Key to maintaining the Chinese control over the region is the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP, which authorities use to spy on the population and each other. IJOP was created by the Hebei Far East Communication System Engineering Company, a subsidiary of the state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corporation.
Authorities interact with IJOP using an app, and after Human Rights Watch acquired a copy of this app, they contracted with Berlin’s Cure53 to reverse engineer it. Now, they have published a massive, comprehensive, chilling report that provides the most thorough look into the cutting edge of Chinese high-tech totalitarianism ever seen.
This is significant because Xinjiang is a beta-test for the rest of China. Earlier surveillance techniques that were pioneered on Uyghurs have had their rough edges smoothed out and then were rolled out for all Chinese people. And, thanks to the Belt-and-Road initiative, the Chinese state is gradually exporting much of their high-tech totalitarianism to client states around the Pacific Rim, sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere. This is the Chinese version of the shitty technology adoption curve: when you have a terrible, dehumanizing technological idea, you need to try it out first on people whose complaints go unheeded: prisoners, people on welfare, blue-collar and gig-economy workers, migrants and refugees, mental patients, kids. These people are used as involuntary testers for bad ideas, and the technologies that can be refined and normalized eventually find their way into everyone else’s world.
The IJOP app reveals that people in Xinjiang can be flagged for activities as innocuous as “not using the front door” or “not socializing with neighbors,” as well as using any of 51 network tools, including VPNs, Whatsapp and Viber. The system automatically flags residents who use a phone not registered to them, or who use more electricity than their neighbors, or who leave their assigned residential area without police permission. The app dispatches officers to investigate people who get new phone numbers or who socialize with foreigners.
The app also monitors the police, scoring officers on how many people they monitor, and how promptly they perform the tasks the system assigns to them.
Human Rights Watch points out that “many – perhaps all– of the mass surveillance practices described in this report appear to be contrary to Chinese law.” But that isn’t stopping anyone.
