0x815

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2969062

Archived link

Chen Wenqing, head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, recently visited Lhasa, Kardze, and Chamdo, meeting with local officials to emphasize the need for heightened surveillance and control. His tour, which took place from September 10th to 13th, focused on maintaining stability and combating what the Chinese government terms “separatists”.

[...]

The official emphasized the need for legal suppression against those deemed threats to China’s stability and called for stricter management of religious activities stating, “We must resolutely crack down on separatist and sabotage activities in accordance with the law, resolutely manage religious affairs in accordance with the law, resolutely protect normal religious activities in accordance with the law.”

[...]

Concurrent with Chen’s visit, other high-ranking officials have made similar trips to the region. Zhang Jun, president of the Supreme People’s Court, advocated for “tough punishments to maintain pressure on violent terrorism, ethnic separatism and other serious criminal crimes” during his visit to courts in Tibet.

These heightened security measures have raised concerns among human rights advocates, who note that China’s broad definition of separatism often includes individuals merely critical of its policies toward Tibetans.

Archived link

• Research from Infyos has identified that companies accounting for 75 per cent of the global battery market have connections to one or more companies in the supply chain facing allegations of severe human rights abuses.

• Most of the allegations of severe human rights abuses involve companies mining and refining raw materials in China that end up in batteries globally, particularly in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China.

• “The relative opaqueness of battery supply chains and the complexity of supply chain legal requirements means current approaches like ESG audits are out of date and don’t comply with new regulations. Most battery manufacturers and their customers, including automotive companies and grid-scale battery energy storage developers, still don’t have complete supply chain oversight," says Sarah Montgomery, CEO & co-founder, Infyos.

• Supply chain changes are needed to eliminate widespread forced labour and child labour abuses occurring in the lithium-ion battery market, Infyos added.

There is an interesting study (May 2024), also linked in the article: When Online Content Disappears

Historians of the future may struggle to understand fully how we lived our lives in the early 21st Century. That's because of a potentially history-deleting combination of how we live our lives digitally – and a paucity of official efforts to archive the world's information as it's produced these days.

However, an informal group of organisations are pushing back against the forces of digital entropy – many of them operated by volunteers with little institutional support. None is more synonymous with the fight to save the web than the Internet Archive, an American non-profit based in San Francisco, started in 1996 as a passion project by internet pioneer Brewster Kahl. The organisation has embarked what may be the most ambitious digital archiving project of all time, gathering 866 billion web pages, 44 million books, 10.6 million videos of films and television programmes and more. Housed in a handful of data centres scattered across the world, the collections of the Internet Archive and a few similar groups are the only things standing in the way of digital oblivion.

"The risks are manifold. Not just that technology may fail, but that certainly happens. But more important, that institutions fail, or companies go out of business. News organisations are gobbled up by other news organisations, or more and more frequently, they're shut down," says Mark Graham, director of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, a tool that collects and stores snapshots of websites for posterity. There are numerous incentives to put content online, he says, but there's little pushing companies to maintain it over the long term.

Despite the Internet Archive's achievements thus far, the organisation and others like it face financial threats, technical challenges, cyberattacks and legal battles from businesses who dislike the idea of freely available copies of their intellectual property. And as recent court losses show, the project of saving the internet could be just as fleeting as the content it's trying to protect.

"More and more of our intellectual endeavours, more of our entertainment, more of our news, and more of our conversations exist only in a digital environment," Graham says. "That environment is inherently fragile."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2956996

Archived link

At a less well-reported meeting in Beijing late last year, organised by the China-Africa Business Council, officials pushed for the rapid expansion of Chinese private security firms [in countries of the Global South]. ‘Outbound Chinese investors face security challenges and a complex environment,’ said an official statement.

[...]

Officials are concerned about the fate of programmes under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which started as a global infrastructure programme, but has evolved into an umbrella for just about everything China does overseas to further its influence. Projects have stalled or collapsed under a mountain of unsustainable debt and growing resentment at the outsize role of Chinese firms and labour. In Pakistan, for instance, Gwadar Port, built by China as key part of a $62 billion (£47 billion) China-Pakistan economic corridor has been under virtual siege by Baloch separatists, who have targeted Chinese engineers. Chinese-owned mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo have also been targeted.

