How China’s Surveillance Is Growing More Invasive | Visual Investigations

Summary

China's surveillance system is expanding at an unprecedented scale, collecting massive amounts of personal data such as facial images, voiceprints, iris scans, and DNA from its citizens. A New York Times investigation reveals how this data is being used to maintain authoritarian control. The government utilizes advanced technologies like facial recognition and phone trackers to monitor and track individuals' activities, both online and offline. This extensive surveillance effort aims to create comprehensive profiles of citizens and foresee potential threats, further solidifying the state’s control. The implications of this could extend beyond China's borders.

Highlights

• China uses millions of cameras for facial recognition, storing billions of images daily. 📸
• Advanced tools like IMSI catchers track phone signals and physical movements. 📶
• China is collecting biological data, including DNA and iris scans, for tracking. 🧬
• Surveillance extends into Wi-Fi networks and software to analyze personal data. 📡
• The state’s control is deepened by building comprehensive profiles of each citizen. 📊
• Surveillance supports authoritarian rule, possibly extending beyond China. 🌍

Key Takeaways

• China's surveillance is highly sophisticated, collecting everything from facial images to DNA. 🧬
• The government uses technologies to track both online and offline activities. 📱
• Surveillance is not limited to known targets; everyday citizens are also monitored. 👀
• China aims to create comprehensive profiles for citizens to maintain control. 📊
• The surveillance infrastructure aims to predict and stop potential threats. 🔍
• The scale and technology used in China’s surveillance are unparalleled globally. 🌐

Overview

China's surveillance system is nothing short of extraordinary, with the government using cameras, phone trackers, and even genetic information to keep tabs on both citizens and visitors. The scale of this surveillance effort is massive, with half the world's cameras reportedly in China, capturing millions of images every day. Technology like IMSI catchers and Wi-Fi sniffers track mobile devices, while software analyzes vast databases to match identities, making Big Brother seem like child’s play!

But here's where it gets even more sci-fi: China is also collecting biological data. We're talking iris scans, voiceprints, and DNA samples that are stored and analyzed, ostensibly to catch criminals. However, this collection often extends far beyond suspects, hinting at a desire to maintain a tight grip on the population. Whether it's tracking your phone movements or analyzing your DNA, no stone is left unturned in this surveillance state. The tools are advanced, and the goal is clear: control. Absolute control.

All this surveillance is part of a grand strategy to anticipate threats before they even surface. Through data consolidation, the government aims to build detailed citizen profiles, allowing for enhanced monitoring and control. Should other nations take a leaf out of China's playbook, we might just see this Orwellian approach become a global norm. It's a fascinating yet spine-chilling glimpse into what the future of state control could look like.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to China's Surveillance In the introductory chapter on China's surveillance, the text highlights the aspects of individuality like one's appearance, technology usage, and voice, and how these unique identifiers are utilized by the Chinese government for surveillance purposes. It mentions that the surveillance network in China is vast and intricate, underscoring the comprehensive nature of their information-gathering efforts.
• 00:30 - 01:00: The New York Times Investigation The chapter titled 'The New York Times Investigation' discusses a comprehensive analysis conducted by The New York Times over more than a year. They examined over 100,000 government bidding documents spanning two decades, provided by ChinaFile. These documents reveal the surveillance products and services required by government agencies across the country, including phone trackers.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Surveillance Technologies and Strategies Chapter Title: Surveillance Technologies and Strategies The chapter discusses the documents related to equipment used for collecting iris scans and DNA samples. These documents outline the strategic planning behind these acquisitions and call for companies to submit bids for project contracts. The aim is to highlight China's ambition to collect extensive sensitive personal data at local and national levels. The ultimate goal is to centralize this data for comprehensive surveillance of its citizens.
• 03:00 - 06:30: Phone Trackers and Monitoring This chapter discusses the use of surveillance technology by authoritarian governments, focusing on China as a case study. It highlights China's extensive use of surveillance cameras, estimating that the country is home to more than half of the world's nearly one billion surveillance cameras. The chapter begins with an exploration of how these cameras are integral to the country's broader surveillance apparatus and its implications for maintaining authoritarian control over the population.
• 06:30 - 11:00: Biometric Data Collection The chapter discusses the extensive use of cameras for surveillance and storage of images in Fujian Province, China. It highlights a bidding document revealing plans to upgrade the facial analysis system, indicating a massive capture of data by facial recognition cameras. The upgrade requires a database expansion 20-fold, showcasing the system's capacity to detect and store facial data from video feeds.
• 11:00 - 13:30: Conclusion and Future Implications The chapter 'Conclusion and Future Implications' discusses the extensive facial recognition system in Fujian province, China, which stores 2,000 images daily, accumulating 2.5 billion facial images at any time. This makes it three times larger than the largest U.S. government facial-recognition databases, highlighting the vast scale and implications of such surveillance measures.
• 13:30 - 15:00: Producer's Note This chapter discusses the strategic placement of surveillance cameras throughout China, with authorities being meticulous about their locations and viewing angles. Documents reveal specific examples, such as a camera positioned on the northwest side of an apartment building in Beijing and another across from a kindergarten in Jiaxing, illustrating the detailed planning involved in the surveillance efforts. It also suggests that the police use these cameras for more than just external observation.

