New Chinese surveillance system targets journalists, international college students

Security officers in one in every of China’s largest provinces have commissioned a surveillance system they are saying they wish to use to trace journalists and worldwide college students amongst different “suspicious people”, paperwork reviewed by Reuters confirmed.

A July 29 tender doc revealed on the Henan provincial authorities’s procurement web site – reported within the media for the primary time – particulars plans for a system that may compile particular person recordsdata on such individuals of curiosity coming to Henan utilizing 3,000 facial recognition cameras that join to numerous nationwide and regional databases.Read: Deep Dive | China’s increasing DNA surveillance raises concernA 5 million yuan ($782,000) contract was awarded on Sept. 17 to Chinese tech firm Neusoft (600718.SS), which was required to complete constructing the system inside two months of signing the contract, separate paperwork revealed on the Henan authorities procurement web site confirmed. Reuters was unable to determine if the system is at the moment working.Shenyang-based Neusoft didn’t reply to requests for remark.China is making an attempt to construct what some safety consultants describe as one of many world’s most refined surveillance know-how networks, with tens of millions of cameras in public locations and rising use of strategies akin to smartphone monitoring and facial recognition.US-based surveillance analysis agency IPVM, which has carefully tracked the community’s growth and first recognized the Henan doc, stated the tender was distinctive in specifying journalists as surveillance targets and offering a blueprint for public safety authorities to shortly find them and hinder their work.”While the PRC has a documented history of detaining and punishing journalists for doing their jobs, this document illustrates the first known instance of the PRC building custom security technology to streamline state suppression of journalists,” stated IPVM’S Head of Operations Donald Maye, utilizing the initials of the People’s Republic of China.Reuters was unable to search out any paperwork figuring out journalists or foreigners as particular targets of surveillance methods in different components of China.Read: Deep Dive | It’s Tibet’s flip for Xinjiang-style Sinicisation mannequinThe Henan provincial authorities and police didn’t reply to requests for remark. The Ministry of Public Security and China’s Foreign Ministry additionally didn’t remark.”TAILED AND CONTROLLED”The near-200 web page tender doc from the Henan Public Security Department doesn’t give the reason why it needs to trace journalists or worldwide college students. Another class of individuals it stated it needs to trace have been “women from neighbouring countries that are illegal residents.”Public entry to the tender doc was disabled on Monday.The tender doc specified cameras should have the ability to construct a comparatively correct file for people whose faces are partially coated by a masks or glasses, and people focused have to be searchable on the database by merely importing an image or looking out their facial attributes.The system can be operated by no less than 2,000 officers and policemen, and specifies that journalists can be divided into three classes: pink, yellow, inexperienced, in reducing order of danger, in line with the tender.Different police forces overlaying all of Henan, whose 99 million inhabitants makes it China’s third-largest province by inhabitants, can be linked to the platform with a view to spring into motion within the occasion of a warning being set off, the tender explains.Warnings can be set off if a journalist whereas in Henan registers right into a lodge, buys a ticket, or crosses the provincial border, in line with the tender.”Suspicious persons must be tailed and controlled, dynamic research analyses and risk assessments made, and the journalists dealt with according to their category,” the tender reads.The tender additionally detailed completely different early warning methods for the opposite teams.MEDIA CONTROLSome press freedom teams say the ruling Chinese Communist Party has tightened management over media since Chinese President Xi Jinping took workplace in 2012.In February, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) stated China used coronavirus prevention measures, intimidation and visa curbs to restrict international reporting in 2020, citing responses to an annual survey of correspondents and interviews with bureau chiefs.The Chinese international ministry on the time known as the FCCC report “baseless” and stated China at all times welcomed media and journalists from all nations to cowl information in China in line with the regulation. “What we oppose is ideological bias against China and fake news in the name of press freedom,” a spokesman stated.While a lot of the Henan doc refers to journalists, a number of segments specify “foreign journalists”.In October final yr, the Henan authorities revealed on its procurement platform for potential suppliers a brief abstract of the supposed undertaking through which it stated the system could be “centred on foreigners” and assist “protect national sovereignty, security, and interests”.The contract was put out for tender on July 29, days after international journalists from the BBC, LA Times, Agence France-Presse and others reporting on devastating floods in Henan have been focused by a nationalist marketing campaign on China’s closely censored social media platform Weibo.The FCCC stated on the time it was “very concerned to witness the online and offline harassment of journalists” overlaying the floods. It described how, as an illustration, one Weibo account requested its 1.6 million followers to report the whereabouts of a international journalist who was reporting in regards to the floods.The tender additionally stated the system ought to have the ability to monitor the actions of worldwide college students via strategies akin to cell phone positioning and journey bookings – significantly throughout key dates such because the nation’s nationwide day or annual session of parliament.”On…sensitive dates, launch a wartime early warning mechanism,” it learn.