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China Forces its Muslim Minority to Install Spyware on Their Phones

posted by martyb on Sunday August 06 2017, @03:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the 1984-was-not-supposed-to-be-an-instruction-manual dept.

realDonaldTrump sent in this link:

http://mashable.com/2017/07/21/china-spyware-xinjiang/

China has ramped up surveillance measures in Xinjiang, home to much of its Muslim minority population, according to reports from Radio Free Asia.

Authorities sent out a notice over a week ago instructing citizens to install a "surveillance app" on their phones, and are conducting spot checks in the region to ensure that residents have it.

pic.twitter.com/NnNvc7foV4

— Delinda Tien (@TienDelinda) July 14, 2017

The notice, written in Uyghur and Chinese, was sent by WeChat to residents in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. 

Android users were instructed to scan the QR code in order to install the Jingwang app that would, as authorities claimed, "automatically detect terrorist and illegal religious videos, images, e-books and electronic documents" stored in the phone. If illegal content was detected, users would be ordered to delete them.

Users who deleted, or did not install the app, would be detained for up to 10 days, according to social media users.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 06 2017, @11:13PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 06 2017, @11:13PM (#549677)

    You seem to think that the US (or UK or similar) is using "Orwellian legal orders forcing private companies to backdoor their software".

    If that were true, it would be kind of silly to pay contractors $billions to figure out how to do stuff. There would be nothing to figure out: just use the backdoor.

    Also, there is no way that normal companies would manage to keep such secrets. Shamefully, lots of their staff aren't even US citizens.

    I'm torn. Are you really that dumb, or are you just trying to hurt the US software industry by encouraging a belief that they have government-demanded backdoors?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @05:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @05:00PM (#550041)

    not necessarily backdoors, but I'm 100% certain that three-letter-agencies can just drop a piece of paper on someone's desk at any major tech company and get the data they want.

    I actually respect Apple for just not having that data in the first place(wrt phone encryption keys). More companies should follow that precedent.