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January 1, 2022 04:34 pm

China Is Harvesting 'Masses' of Data on Western Targets from Social Media

The Washington Post reports:China is turning a major part of its internal Internet data surveillance network outward, mining Western social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to equip its government agencies, military and police with information on foreign targets, according to a Washington Post review of hundreds of Chinese bidding documents, contracts and company filings. China maintains a countrywide network of government data surveillance services — called public opinion analysis software — that were developed over the past decade and are used domestically to warn officials of politically sensitive information online. The software primarily targets China's domestic Internet users and media, but a Washington Post review of bidding documents and contracts for over 300 Chinese government projects since the beginning of 2020 include orders for software designed to collect data on foreign targets from sources such as Twitter, Facebook and other Western social media.... These surveillance dragnets are part of a wider drive by Beijing to refine its foreign propaganda efforts through big data and artificial intelligence. They also form a network of warning systems designed to sound real-time alarms for trends that undermine Beijing's interests... Some of the Chinese government's budgeting includes buying and maintaining foreign social media accounts on behalf of police and propaganda departments.... The documents describe highly customizable programs that can collect real-time social media data from individual social media users. Some describe tracking broad trends on issues including U.S. elections... The exact scope of China's government public opinion monitoring industry is unclear, but there have been some indications about its size in Chinese state media. In 2014, the state-backed newspaper China Daily said more than 2 million people were working as public opinion analysts... In June 2020, Twitter suspended 23,000 accounts that it said were linked to the Chinese Communist Party and covertly spreading propaganda to undermine pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. This month, Twitter said it removed a further 2,048 accounts linked to Beijing and producing coordinated content undermining accusations of rights abuses in Xinjiang. Experts say those accounts represent a small fraction of China's efforts to boost pro-Beijing messaging on foreign social media. Reached for comment, a Twitter spokesperson told the Post," We prohibit use of our API for surveillance purposes, as per our developer policy and terms." The Post adds that Facebook "did not respond to requests for comment about whether it is aware of the monitoring...."

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