DIGITAL LIFE

Chinese dictatorship uses app to monitor tourists phone

An investigation carried out by The Guardian in partnership with The New York Times and the Süddeutsche Zeitung reveals that Chinese authorities are installing surveillance apps on the smartphones of tourists entering the country from the Xinjiang region from neighboring Kyrgyzstan.
Once they arrive at the border, tourists deliver documents and smartphones to Chinese guards who install a surveillance app that extracts contacts, messages, emails and information about the device itself looking for Islamic content. This method concerns Android-based smartphones, while iPhones are attached to a scanner that performs the analysis.
Usually the app is uninstalled before the smartphone is returned to the rightful owner, but in some cases the tourists noticed a strange application with an Android symbol, which began the report of the British newspaper.
Contacted by The Guardian, a member of the Privacy International group, Edin Omanovic, considered the case as "highly alarming in a country where downloading the wrong app or news article can take you to a detention center."
"This is one more example and why is the Xinjiang surveillance regime one of the most illegal, invasive and draconian in the world," Omanovic said. Miguel Dias