A report in the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, translated by the SupChina newsletter and website on Wednesday, found that vast amounts of citizens’ private information can be freely bought by strangers, for very affordable prices.
For just 700 yuan, or $100, the paper’s reporters were able to find huge amounts of information about a colleague — including a full list of hotel rooms checked into, airline flights taken, Internet cafes visited, border entries and exits, apartment rentals and real estate holdings. All they needed was his personal ID card number.
They were also able to purchase data to pinpoint another colleague’s location in real time via his mobile phone or buy detailed information about bank transactions, driving infractions and train journeys — even whom their colleague stayed with during each hotel visit.
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The data is available on hundreds of tracking services advertised on China’s Internet platforms. Some may be fraudulent, but others are clearly accessing information from national police and government databases, as well as banks and mobile carriers, David Bandurski, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project, wrote in the SupChina piece.
It is either being sold by the police and authorities — or outsiders are hacking into national databases, Bandurski wrote.
If that wasn’t bad enough, China is already in the midst of an ambitious plan to centralize everyone’s data and issue everyone a score based on their “social credit.”
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A city government official told NPR the score draws on up to 3,000 items of information collected from nearly 100 government entities to determine an individual's public credit score, adding the city also plans to reach for other sources of personal information. A good score earns rewards like discounted airline tickets, and a bad score could one day lead to problems getting loans and getting seats on planes and trains.
But it also quoted Zhu Dake, a humanities professor at Tongji University in Shanghai, as warning the authorities could start judging people in moral or ideological grounds.
Nan mais ce n'est pas grave ça, tu auras des promotions commerciales en échange, imagine comment ça sera trop mieux !
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"It's definitely the police who sold this information. You don't need to pretend it is not you,” said one user, while others complained that it would be impossible to buy government officials' personal data.
“Only we, citizens, don't have any privacy,” one wrote.
Via La ML Désidédata (voir http://shaarli.guiguishow.info/?NewrhQ )