
WeChat and the Surveillance State - Markoff
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-48552907
======
_hardwaregeek
I was explaining what it's like to live in China to someone and it's like
explaining a dystopian cyberpunk novel, but with a level of surrealism and
just plain absurdity. A Gibson novel filtered through some Philip K. Dick. You
have a gigantic surveillance state with unprecedented reach and
control...banning people from referencing a cartoon bear. You have a society
with an extremely sophisticated cashless economy——beggars will take WeChat
Pay——yet no clean water and horrible pollution.

~~~
sho
Oh come on. Pollution is highly localised. Yeah, there's a few bad cities but
it's a big place and 99% of it is fine. And no clean water, really? That will
be news to the billion plus inhabitants who haven't realised they're dead yet
from lack of clean water, sixth sense style.

Nit picking aside - that surveillance state is maybe 5 years ahead of the
west. I'm continually amazed that western governments have allowed strongly
encrypted private communications to become a thing, even an expectation - this
is totally unprecedented and a radical upset to the balance of power between
the state and its citizens. I expect it's only a matter of time before strong
end to end encryption is totally banned in the west, too.

~~~
_hardwaregeek
How many native Chinese do you know who drink tap water? Almost all I know
either drink bottled water or only hot, boiled tap water.

As for pollution, only 84 out of 338 cities reached the national standard for
air quality [1]. That's not exactly "a few bad cities". The government has
been working on improving it, but they still have a long way to go.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China#Air_polluti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China#Air_pollution)

~~~
sho
> Almost all I know either drink bottled water or only hot, boiled tap water

100% of them drink boiled tap water. But isn't this proving my point? Not like
it's poisoned with heavy metals?

As for pollution, of course they have a long way to go, but the dystopian
picture you paint is hardly fair. It's not perfect but you make it sound like
Blade Runner 2049. It's not. I live in Bangkok right now and it is WAY worse
than Shenzhen or Shanghai. But I never hear Thailand invoked in one of these
"pollution hell" threads.

Look, what you said isn't technically incorrect but your level of hyperbole
irked me. I always come across as defending China or something in these
threads but I'm not really, I just want it to be fact based. China is not THAT
bad. Yes, I know a lot of Chinese people, and they express no pressing desire
to leave. It is very far from the worst place on earth to live.

~~~
tempguy9999
> 100% of them drink boiled tap water. But isn't this proving my point?

No, it's exactly disproving your point, or at least strong evidence against
it. To be explicit: if 100% drink boiled tapwater then 100% feel pollution is
present which strongly suggests pollution isn't localised.

As for introducting heavy metals, you're trying to fudge the issue: pollution
may include, but is not limited to, heavy metals.

> I always come across as defending China or something

I take your point and will accept you're arguing in good faith, but a sloppy
post like this simply undermines yourself.

~~~
gastlygem
We drink boiled water just because we like it warm. It's part of the culture.
It's also one of the reasons why there are few epidemics when natural disaster
strikes.

The tap water quality varies from place to place, but it's generally good
enough, granted it is not as good as the first world countries such as the US
or Japan or much of the Europe, but after all we are still a third world
country.

We are a surveillance state and it's worth discussing and condemning in every
aspect, but talking about tapped water just dilutes the topic.

------
dheera
I absolutely hate WeChat (not necessarily just for the reasons in the article,
but many other _technical_ reasons) but I'm forced to use it because all of my
friends and my entire social life happens on it. And I live in the Bay Area.
If I don't use it I would basically be locking myself up in a prison where I
would never see my friends.

Even the majority of my friends who work at Facebook and Google use WeChat to
organize social events. Hell, I've visited friends at Facebook's HQ and had to
tell them by WeChat that I'm downstairs in the lobby.

I personally totally get why this happens, and the network effect is so strong
that my first instinct to contact my friends is via WeChat as well. I too
organize social events on WeChat, because I know my friends don't really check
anything else, so in the process, I too am guilty of propagating this network
effect.

I still hate the app though. I just don't hate it enough to want to ditch my
social life.

