Last Updated on 02/01/2022 by Sanskriti
According to a new revelation from The Washington Post, China is mining Western social media to provide information about outside targets to its army and police. This discovery was uncovered after a thorough examination of a slew of Chinese bidding documents, contracts, and corporate registrations.
According to the new study, China has a statewide network of data surveillance services that have been created over the last decade and are used domestically to notify officials of politically sensitive content posted on the internet.
Information from other tech firms likeTwitter, Facebook, and other Western social media sites is also being targeted in collecting and targeting information including the software, which is aimed at domestic Internet users and journalists.
According to the records obtained by the Washington-based journal, Chinese organisations such as the state media, propaganda departments, police, military, and cyber regulators are buying new or more advanced data collection devices.
According to the article, China’s state-run media software scrapes Twitter and Facebook to compile a database of foreign journalists and academics.
A Beijing police intelligence programme examines Western information on Hong Kong and Taiwan, according to the article. It also keeps track on Uyghur content in other countries.
A Beijing-based expert who works for China’s Central Propaganda Department says, “Now we can better understand the underground network of anti-China personnel.”
According to the article, the team was originally charged with generating a data analysis on how unfavourable news about Beijing’s senior leadership spreads on Twitter, including profiles of specific academics, politicians, and journalists.
“They are now reorienting part of that effort outward, and I think that’s frankly terrifying, looking at the sheer numbers and sheer scale that this has taken inside China,” a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, Mareike Ohlberg said.
She further said, It really shows that they now feel it’s their responsibility to defend China overseas and fight the public opinion war overseas.”
