The Chinese government is forcing some ethnic minorities to install a spyware app on their smartphones to monitor their activities, while law enforcement authorities are warning that those who do not comply will be detained for up to 10 days.
The initiative began in Xinjiang, western China, when authorities began sending WeChat messages to residents of Urumqi, requiring smartphone users to install an Android app called Jingwang. The app’s role is to monitor users for potential “terrorist activities, illegal religious videos, e-books and e-documents.”
Most of the residents in the area belong to the Muslim minority, according to local media, and the message is being broadcast in both Mandarin and Uyghur, the latter being the language spoken by the Uighur group, whose population numbers 8 million.
The message includes a QR code to make it easier for users to download the spyware app, along with a warning that those who do not install it will be detained for up to 10 days.
Authorities warned that spot checks will be carried out in the coming weeks to ensure that everyone has the app installed and that no illegal content is being stored. If the app is running and illegal content is found, users will be required to delete it.
The app can spy on almost all activities that take place on the phone, recording data such as conversations on WeChat and Weibo, two of the most popular communication platforms in China.
Information, such as Wi-Fi, IMEI data, and SIM card data, is automatically collected and transferred to a government server, along with information about media files stored on the device, which are checked against digital content signatures to determine whether they violate the law or are linked to terrorist activity.
Mobile spying efforts seem to only be targeting Android for now, but iOS runs on less than 10% of devices in China. Maybe we'll hear more about that later...