~~~
baby
TBF. This is because you only hang out with asian people. I live in the bay
too and I don't know many people using wechat :|

~~~
dheera
Mostly, not only, but in any case I'm not disputing that. I'm just expressing
that despite the fact that I use WeChat a lot, and need to use WeChat a lot, I
still don't actually _like_ the thing. I just like my friends enough that I
will grudgingly use WeChat because "everyone" (in my circle) does.

~~~
yjhoney
I feel that someone who really respects their privacy should not hang out with
friends who don't respect their own privacy. Because inevitably, their friends
will post enough material to compromise the privacy of everyone in the circle.

A year after I stopped using Facebook actively, all of my friends have stopped
hanging out with me. It's just me, my family, and my coworkers.

------
komali2
I used to hold a kind of naive hope that the ham fisted Party would eventually
be replaced with democracy. I remember back in 2011 my friends that were
placed in moderately distinguished positions were sending their kids to Canada
to collect foreign dual citizenship, fully expecting the collapse of the PRC
in their lifetime.

But now I think the Party is too good at maintaining itself. It's augmented by
technology like WeChat to know exactly what is going on across the whole
country. Access to dissident conversations will make it even easier to tailor
the kind of subtle propaganda they're getting very good at.

Will the PRC just continue to exist as it is, forever? My last remaining hope
is for massive power grabs by xi jinping (already happening), followed by
government ineptitude as he ages and underlings squabble, followed by chaos
upon his death. Beyond that I can't see any way out.

~~~
theseadroid
Maybe there's a third option aside from continue the state quo or convert
fully into a democracy? Maybe the party can evolve into something that's more
and more benevolent to the people it governs?

As a Chinese who emigrated because of the many social problems of China, I'm
not sure switching to democracy right now will be beneficial for regular
Chinese. You've all heard stories about how bad mannered Chinese tourists are,
but those are still somehow better than the average Chinese I'd say. Think
about people who still eat shark fins today, who have no problem buying rhino
horns or pangolin skins. (there are more extreme stuff, one example:
[https://www.animalsasia.org/intl/media/news/news-
archive/fiv...](https://www.animalsasia.org/intl/media/news/news-archive/five-
things-you-need-to-know-about-bear-bile-farming.html)). If you ever visited
mainland China you probably noticed many public restrooms have no toilet
paper. Some places tried to put toilet paper in but people would steal all of
them right after.

I am not sure democracy can work with people like that. I fear it wont. I fear
not enough educated/informed people will make democratic decisions that are
harmful to themselves. I fear a democratic China will become the next Russia,
the next Brazil, the next Turkey. At least the current party has done more
poverty fighting than most of the third world democratic countries. (data
available on world bank website)

Does China have problems? Absolutely. The question is if you really understand
what are the problems, before we even start talking if the proposed solutions
will work or not.

>Will the PRC just continue to exist as it is, forever? My last remaining hope
is for massive power grabs by xi jinping (already happening), followed by
government ineptitude as he ages and underlings squabble, followed by chaos
upon his death. Beyond that I can't see any way out.

If that happens, is that a good thing? To you, or some Americans who see China
as a foe, maybe. I doubt such a chaos is what the average Chinese wants.

P.S. PRC doesn't allow dual citizenship.

~~~
komali2
I hear you and understand you, but your argument is essentially nullified by
the existence of Taiwan.

We have proof positive that the Chinese culture is not only compatible with
democracy, it flourishes beneath it.

~~~
jimclegg
I think its a bit premature, but do you really think China under a democratic
system would be better for the world?

What would Chinese populism look like when it eventually emerges given more
democratic features?

Are you sure we are ready for a Chinese Trump? and for the silent majority of
China to dictate foreign policy?

I'm from the school of "be careful what you wish for".

~~~
komali2
We have a competent Chinese Trump today in the form of xi jinping - the
difference being instead of being limited to merely separating children the
children of Other from their Parents and throwing them in jail, Jinping is
directing the wholesale imprisonment and "reeducation" of entire religions,
and occasionally just taking their organs from them.

I'll take a democratically elected trump that is gone in at most 8 years over
the now irremovable xi jinping.

So yes, democracy is unilaterally the better option for China.

~~~
theseadroid
have you talked to any Chinese people and how many of them oppose this
reeducation of entire religions? I'm just curious whether that will still
happen in your planned democratic China.

