China's deep surveillance state meets some public resistance

China's massive efforts to build a dictatorship that cannot be overthrown has been of personal interest since I came to understand its goal. What is going on in China is a fascinating and terrifying experiment in how far tyrants can go in monitoring and controlling a modern society. 

The government there is building what it hopes will be an impenetrable tyranny. The tyranny infrastructure uses sophisticated digital surveillance technology, human cognitive biology and social science. The goal includes government attempts to literally shape people's perceptions of reality, how they think about what they think they see, and what their options might be based on government-shaped thinking. The basis for this experiment lies in modern digital surveillance technology, and cutting edge cognitive biology and social behavior science.

A recent huge data hack in China led some Chinese citizens to complain and to try to resist the growing penetration of intense surveillance into the lives of average people. As usual, dark free speech from the government is thick and mostly effective. But, there are signs of some restlessness with what the government is doing and how much control it exerts over most activities that average people routinely engage in.

 The New York Times writes:

China’s Surveillance State Hits Rare Resistance From Its Own Subjects

Beijing’s swift move to censor news about one of the largest known data breaches shows keen awareness of how major security lapses can harm its credibility.

Chinese artists have staged performances to highlight the ubiquity of surveillance cameras. Privacy activists have filed lawsuits against the collection of facial recognition data. Ordinary citizens and establishment intellectuals alike have pushed back against the abuse of Covid tracking apps by the authorities to curb protests. Internet users have shared tips on how to evade digital monitoring.

As China builds up its vast surveillance and security apparatus, it is running up against growing public unease about the lack of safeguards to prevent the theft or misuse of personal data. The ruling Communist Party is keenly aware of the cost to its credibility of any major security lapses: Last week, it moved systematically to squelch news about what was probably the largest known breach of a Chinese government computer system, involving the personal information of as many as one billion citizens.

The breach dealt a blow to Beijing, exposing the risks of its expansive efforts to vacuum up enormous amounts of digital and biological information on the daily activities and social connections of its people from social media posts, biometric data, phone records and surveillance videos. The government says these efforts are necessary for public safety: to limit the spread of Covid, for instance, or to catch criminals. But its failure to protect the data exposes citizens to problems like fraud and extortion, and threatens to erode people’s willingness to comply with surveillance.

“You never know who is going to sell or leak your information,” said Jewel Liao, a Shanghai resident whose details were among those released in the leak.

China, which has been racing to create one of the world’s toughest data privacy regimes, frequently excoriates companies for mishandling data. But the authorities rarely point fingers at the country’s other top collector of personal information: the government itself.

Security researchers say the leaked database, apparently used by the police in Shanghai, had been left online and unsecured for months. It was exposed after an anonymous user posted in an online forum offering to sell the vast trove of data for 10 Bitcoin, or about $200,000. The New York Times confirmed parts of a sample of the database released by the anonymous user, who posted under the name ChinaDan.

In addition to basic information like names, addresses and ID numbers, the sample featured details that appeared to be drawn from external databases, like instructions for couriers on where to drop off deliveries, raising questions about how much information private companies share with the authorities. Of particular concern for many, it also contained intensely personal information, such as police reports that included the names of people accused of rape and domestic violence, as well as private information about political dissidents.

The government has sought to erase nearly all discussion of the leak. At a cabinet meeting led by China’s premier, Li Keqiang, last week, officials made only a passing reference to the question of privacy, emphasizing the need to “defend information security” so that the public and businesses could “operate with peace of mind,” according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Now, there are signs that people are growing wary of the government and public institutions, too, as they see how their own data is being used against them. Last month, a nationwide outcry erupted over the apparent abuse of Covid-19 tracking technology by local authorities.

Protesters fighting to recover their savings from four rural banks in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou found that the mobile apps used to identify and isolate people who might be spreading Covid had turned from green — meaning safe — to red, a designation that would prevent them from moving freely.

A routine street surveillance post in Shanghai

“There is no privacy in China,” said Silvia Si, 30, a protester whose health code had turned red. The authorities in Zhengzhou, under pressure to account for the episode, later punished five officials for changing the codes of more than 1,300 customers.

On Wednesday, a blogger in Beijing posted on Weibo that he was refusing to wear an electronic bracelet to track his movements while in isolation, saying the device was an “electronic shackle” and an infringement on his privacy. The post was liked around 60,000 times, and users flooded it with responses. Many said the bracelet reminded them of the treatment of criminals; others called it a ploy to surreptitiously collect personal information. The post was later taken down by censors, the blogger said.

Other comments in the NYT article indicate that some citizens are protesting in little ways, but they understand that at this point, the government will get everything it wants in terms of surveillance intrusiveness. They are just hoping for a brief respite from creeping intrusions into their private lives. If that is the best the Chinese people can do at this point in the great experiment in forever tyranny, it looks like the tyrants just might succeed in building a society that cannot ever throw off its oppressors.

China is leading the way is technology-based tyranny. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin realized he had to go all in on surveillance and information control just like China has done. Putin is building his version of Chinese tyranny in Russia. Tyrants everywhere are watching these experiments very carefully. If this social control experiment works in China and Russia, it could work just about everywhere. And, as surveillance technology continues to advance, the tyrants will implement it nationwide as soon as possible.

This is a significant part of the reason that I see democracy vs. tyranny as a global war. If democracy loses and tyrants really can build an impenetrable authoritarian state that citizens cannot breach, we could be witnessing the beginning of the end of a period for human flourishing and liberty. Not only would the American experiment end in tyranny, democracy worldwide would end.

Q: Is it reasonable to think that in time America could potentially succumb to the same kind of authoritarian police state that the tyrants in China and Russia are trying to build right now?[1] 

Footnote: 

1. There seems to be no shortage of authoritarian-minded people willing to cooperate and participate in tyranny. Because of that there will very likely (99% chance) always be more than plenty of workers, implementers and self-interested opportunists who foster and support tyrants at the expense of individual liberty. China's and Russia's surveillance states are not building or maintaining themselves. That takes hundreds of thousands of willing participants, maybe millions.