A BRI working group recently highlighted the need to ‘hammer out the safety protection in a detailed way,’ according to the state-owned Xinhua news agency.

[...]

China now has overseas economic investments and assets worth well over a trillion dollars by most estimates. It has set up around 47,000 overseas firms across 190 countries or regions, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

[...]

Beijing now seems to have concluded that they are dangerously exposed, particularly at a time of growing economic stress and geopolitical tensions and require a local security apparatus to match.

[...]

The Solomon Islands provide a template for China. Last year, they signed a deal on police cooperation with Beijing as part of an upgrade of their relations to a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’. The Chinese telecoms company Huawei is building a cellular network on the Islands, and a Chinese state company plans to redevelop the port in the capital, Honiara.

[...]

China had less success with Thailand, where the government scrapped plans for joint patrols with Chinese police in popular tourist spots following criticism that it compromised Thai national sovereignty, and a rebuke from the country’s police chief. There was also anger on social media. ‘Thailand will become a complete surveillance state’, was one typical response, though among other autocrats more welcoming of Chinese, that seems to be precisely the point.

Archived link

High-tech CCTV, super-accurate DNA-testing technology and facial tracking software: China is pushing its state-of-the-art surveillance and policing tactics abroad.

Delegates from law enforcement across the world descended this week on a port city in eastern China showcasing the work of dozens of local firms, several linked to repression in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

China is one of the most surveilled societies on Earth, with millions of CCTV cameras scattered across cities and facial recognition technology widely used in everything from day-to-day law enforcement to political repression.

Its police serve a dual purpose: keeping the peace and cracking down on petty crime while also ensuring challenges to the ruling Communist Party are swiftly stamped out.

During the opening ceremony in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China's police minister lauded Beijing's training of thousands of police from abroad over the last 12 months -- and promised to help thousands more over the next year.

An analyst said this was "absolutely a sign that China aims to export" its policing.

"Beijing is hoping to normalise and legitimise its policing style and... the authoritarian political system in which it operates," Bethany Allen at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said.

[...]

"The more countries that learn from the Chinese model, the fewer countries willing to criticise such a state-first, repressive approach."

[...]

Tech giant Huawei said its "Public Safety Solution" was now in use in over 100 countries and regions, from Kenya to Saudi Arabia.

[...]

The United States sanctioned SDIC Intelligence Xiamen Information, formerly Meiya Pico, for developing an app "designed to track image and audio files, location data, and messages on... cellphones".

In 2018, the US Treasury said residents of Xinjiang "were required to download a desktop version of" that app "so authorities could monitor for illicit activity".

China has been accused of incarcerating more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang -- charges Beijing vehemently rejects.

[...]

Several delegations expressed interest in learning from the Chinese police.

"We have come to establish links and begin training," Colonel Galo Erazo from the National Police of Ecuador told AFP.

"Either Chinese police will go to Ecuador, or Ecuadorian police will come to China," he added.

One expert said that this outsourcing of security is becoming a key tool in China's efforts to promote its goals overseas.

[...]

"China's offers of police cooperation and training give them channels through which to learn how local security forces -- many either on China's periphery or in areas that Beijing considers strategically important -- view the security environment," [Sheena Greitens at the University of Texas in the U.S.] said.

"These initiatives can give China influence within the security apparatus if a threat to Chinese interests arises."

[Corrected broken link.]

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2926436

A Hong Kong man is facing as long as 10 years in jail after he pleaded guilty to sedition for wearing a T-shirt featuring a protest slogan.

In court on Monday, Chu Kai-pong, 27, was the first person to be convicted under Hong Kong’s tough homegrown national security law enacted in March.

[...]

He was arrested on June 12 at a train station wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”, and a yellow mask printed with “FDNOL” – the shorthand for another pro-democracy slogan, “five demands, not one less”. June 12 is a date associated with protests in the city in 2019.

[...]

Chu’s lawyer argued that the maximum he could be given would be two years.