~~~
teknologist
Could be argued that anyone who watches propaganda on Chinese TV daily isn't
particularly fit to have that discussion.

It's not like in the West where people are critical of this kind of stuff.
They've really excelled at developing a "hive mind" mentality with what the
state media put out.

~~~
theseadroid
Assuming you are not living in China, could you please go ask some Chinese
around you? There are really plenty of Chinese living abroad.

------
ConfusedDog
This is indeed very scary especially now it requires facial recognition
part... to sign up for WeChat, you need to have a valid phone number; to use
WeChat pay, you got to provide real-name and official ID, bank account, etc.
From the WeChat social network, relationships are easily identified.

The mere existence of such tool is destine to be misused, regardless who made
it. This is what real power looks like.

~~~
srslack
There is practically no difference in these requirements versus what Facebook
is requiring. Try to create a Facebook account and they will soon flag your
account to require a photo for facial recognition. You can't signup for
Facebook without a valid mobile number. And if Facebook does not like the
photo you provide for facial recognition, they want a government ID.

~~~
franciscop
Mmh no? I've been without FB account for 3-4 years, and recently opened a new
one from scratch because some friends _only_ use FB and absolutely nothing
besides confirming my email was required.

Yes, it does suggest that I add my phone, and that I verify my friends, and
that blablabla, but nothing else is required for me to add few friends and
join a chat.

~~~
monocasa
My bet is that they were able to internally link your previous account and the
new one. And probably kept building your profile while you were "without" an
account.

~~~
franciscop
Oh interesting point of view. I was thinking they might have linked my "ghost
profile", not the previous one, but yeah that's a possibility

------
horyzen
And yet facebook wants to be more like WeChat[0].

[0][https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/8/18256226/facebook-
wechat-m...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/8/18256226/facebook-wechat-
messaging-zuckerberg-strategy)

------
gen3
I'm glad this article was written. I think the general public is unaware of
how China operates, and through education we can better protect our own civil
liberties (and better understand why the China is the way that it is).

~~~
Cypher
I do wonder how long it's going to be before we see WhatsApp and the
surveillance state articles.

~~~
komali2
I dunno. We're not anywhere near the level of China (here in the USA).

To achieve that, we'd need

1\. The fourth estate to become a government agency (functionally)

2\. Facebook to have government agents on-site that employees have to follow
the orders of

3\. The existence of a "department of cultural well-being" with total
authority to regulate art, media, news, etc

4\. Laws on the books outlawing esoteric orwellian concepts like "distributing
harmful rumors" or "disrupting the cultural well-being of the United States."

Certainly any one of those steps would have me in front of the capital with a
big bottle of water and a picket sign, ready to settle in for the long one.

China is very far removed from us.

~~~
jimclegg
Facebook's board of directors doesn't include goverment agents (even if
retired)?

~~~
komali2
(even if retired) being the key point.

The PRC has active bureaucrats working in nearly every info company in the
country. They are the Party's Cultural Representative and their word is law.

There is no equivalent in the USA, not even close.

~~~
jimclegg
Seems like a difference without distinction if the outcomes desired by the
government are achieved through retired agents and a variety of pressure
points.

The illusion of "average citizen control" is more common in USA population
than China it seems, whether this control is real is debatable.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
The current American government regularly issues proclamations that major news
organizations are publishing fake news. It sure doesn't seem like they're
achieving their desired outcomes there. Maybe that's not a fair comparison -
have any major Chinese companies been able to say "yes, we understand Xi
Jinping wants us to do X, but we think he's authoritarian and wrong so we
won't do it"?

------
pixelmonkey
Very good article, and the video on that page is a must-watch to understand
the perils of a state/tech/media alliance that runs too deep.

------
beager
The bit about face recognition and voice imprinting is most certainly being
used to populate some database, but it also serves as a CAPTCHA of sorts.

Advancements in procedural face and voice generation could create a powerful
tool to beat CAPTCHA advancements, and to preserve anonymity against creeping
surveillance.

Of course, China has hooks into the device manufacturers so doing this is an
order of magnitude harder than it already is.

~~~
mortenjorck
If posting photos from a 6/4 vigil in Hong Kong got the reporter from zero to
the first tier watch list, I have a feeling any biometric mismatches would
quickly escalate him to the next tier.

------
xyzal
This maybe implies a use case where deepfakes could actually used be to the
benefit of society.