How China’s Surveillance Is Growing More Invasive | Visual Investigations Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 You are unique. Your eyes cast a warm, brown glow. Your voice carries a soft tone. Your nose creases when you smile. But the things that make you unique can also be used to track you. And in China, your appearance, the technology you use, and the sound of your voice are all types of information the Chinese government collects. The scale of this surveillance and the infrastructure supporting it are larger and more elaborate
• 00:30 - 01:00 than previously known. For over a year, The New York Times has analyzed more than 100,000 government bidding documents. They span two decades and were collected and shared exclusively with us by ChinaFile, a digital magazine published by the Asia Society. In these bidding documents, government agencies from across the country detail what surveillance products and services they need, from phone trackers,
• 01:00 - 01:30 to equipment used to collect iris scans, and DNA samples. These documents explain the strategic thinking behind the purchases and invite companies to bid for project contracts. Together, they reveal China’s ambition in collecting vast amounts of sensitive personal data. From the local to national level, China aims to gather as much information as possible on its citizens, centralize this data,
• 01:30 - 02:00 and use it to maintain authoritarian rule over its entire population. Let’s start with the cameras, the foundation of China’s surveillance state. There’s a lot of them. Analysts estimate that over half of the world’s nearly one billion surveillance cameras are in China.
• 02:00 - 02:30 These cameras surveil and store the images of all who cross their paths. A bidding document from Fujian Province, in the country’s southeast, details the police’s plan to improve their facial analysis system. It reveals just how much data their facial recognition cameras are capturing, so much so that they required a database 20 times as large. In this case, the system detects faces from video feeds
• 02:30 - 03:00 and stores 2,000 images of those faces every day. Police keep them for six months. There are 7,000 video feeds in this Fujian system. So that’s 2.5 billion facial images stored at any given time. All those images are for just one province in China. To put that in context, that’s three times bigger than one of the largest U.S. government facial-recognition databases,
• 03:00 - 03:30 which is run by Homeland Security. Throughout China, authorities are highly strategic about where they place cameras. Dozens of documents show that police detail the locations and precise viewing angles for the cameras. For example, there are instructions for a camera’s placement on the northwest side of this apartment building in Beijing, and across the street from this kindergarten in the city of Jiaxing. Police don’t just watch from the outside either.
• 03:30 - 04:00 They want to put cameras inside the lobbies of these hotels, including at this franchise location of American hotel brand Days Inn. The hotel’s front desk manager told The Times that the camera does not have facial-recognition capabilities and is not feeding videos into the police network. One document from the town of Xiqiao in Guangdong Province reveals the philosophy of local officials as they aim for maximum surveillance.
• 04:00 - 04:30 They’ve determined that cameras should go in places where people fulfill their most common needs. The document lists coordinates for camera positions. They match locations where people shop, where they live, where they learn and travel. To take advantage of all this footage, police around China rely on software to analyze and extract more information. State media promotes the software’s ability
• 04:30 - 05:00 to identify a person’s race and ethnicity, the color of their clothes, and whether they’re wearing a mask or glasses. Documents show this technology can search a person’s image in existing databases for a match. These search results often contain more specific information about the person, like their national ID number, name, sex and permanent address. While this type of technology is readily available,
• 05:00 - 05:30 the documents show the government doesn’t think it’s being used widely enough. In one, China’s top police agency complains that the analytical capabilities need to be better and are too decentralized. The government is determined to not only fix these consolidation issues but to branch into new and more invasive surveillance technologies. While cameras track you in public,
• 05:30 - 06:00 much of your private life is on your phone. Your location, the apps you have, the things you say online, the government is using all of this information to monitor you without you even knowing. Police use phone trackers to help connect your digital life to your physical location. Our investigation found a dramatic expansion of their use across China. Sometimes, the trackers are invisible, hidden within cameras. Others look like Wi-Fi routers.
• 06:00 - 06:30 Here’s how authorities put this technology to work. Your phone is constantly searching for the strongest available network signals. Some trackers, known as IMSI catchers, imitate strong cellular signals, luring your phone’s connection before capturing its unique identifying information. Other trackers, like Wi-Fi sniffers, lie in wait on public Wi-Fi networks, intercepting and analyzing your phone’s
• 06:30 - 07:00 outbound communications. Since these trackers can be installed throughout a city, authorities can use them to map out a phone’s movements. Let’s say you post something online that the government finds incendiary. Police can go to social media companies and find out your username, phone number and your device ID. They can then look up that device ID to see what the trackers have captured. This way, police can find out where you’ve been