Warning: The following article contains descriptions of violence. Some names have been changed to protect individuals’ identities.

Like many of the women inspired by the protests, Alef posted a photo on social media revealing her hair flowing freely in public. It was a simple act of solidarity with the movement against the forced wearing of the hijab.

“I didn’t really care enough to hide who I am or where the photo was taken,” she said. “I wanted to say, ‘we exist’.”

But the picture was seen by the authorities, which were trying to crush the protests, and Alef was arrested.

She says she was blindfolded, handcuffed and taken to an unknown location where she remained in solitary confinement for nearly two weeks. She was also interrogated multiple times.

In one interrogation, she says her inquisitors tried to force a confession out of her. She was made to hand over her phone to masked guards, who went through her social media posts and photos. Pictures showed she had participated in protests and that she had been shot at by security forces with pellet guns. Her interrogators also accused her of working for the US.

Alef was charged with, amongst other things, “appearing in public without a hijab” and “promotion of corruption and fornication”.

She was found guilty and although she was given a suspended sentence, she also received 50 lashes.

“A male officer told me to take off my coat and lie down,” she said. “He was holding a black leather whip and started hitting me all over my body. It was very painful but I didn’t want to show weakness.”

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2895443

Archived link

Over the past decade and a half, the Chinese techno-authoritarian state has deeply entrenched itself in the day-to-day lives of citizens through the use of highly sophisticated surveillance technology. Two of the world’s largest manufacturers of video surveillance equipment, Hikvision and Dahua, have revolutionized the industry and exported their products to hundreds of countries worldwide.

Chinese citizens are required to use their ID when engaging in various activities, from signing up for WeChat, the ubiquitous messaging app, to using super-apps like Alipay or WeChat Pay for tasks such as public transport, online shopping, and booking movie tickets.

This extensive network allows the government to track citizens’ everyday activities and create detailed profiles, effectively establishing a Panopticon state of censorship and repression.

The most prominent feature of China’s surveillance state is its extensive network of facial recognition cameras, which are nearly ubiquitous. The Chinese government launched a programme known as Skynet in 2005, which mandated the installation of millions of cameras throughout the nation.

This initiative was further expanded in 2015 with the introduction of SharpEyes, aiming for complete video coverage of ‘key public areas’ by 2020.

The government, in collaboration with camera manufacturers such as Hikvision and Dahua, framed this as a progressive step towards developing ‘smart cities’ that would enhance disaster response, traffic management, and crime detection.

However, the technology has been predominantly employed for repressive purposes, reinforcing compliance with the Communist Party of China.

[...]

Although many of the ‘threats’ identified by this system may turn out to be false alarms, the omnipresent vigilance of the state ensures that even the slightest dissent from citizens is swiftly suppressed.

[...]

China has become the first known instance of a government employing artificial intelligence for racial profiling, a practice referred to as ‘automated racism’, with its extensive facial recognition technologies specifically identifying and monitoring minority groups, particularly Uyghur Muslims, who have been subjected to numerous human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

[This inlcudes] mass detentions, forced labour, religious oppression, political indoctrination, forced sterilisation and abortion, as well as sexual assault.

In Xinjiang, an extreme form of mass surveillance has transformed the province into a battleground, with military-grade cyber systems imposed on the civilian population, while the significant investment in policing and suppressing Uyghur Muslims has established Xinjiang as a testing ground for highly intrusive surveillance technologies that may be adopted by other authoritarian regimes, and the Chinese government has been known to collect DNA samples from Uyghur Muslims residing in Xinjiang, a move that has drawn widespread international condemnation for its unethical application of science and technology.

[...]

The Chinese government has adeptly formulated legislation that unites citizens and the state against private enterprises. Laws such as the Personal Information Protection Law and the Data Security Law, both enacted in 2021, impose stringent penalties on companies that fail to secure user consent for data collection, effectively diverting scrutiny away from the state’s own transgressions.

[...]

Archived link

[...]

Apparently, AMD has placed a long black sticker on the lower left corner, seemingly to remove mentions of Taiwan. That appears to be convenient timing as the new 7600X3D chips are slated for release in China on September 20, and the country has a history of forbidding mentions of Taiwan on product packaging.

