Human Rights Watch Reverse-Engineers China’s Mass Surveillance App

The latest news on this front comes from a really interesting article on Electronic Frontier Foundation by GENNIE GEBHART

For years, Xinjiang has been a testbed for the Chinese government’s novel digital and physical surveillance tactics, as well as human rights abuses. But there is still a lot that the international human rights community doesn’t know, especially when it comes to post-2016 Xinjiang.

Last Wednesday, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing the inner workings of a mass surveillance app used by police and other officials. The application is used by offiicals to communicate with the larger Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), the umbrella system for collecting mass surveillance data in Xinjiang.

This report uncovers what a modern surveillance state looks like, and can inform our work to end them. First, the report demonstrates IJOP’s system of pervasive surveillance targets just about anyone who deviates from an algorithmically-determined norm. Second, as a result, IJOP requires a massive amount of manual labor, all focused towards data entry and translating the physical world into digital relationships.

See full story here.