~~~
Swinx43
I honestly see it going the other way. Deepfakes being used to create fake
material that falsely incriminates someone. So if they have the biometrics of
an account on file already, they would match a fake video circulating the
service to that account and presto you are on a watch list.

~~~
Aelius
I could imagine a "resistance" bombarding wechat with so much garbage that the
PRC wouldn't be able to trust intel gathered from it.

~~~
Swinx43
Now that is an interesting thought. They could incriminate party members and
government officials to sow distrust in the ranks.

Having seen though how certain groups of the population have been dealt with
in China does make me wonder if they would not just round everyone up and send
them for “re-education”.

------
netwanderer3
I once tried downloading WeChat from Google Play but the registration process
required another existing WeChat user that I may know to recommend or vouch
for my account first so I couldn't complete it. Strangely enough, a few months
later I needed to use it for work and this requirement disappeared. Has this
ever occurred to anyone?

~~~
01100011
Yeah they occasionally get paranoid and clamp down it seems. I had installed
it, made an account, then uninstalled it. When I reinstalled, I forgot my
password. That flagged my # as suspicious and then it required another WeChat
user(who had an account longer than, IIRC, 6 months, and who hadn't validated
anyone else lately) validate me before I could continue.

A few weeks ago I tried again and all they wanted was a facebook auth to
create a new account. I think they're trying to broaden adoption now. Probably
a good strategy for a spy app.

------
educationdata
What is more scary is that there are many Chinese Americans using WeChat to
connect with family members. There is no doubt some of them work in the U.S.
government or other sensitive companies or agencies. By tracking their
location alone, the Chinese government can obtain huge amount of data.

~~~
vajaya
should we ban wechat? probably yes. it's a quintessential threat to privacy,
freedom, and democracy practice. but are we able to? not at all. All big
corporates and even some in government are on their side. China is where money
is to make and ruling is to learn.

~~~
majia
The question is what is the due process to ban wechat. An executive order from
Trump? If wechat is banned, should all other Chinese apps and websites be
banned because every Chinese company is tied to Chinese government? If someone
objects to the ban, should he/she be banned for colluding with a foreign
threat? If you go down the slope, then at some point the US will become as
oppressive as China. China can't make US more authoritarian, but paranoia can.

------
AFascistWorld
[https://advox.globalvoices.org/2017/12/27/dont-call-xi-
the-b...](https://advox.globalvoices.org/2017/12/27/dont-call-xi-the-bun-
chinese-netizens-are-being-jailed-for-chatroom-jokes/)

------
jorblumesea
It's thing like this that I wonder if the the US will always have a bit of an
advantage in the coming cold war. Similar to how the Soviet Union gave the
West continual propaganda victories, China seems to be replicating the same
mistakes. The US has done so many bad things, always seemed to win the
propaganda war because the Soviet union was so unequivocally repressive.

~~~
joyjoyjoy
Maybe. But both, the Soviet Union and the US had to offer something.

US: Idea of freedom and democracy

Soviet Union: Idea of equality and communism.

China lacks an ideology that can attract foreigners. Also, in all super powers
since Rome it was possible for able people to become a citizen and to be part
of it. Even Nazis became American (think von Braun).

It is not possible to become a Chinese citizen.

------
Libelula
That's enough for me, I'm uninstalling the app and my Chinese friends better
upgrade to WhatsApp or Telegram.

------
joyjoyjoy
Yes. China. I love WeChat I must say. Much better than WhatsApp.

Yes, Tiananmen Square. Westerners in China call it "The day when nothing
happened". But I also heard different views from Western Politicians that were
deeply involved with the Chinese system. The amazing thing is that the
students were actually allowed to protest for a long time.

The guy in the video is just an asshole. He is harassing normal Chinese people
who might get problems.

