peace of mind," according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Opportunist on Friday July 15 2022, @02:56PM (8 children)
Give it. But make sure it's the data you want everyone to have.
In other words, poison the well. Feel the algo the data you want them to have. My Facebook page is a lie. Totally. According to the page, I'm rubbing shoulders with the greatest and brightest of my industry (Photoshop is really one hell of a tool!), I'm the model citizen you always wanted and in my spare time, I help puppy dogs across the road.
That aside, the cookie profile you can get from my browser als well as my browsing habits are a total mess. I actually visit about 200 pages a second. Ok, not me, a plugin I wrote does. It throws random crap into search engines collects a load of sites and visits a few pages there. And of course I allow every tracking cookie there. Not so much on the pages I actually visit, of course.
Poison the data well. Trying to withhold the data is useless. Some will always get out. And some valid data is still valid data. If you can't tell valid data from bogus data, the whole data set is invalid and useless.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2022, @10:07PM (2 children)
While your efforts sound commendable, I wonder about your parting shot,
> If you can't tell valid data from bogus data, the whole data set is invalid and useless.
When it comes to selling data (to advertisers, scammers, identity thieves, etc) I doubt anyone really cares if the data is poisoned. For example, the fishing emails will go to out to everyone, real or not, and still hit the target inboxes.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 16 2022, @08:11AM (1 child)
Sure. But it's also very easy to identify them, basically rendering them useless.
Also, I agree, as long as only I create bogus data, the advertisers and data customers won't notice that they are buying junk. Give it time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 17 2022, @02:59PM
> ...very easy to identify them
...very easy for me to identify them
ftfy.
You weren't the target, but phishing is still very successful, otherwise who would bother?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Samantha Wright on Friday July 15 2022, @11:57PM (4 children)
Have you considered that it might simply be less effort to not have a Facebook profile?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 16 2022, @02:25AM
It would be easier to not have a FB account (I don't), but maybe FB has created an account for you anyway. Isn't that nice of them? /s.
https://www.groovypost.com/news/facebook-shadow-accounts-non-users/ [groovypost.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday July 16 2022, @02:54AM (1 child)
That's what I did, until the edgy tech startup I went to work for required all their employees to connect through FB. We were working on what was going to be the next big website in the social media arena, and management felt we all ought to stay up to date on what the competition was doing. Eat own own dog food, and our competitors' dog food too, yeesh.
The startup failed, but not before old acquaintances found me on FB. I still don't use FB much, not least because of the insecure S.O. who doesn't want me blabbing anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 16 2022, @04:46PM
What? They required you to use FB accounts with real info? What sort of stupid competitors were you? At least reduce the value of their data by filling it with crap.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 16 2022, @08:14AM
Considering that there exist "shadow profiles", having a Facebook profile is like having an army in your country. You'll always have one. You can only decide whether you control it or whether someone from abroad does.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday July 15 2022, @03:40PM (3 children)
is if the Chinese government went all the way in the surveillance and social scoring craziness, and let uabashed tyranny rain down on the citizenry. Because then what will eventually happen is, a majority of the people will decide to revolt en masse and topple the damn communist party sonsabitches, French revolution-stylee.
If the party is smart however, they'll toe the line between restraint and popular outrage, so that a critical mass of dissenters is never quite reached and the status quo lasts forever. Let's hope they're not too smart...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 16 2022, @03:51AM
My take is they wouldn't be going this route if they were too smart.
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Saturday July 16 2022, @04:16AM
I don't think that a revolution would succeed against the level of surveillance that would provoke it. If fact, adding in some AI driven social credit, I think a tyrannical system could stop such a revolution from even coalescing in the first place. Hopefully I'm overestimating the competency of people operating in a tyrannical system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 16 2022, @04:53PM
Most people don't care about such stuff.
As long as most of the people are fed, and the safety of they and their loved ones is assured as long as they follow the rules most won't care even if some of the rules are bad. That's why most dictators aren't overthrown.
They're overthrown when the people can't be fed or by external parties.
And this is true even in non-dictatorships. Doesn't matter if you're democratically elected - hangry people can still hang you...