Chinese Newspaper And Citizens Find Spyware Purchase Orders On Dozens Of Police And Local Government Web Sites
from the investigating-the-investigators dept
It is hardly news that the Chinese authorities spy on their citizens, but a story in Global Voices adds a couple of fascinating twists to the story. The Beijing Times newspaper discovered that a district police department’s Web site had a purchase order for surveillance software:
Beijing Times found the purchase order on the website of the Wenzhou district police department, took a screen capture of the order, and posted it on social media with a brief explanation of its origins. The purchase order includes two items: software for injecting trojans onto mobile phones, and a trojan for spying on mobile phone conversations, text messages, and image messages on Android and for jail breaking an iPhone. The first item cost RMB 100,000 yuan (approximately US $16,000) and the second item costed RMB 4,900 yuan (approximately US $800).
The fact that the purchase order for such a sensitive item was uploaded to the police site seems odd — perhaps surveillance software is now so run-of-the-mill and pervasive that the police no longer regard its use as controversial. The other interesting aspect of this story is that Beijing Times was digging around on the police Web site in the first place, and that having found something rather interesting, decided to publish it, rather than discreetly forget about it. Even better, this rather bold action inspired others to get digging for similar purchase orders. Remarkably, they found some, including this:
a software tool that collects messages from overseas social media including Twitter, Facebook and Google plus. Authorities in Taian city purchased data collection software and content posting software intended to help ?counter public opinion? on nine major social media platforms, both in China and overseas.
Again, no real surprises there, but it’s good to have more detailed information about who’s using which surveillance tool, and for what purpose.
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Filed Under: china, government, police, spyware
Comments on “Chinese Newspaper And Citizens Find Spyware Purchase Orders On Dozens Of Police And Local Government Web Sites”
Cue the Britishly wrathful reaction from the West: “They are collecting international info! We must stop them!” while shouting for security backdoors on the other side.
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Publicly perhaps, though I imagine privately they’d be asking ‘So uhh, where’d you buy these programs from again? I’ve got a ‘friend’ that might be interested.’
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Nailed it.
You can call it government waste at those prices, too.
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What's the surprise?
They have someone whose job is to show “government transparency” just like here in the west. that person dutifully uploads all PO’s to the web as per their instructions. The maroon who orders tech software, is doing the same job they learned 20 years ago when all this was secret, so forgot that it would end up online. After this, they’ll figure out some way to flag what should not be posted. Kafka would be proud.
Re: What's the surprise?
That, or this is a “honey pot”.
Re: Re: What's the surprise?
We’ve been honey dicked!
Re: Re: What's the surprise?
We’ve been honey dicked!
Not bad
In the good hand, that has a name: transparency.