From facial recognition software to tracking phone calls, Chinese police are using sophisticated surveillance tools to track down demonstrators participating in recent protests and quell anger over strict medical restrictions on a scale not seen in China for decades.
In addition, the demonstrators chanted political demands, and some even demanded the resignation of President Xi Jinping.
In response, the authorities called for “repression” and deployed a robust security arsenal using state-of-the-art surveillance tools to track protesters.
“It appears that in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the police used high-tech methods,” Wang Shengsheng, a lawyer who provides free legal advice to protesters, told AFP.
“It appears that in other cities they relied on CCTV footage and facial recognition,” the Shenzhen human rights lawyer added.
Beijing police were able to use phone location data obtained by scanners at the assembly site, as well as from taxis that dropped protesters off after scanning their medical permits.
The lawyer stated that many Beijing residents “didn’t understand why they were called by the police when they were just passing by the demonstration site and not participating in it.”
She added that police in Shanghai called those they found for questioning and confiscated their phones, “Probably to get all her details.”
fear
In Canton, people told a lawyer that their accounts on the encrypted messaging app Telegram were hacked after they registered their ID with the police on their way to the protest site.
Their friends told the lawyer that the Beijing detainees’ Telegram accounts were still active while they were in custody, indicating that the police had access to them.
On alarm, protesters communicate with each other in encrypted chat groups that can only be accessed through VPN software, which is illegal in China.
As more reports of police arrests and intimidation come in, demonstrators share tips on how to avoid interrogation and legal advice on what to do if they are interrogated, arrested or have their phones confiscated.
They are calling on some of them to remove anything related to the protests from their phones, including chat logs, videos and photos, in case they are checked by the police.
A Beijing resident told AFP that on Sunday afternoon and Tuesday evening, police arrested two of his friends who had taken part in protests in Beijing and Shanghai. He added, on condition of anonymity for security reasons, that police released his friend from Shanghai on Monday evening but kept his phone.
And on heavily monitored Chinese social media, any user posting about the protests can be easily traced, as registering on the platforms requires a real name.
“Of course, phone calls and social media posts are searched both in real life and online,” said Roy Zhong, a China analyst at the Wilson Center in Washington.
Lack of personal space
Agence France-Presse reported that during Sunday’s rally in Beijing, several police officers filmed the demonstrators, many of whom were inexperienced, with small hand-held cameras.
A protester told AFP police called her and five of her friends after they took part in Sunday’s rally in the Diplomatic Quarter.
She said she was called to the police station on Tuesday but asked to leave because she did not have a recent coronavirus test.
In Shanghai, an AFP journalist witnessed several arrests and said police forcibly checked a protester’s phone for allegedly blocked foreign social networks in China that were being used to spread information about the protests.
According to the audio recording, a 17-year-old protester in Shanghai was even asked by a police officer, “What is the right to privacy? You have no right to privacy.”
Lawyer Wang regrets that these “advanced technologies are used during public demonstrations” and not “when people go missing or die in criminal cases.”
She says she is “very sad” that this “very effective technology is (used) in the wrong area.” “If our phones can be stolen and manipulated, if our accounts can be accessed without our consent, what freedom do we have?”