I love Chine. I understand and respect "sensitive" issues. In the end I can
not become Chinese and always will be a "tolerated guest".

~~~
tuxxy
What is this weird notion of "respecting sensitive issues"?

Is that just a polite way of saying, "I don't discuss human and civil rights
violations." Why should I respect a person's desire to not hear about their
own government's crimes?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
What makes the problem so challenging to fix is that it's not an inherently
weird notion. I respect sensitive issues all the time; I don't make light of
tragedies around people who've recently experienced them, I don't discuss
controversial issues at quiet dinner parties, and so on. The Chinese
government has just hijacked that entirely natural mechanism to justify
driving some conversations out of the public sphere entirely.

------
joyjoyjoy
Why so focused on democracy? Is democracy a value by itself?

Have a look at this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon%27s_New_Map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon%27s_New_Map)

[https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nCSXvCM3ogI/WZhtafxpPoI/AAAAAAAAX...](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nCSXvCM3ogI/WZhtafxpPoI/AAAAAAAAX70/3-pJ90SPWuksD1bfMnPtVvGzSqJ6Tbh5gCLcBGAs/s1600/Gap%2BCountries.jpg)

------
ngcc_hk
Just copy the idea of Apple “Find my” as they had for e-wall, wechat .... and
reprogram to enhance this.

As Leo or is it Smith would say ... “upgrade”.

The matrix totally own you.

------
panarky
_Then came a stage I was not prepared for. "Faceprint is required for security
purposes," it said.

I was instructed to hold my phone up - to "face front camera straight on" \-
looking directly at the image of a human head. Then told to "Read numbers
aloud in Mandarin Chinese".

My voice was captured by the App at the same time it scanned my face.

Afterwards a big green tick: "Approved"_

------
anonu
In NYC there's been a growing trend towards merchants going cashless. There
are bills to prevent this. Losing ability to pay with cash means a loss of
privacy and anonymity.

The WeChat dominance in payments reminds me a bit of this trend. Luckily some
US local governments care about maintaining some level of privacy.

------
quotz
The West has to be wary of becoming a surveillance state. More often than not
tech companies in the West are using China tech as an example of how they
should operate. We have to protect our civil liberties. I grew up in a post-
communist country in Europe, riddled with corruption and dictatorial
tendencies, and it is really not a nice place. It's strange that as technology
becomes a bigger part of our society, the more it is used against us.

------
0x1997
Tiananmen Square, 1989 -- Revisited [http://www.unz.com/article/tiananmen-
square-1989-revisited/](http://www.unz.com/article/tiananmen-
square-1989-revisited/)

------
AnthonyWnC
Another hit piece by bbc; move along there is nothing to see.

------
vajaya
basically Chinese government doesn't want its citizens to talk anything
cultural, political, spiritual, religious, etc. If you wanna talk fashion,
food, travel, music, and the likes, that's absolutely fine. and it seems
Chinese people are perfectly content with it. I heard that wechat is
transparent to Chinese authority. Last year, a dozens of college students who
are Marxist activists and advocate for workers' right in Shenzhen(yes, that
techy wonderland so much applauded on HN) were arrested and disappeared since.
Some say the authority can watch their every move via wechat.

~~~
Cypher
Well worker rights is a fantasy in the west too.

Google and facebook track our every moves and the NSA can watch over our every
move. The scary thing is few journalist are left to talk about it over here.

~~~
komali2
The NSA can't watch our every move, that's illegal.

We learned from Edward Snowden that they do so for some people anyway,
illegally. It's bad and wrong.

It's not nearly at the level of China.

America doesn't have xinjiang reeducation camps for political dissidents that
also happens to be full of people charged with the crime of being religious.

America isn't harvesting the organs of its prisoners against their will.

The consequences of being caught by the Chinese surveillance machine is far,
far worse in China than it is in the USA, which really doesn't even have it at
the same level.

~~~
pishpash
If we're talking about what a state considers to be marginal groups, you must
not compare your own imagined experiences if you're not part of a marginal
group. The consequences of being caught by the police as a black man, for
example, is far far worse in the US than it is in China or many other places.
This is also a much more likely event.