• 07:00 - 07:30 and where they might be able to find you. These trackers can also exploit weak security practices and might be able to screen the apps you’ve installed. And those apps can say a lot about you. For example, police from a county in Guangdong bought phone trackers and hope they can use them to detect which phones have a Uyghur to Chinese dictionary app. Users of the app are likely part of the Uyghur ethnic minority,
• 07:30 - 08:00 a group that is heavily surveilled and oppressed by the government. In 2019, a New York Times journalist walked around a city in Xinjiang where most Uyghurs live. There, he found 38 Wi-Fi sniffers in just one neighborhood. We traced one of the earliest phone tracker purchases to Shandong Province in 2015. Seven years later, according to our analysis, all 31 of mainland China’s provinces and regions have them.
• 08:00 - 08:30 Phone trackers are powerful tools on their own. But here’s what happens when you combine them with other data. These are internal product presentations we obtained from Megvii, one of China’s biggest surveillance contractors. Megvii’s technology compiles various types of personal data from mobile devices, cameras and other sources. Megvii told The Times its aim is to make communities safer and not, quote,
• 08:30 - 09:00 “about monitoring any particular group or individual.” But this product is already being used by authorities and can display a person’s movements, clothing, vehicles, mobile device information and social connections. It shows us the type of dossier that authorities could generate for anyone. But we found that the pursuit of your personal data goes even further, to the biology of what makes you who you are.
• 09:00 - 09:30 This is the next frontier of surveillance in China. The government is actively collecting voice prints, iris scans and DNA samples from its people and maintains that the primary use of this material is to track criminals. Chinese media often promote these efforts. But the documents repeatedly show that police are gathering troves of material from everyday citizens too. Like in the city of Zhongshan.
• 09:30 - 10:00 Here, a document reveals that police are adding devices to record audio from at least a 300-foot radius around their street cameras. The document outlines their plans to use voice-recognition software to analyze the audio and add people’s voiceprints to a database. The police hope that combining voice-recognition systems with facial-recognition cameras will help them identify targets faster. But since your voice, much like your appearance,
• 10:00 - 10:30 alters over time, our investigation shows Chinese authorities are starting to collect personal identifiers that are less likely to change over time, such as iris patterns. One document reveals that, in Xinjiang, where millions of Uyghurs live, a government contractor built a database that can hold iris samples of up to 30 million people, enough to cover Xinjiang’s entire population. We discovered this same contractor is now
• 10:30 - 11:00 building large iris databases across the rest of the country. Documents show that the Chinese government is collecting another type of sensitive biometric data from broad segments of the population — DNA from men. Authorities can use genetic tracing to catalog entire generations of men. So a database built today will be useful far into the future. China says it uses these genetic databases
• 11:00 - 11:30 to solve crimes. Criminal investigations around the world also rely on genetic information for this same reason. Y chromosome DNA is passed down from father to son. Given a genetic sample from an unknown male suspect, investigators can compare the men’s Y DNA to samples already present in their databases. A match indicates a relationship along paternal lines and helps pinpoint the suspect’s family history
• 11:30 - 12:00 and geographic ancestry. Because of privacy concerns, many countries limit DNA collection to just criminals and suspects. But our analysis shows China stands out in its ambition to build ever larger databases of male DNA. We identified the earliest effort in Henan Province in 2014. Today, male DNA databases exist in at least 25 out of mainland China’s 31 provinces and regions.
• 12:00 - 12:30 The logic behind this ever-expanding campaign is clear. A bidding document from Gansu Province points out that, as populations and family lineages grow, so, too, will the value of male DNA collection. In the same document, the police describe their objective this way: “Do not miss a single family in each village. Do not miss a single man in each family.”
• 12:30 - 13:00 From faces to DNA profiles, iris scans to voiceprints, the Chinese government is consolidating vast quantities of unique personal data with one ultimate goal — to build a comprehensive profile for each citizen, accessible anytime, anywhere, up and down the ranks of the government.
• 13:00 - 13:30 This sweeping surveillance effort lays the groundwork for even more advanced methods of control. The documents show that the state is even working towards predicting potential threats before they materialize. It is building a future in which mass surveillance supports authoritarian rule. And it’s unlikely to stay in China.
• 13:30 - 14:00 “Hi, this is Muyi, one of the producers of this video. Our team spent over a year analyzing more than 100,000 government bidding documents to reveal how China’s surveillance state is seeking sensitive personal data
• 14:00 - 14:30 at an unprecedented scale. We also obtained internal presentations from a security contractor and reviewed police manuals and state propaganda. We’ll have more coverage of China’s invasive surveillance efforts, including how officials are trying to predict the future to stop threats before they even materialize. You can see our ongoing coverage at the link on the screen.”