The hidden text shows the origin of the Ryzen processor: “AMD processors are diffused and/or made in one or more of the following countries and/or regions: USA, Germany, Singapore, China, Malaysia, or Taiwan.”

[...]

We can surmise that the company is doing this to soothe Beijing’s ruffled feathers, which claims Taiwan is part of China and has previously slapped import restrictions on products mentioning Taiwan as the place of manufacture.

It isn’t the first time that AMD has seemingly acquiesced to the demands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In January, it removed the ‘Diffused in Taiwan’ silkscreen from the Ryzen 7000 chips. Although the company says it did this to standardize production with the products from its Xilinx acquisition, it does have the convenient side effect of keeping Beijing happy.

[...]

This recent change — adding a sticker that covers ‘Taiwan’ on the box — doesn’t seem to have any other reason except to address the CCP’s likely complaints.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2813194

• Russia started producing new long-range attack drone last year, intelligence sources say
• More than 2,500 Garpiya drones were produced in the year to July, intelligence shows
• New Russian-made drone has Chinese engines and parts, documents indicate
• Garpiya would reduce Russian reliance on Iranian drones, expert says

Russia started producing a new long-range attack drone called the Garpiya-A1 last year using Chinese engines and parts, which it has deployed in the war in Ukraine, according to two sources from a European intelligence agency.

The intelligence – which included a production contract for the new drone, company correspondence on the manufacturing process and financial documents - indicated that IEMZ Kupol, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned weapons maker Almaz-Antey, produced more than 2,500 Garpiyas from July 2023 to July 2024.

The existence of the new Russian drone incorporating Chinese technology has not been previously reported. IEMZ Kupol and Almaz-Antey did not respond to requests for comment.

The two intelligence sources said that the Garpiya, which means Harpy in Russian, has been deployed against military and civilian targets in Ukraine, causing damage to critical infrastructure as well as both civilian and military casualties.

South Korea’s military recently removed about 1,300 Chinese-made surveillance cameras installed at bases, concerned about potential security risks, Yonhap news agency reported on Friday, September 13, citing an unnamed military official.

The cameras were designed to be connected to a specific server in China, but no actual data was leaked, Yonhap said.

They had been supplied by a South Korean company, with their Chinese origin determined during equipment inspections earlier this year, the report cited the official as saying.

The cameras were not used for guard operations such as along the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, but for monitoring training groups and perimeter fences at bases, the report said.

South Korea’s defense ministry said on Friday it is in the process of collecting the foreign-made cameras and replacing them with others. The ministry declined to confirm where the cameras were made.

Last year, Australia’s foreign minister said its defense and foreign ministries were removing surveillance cameras made by Chinese-run firms from their facilities after reports that the technology posed a security risk.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2806976

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine there have been regular reports of Russians reporting neighbours, colleagues and acquaintances to the police over alleged anti-war statements.

Denunciations have led to arrests, prosecutions and, in some cases, long prison sentences.

But why has snitching become commonplace? And what are the implications for Russian society?

[...]

Free speech in Russia was already under attack, but days after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin took it to a whole new level.

A few days after ordering Russian troops into Ukraine for what he called a “special military operation”, President Putin signed into law repressive legislation designed to silence or punish criticism.

Russians could now be prosecuted for “discrediting the use of the Russian armed forces” and receive long prison sentences for spreading “knowingly false information” about the army.

[...]

The authorities also signalled a hunt for internal enemies. President Putin declared:

“…any nation, and even more so the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and will simply spit them out like an insect in their mouth, spit them onto the pavement. I am convinced that a natural and necessary self-detoxification of society like this will strengthen our country, our solidarity and cohesion…”

In this atmosphere of “us” against “them”, reports started coming in of Russians snitching on Russians for opposing the war in Ukraine - of students informing on teachers, professors on students, work colleagues on each other.

[...]

This has revived memories of the Soviet past when denunciation was actively encouraged by the authorities. Under dictator Joseph Stalin, the prison camps, or Gulag, were full of victims who had been snitched on by their fellow citizens.