Is China Snooping?
Yes according to an interview given by Christopher Balding.
You will find the link to the interview and his paper in the reference section.
Did China hack us?
Oh it’s even better this time.They are data scraping from social media sites which may or may not include hacked data.
They are doing this to every one,they feel are important. Not surprising. though.
Who is the source of the #Chinasnoopgate info?
The data was provided to Christopher Balding by a China based source connected to the company China Revival.
The Overseas Key Information Database (OKIDB) was created by a company called China Revival based in Shenzhen, China. Their client include the PLA and CCP.
Whose data are in these data base?(Source link)
China Revival claims on their website to have records of more than 2.4 million individuals, 650 thousand organizations, 2.3 billion news articles, and 2.1 billion social media posts.
It targets Politicians ,thought leaders with influence. But intellectual property targeting cannot be ruled out.
Political figures,tech figures, influential in all walks of life are in the database
The PM,President, leaders of Political parties of India ,top people in the army, Chief Justice and many People with influence, who sway public opinion.Even crime lords are on their watch lists.Probably not with charitable intentions !
To manipulate public opinion, Zhenhua used open source data.The company mined over 10,000 Indian, 50000 British, 54000 American 2.4 million account worldwide misinformation warfare.
China targets people all over the world for various reasons.It can range from political influence to intellectual property targeting. The data appears used to support Chinese intelligence, military, security, and state operations in information warfare and influence targetting.
What is the possible open source data?
90%Intelligence data is collected from,Twitter,Facebook, LinkedIn,for hybrid war.
What is collected?
What you share publicly.
Australian Finance review in a post talks about how Facebook was the largest intelligence gatherer before Tiktok entered the game
Like location, travel,likes, followers, friends can be anything. What you share on social media publicly. Twitter,Facebook Linkedin media platforms are popular. China by using these data is creating data banks to use for information warfare.
OKIDB has photographs of individuals taken from public sites the targets maintained accounts on such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These photos from public sources of the targets appeared crawled and subsequently stored on publicly available Chinese servers with links in the database for each individual.
The information warfare being touted by Zhenhua targets key people in democracies and their such as the children of politicians, universities,and key industrial sectors. Open democracies need to wake up and scale up data privacy, security and understand the CCP plan.
You will ask,who cares about data like ,birth dates,names right?
It is not only the data contained in a single dataset.But imagine similar data contained in the 200 or so other datasets.When these are combined, the information garnered is powerful.
How can this Data be misused?
It is used try and influence people and institutions and decisions. Manipulate,politics,ground situations,public opinion and policy decisions .It also gains by creating unrest.
Data is power.There can be enormous benefit in forming opinion from the assembled data, craft messaging or target intelligence agencies.
However, the OKIDB is known to engage in influenced decision making processes in China .The Chinese have a unique blend of civil and military power associations. How they will use it is a conspiracy theory Grim Brother’s Scary tales.
China is not a democracy. It recognizes only the state power.Its own.No others.It is not a team player and considers everyone an enemy. It treats its enemies badly and friends worse.
There’s no upside to China getting anyone’s personal data.Their complete lack of respect for personal choice ,freedom and Humanitarian rules.They will use non-traditional warfare techniques. Like Zhenhua targets key leaders and influencers in various sectors.
Open liberal societies cannot grasp the threats embodied in Chinese authoritarian communism.They are sneaky.They use non-traditional warfare and influence operations. Misinformation campaigns are classic weapons .Its tricky to fight.But not impossible.
China is building a techno-surveillance authoritarian state.But they also have expansionist,imperialistic and totalitarian agendas,since forever.
The banning of Chinese apps in India seem to be timely.
What you can do?
Know about protection against data mining.Avoid filling in data in open surveys .
Be careful about what you share online.Avoid sharing personal data, children’s information,healthcare information publicly .
Teach your children about data privacy.
Check ,the browsers and their settings.Check the apps you use.Read the terms and conditions,privacy policy before signing up anywhere.
Its never too late to take care
Resources :
Chinese Open Source Data Collection, Big Data and Private Enterprise Work For State Intelligence and Security:
The Case of Shenzhen Zhenhua
By:Christopher Balding and Robert Potter & Et.Al
Both authors contributed to the writing and research of this paper and names are only listed alphabetically. Et. Al. refers to others who contributed and we wish to acknowledge but whose names need to remain anonymous.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3691999
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6403524/#__ffn_sectitle
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I think the hysteria being spread against China is uncalled for. There is a threat of data theft from numerous sources. Although it is quite true that the Chinese government is known for several authoritarian and notorious activities. But it is rather unwise to connect the average Chinese citizen to the acts and policies of their government. It is advisable and sensible to be careful regarding data privacy on every online platform. But banning of several Chinese apps just because of the current political-military issues with China is nothing but absurd. In fact, the Arogya Setu app is one big threat to data privacy but is acceptable simply because it is promoted by the government. Such articles spread nothing except mistrust between citizens of the two countries.
It is scary!
Really shocking revelation! Though we always doubted China’s role in hacking data, this article uncovered altogether new things.
Wow! That is both surprising and scary. You’re right, we need to be more careful about what we reveal publicly.
Places like Facebook and Google further empower them!