EFF: Massive Database Leak Gives Us a Window into China’s Digital Surveillance State
Massive Database Leak Gives Us a Window into China’s Digital Surveillance State Last week, security researcher Victor Gevers found and disclosed an exposed database live-tracking the locations of about 2.6 million residents of Xinjiang, China, offering a window into what a digital surveillance state looks like in the 21st century. Xinjiang is China’s largest province, and home to China’s Uighurs, a Turkic minority group. Here, the Chinese government has implemented a testbed police state where an estimated 1 million individuals from these minority groups have been arbitrarily detained . Among the detainees are academics, writers, engineers , and relatives of Uighurs in exile. Many Uighurs abroad worry for their missing family members , who they haven’t heard from for several months and, in some cases, over a year. Although relatively little news gets out of Xinjiang to the rest of the world, we’ve known for over a year that China has been testing facial-recognition track...