You might want to try arousing the suspicions of your own state to see how it
really reacts. You might be disappointed.

~~~
sjy
> The consequences of being caught by the police as a black man, for example,
> is far far worse in the US than it is in China or many other places.

This claim is almost impossible to evaluate. What do you mean by 'caught'? Are
you referring to guilty people being punished in accordance with the law?
Innocent people being unfairly targeted for investigation? Or illegal police
brutality?

------
NotPaidToPost
Whatever WeChat's links with policing in China, I believe that they have an
equivalent of Face ID to authenticate users. Keeping in mind that WeChat is
used as an electronic wallet and almost bank account in China.

It would have been better journalism to mention this instead of only going for
the angle of state policing. It's likely that WeChat already had the person's
biometrics details because of the above.

Of course that's less catchy than implying that they requested biometrics
details because he had posted about Tiananmen commemorations. (though the end
result is likely the same)

~~~
aloer
Apple does not have my faceID biometric details and does not need them outside
of my own device. Wouldn’t that make your assumption just as bad?

------
ridewinter
No, it’s an article by and for anyone with western values. You know, the
values that resulted in 99% of the innovations in this world.

~~~
komali2
You can correlate, directly, the "Western value system" with 99% of
innovations in this world?

Wow! I have questions!

1\. What is the west?

2\. What is the homogeneous value system of the west, in its entirety?

3\. What is list of the inventions this value system?

4\. How do we know it was these values that generated these innovations
instead of other causes?

As you might expect, I am extremely skeptical! I'm particularly curious how
you're going to deal what I view as a very non homogeneous concept of "Western
values" (it is news to me to hear them lumped together like that), and where
you'll draw your border on "The West." For example, surely your West
definition must include the Arabian peninsula, for giving us mathematics, 0,
and eye surgery. Surely also it must include China for giving us gunpowder and
extensive bureaucracy? Oh and Japan for innovations in education systems!

~~~
ridewinter
Western values: freedom of speech, the ability to remove bad leaders, etc.

IMO, all of the historical innovations you mention in the Arabian peninsula,
China and Japan happened during periods of relative openness in those
cultures.

~~~
komali2
Interesting - so those values existed well before our modern concept of "the
west," in a place we probably wouldn't call "the west" during a period of time
when "the west" was very "not open?" For example, during the dark ages,
Inquisitions, etc?

Why call it "western values?" Why not just specifically refer to the values by
name?

~~~
ridewinter
They are called “western” values because their current form began with the
Enlightenment and scientific revolution in Europe and have stuck around since
then. But yes they’ve popped up temporarily in other past cultures like
Ancient Greece. If you know of a better name than “western values” let me
know.

~~~
jimclegg
They are called "western values" thanks to a very eurocentric (and somewhat
ignorant) view of the world that was exported thanks to colonialism.

Many of the inventions and values attributed to "Western values/culture" are
derived from non western civilizations (including a tremendous amount of
math/science knowledge which was imported from the east).

Propoganda and lying through ommission is quite prevalant in western accounts
of history, it may require studying abroad to realize the scope of this
activity.

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
The digital war will be won with pencil and paper.

Jun 06 2019

Me

------
dvduval
Facebook/Twitter have been used to manipulate politics in many countries.
China does not want WeChat to be used in a similar way. Somehow here in the
US/West everyone gets the real news?

~~~
komali2
The Chinese government will use WeChat data to arrest and make dissidents
vanish.

Fakenews is not a threat great enough to justify this.

There is no equivalence between what is happening in China and what we are
dealing with in the USA.

~~~
jimclegg
Kind of like the US government using Facebook data/communications to arrest
people?

Sounds very equal.

~~~
komali2
Interesting, I hadn't heard that the United States government was wholesale
surveilling its population, with no oversight, with an open tap in Facebook
data, and using that information to imprison people for thought crimes such as
having a religion.

False equivalence doesn't pass for me. The USA has surveillance issues, but it
isn't the prc.

~~~
jimclegg
In many ways its worse, PRC doesn't arrest or extrajudicially murder people
that have never visited China from what I understand.

Julian Assange would be surfing in Australia with his family right now if he
exposed Chinese war crimes.

~~~
komali2
> Julian Assange would be surfing in Australia with his family right now if he
> exposed Chinese war crimes.

We certainly don't know this to be true or false, because China hasn't had a
Julian Assange yet.

What we can work with is available data - China has tens of thousands of
thought-criminals in reeducation camps, and is actively killing them for their
organs. America has leveraged its extrajudicial international powers twice in
recent memory - once for Julian Assange, once for Kim Dotcom.

