The surveillance application that authorities in northwestern China’s volatile Xinjiang region are forcing Muslim Uyghurs to install on their mobile devices to track online activities and censor content lacks encryption to secure the transfer of collected data, according to a report by a group that supports global internet freedom technologies.
The Open Technology Fund (OTF), a program under the auspices of U.S.-government funded Radio Free Asia, said in a recent report that the app sends the unsecured data to an outside central server operated by the Chinese government. Authorities began requiring citizens in Xinjiang to install the Android app known as Jingwang, or “clean internet” in Chinese, on their mobile devices last year in another move to fuel repression in the heavily surveilled Muslim-majority region. Local police have enforced the policy with spot-checks of mobile phones on the street.
The Open Technology Fund (OTF), a program under the auspices of U.S.-government funded Radio Free Asia, said in a recent report that the app sends the unsecured data to an outside central server operated by the Chinese government. Authorities began requiring citizens in Xinjiang to install the Android app known as Jingwang, or “clean internet” in Chinese, on their mobile devices last year in another move to fuel repression in the heavily surveilled Muslim-majority region. Local police have enforced the policy with spot-checks of mobile phones on the street.
