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Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life
wall street journal ^ | 12/19/2017 | Josh Chin and Clément Bürge

Posted on 12/19/2017 7:40:16 PM PST by bitt

URUMQI, China—This city on China’s Central Asia frontier may be one of the most closely surveilled places on earth.

Security checkpoints with identification scanners guard the train station and roads in and out of town. Facial scanners track comings and goings at hotels, shopping malls and banks. Police use hand-held devices to search smartphones for encrypted chat apps, politically charged videos and other suspect content. To fill up with gas, drivers must first swipe their ID cards and stare into a camera.

China’s efforts to snuff out a violent separatist movement by some members of the predominantly Muslim Uighur ethnic group have turned the autonomous region of Xinjiang, of which Urumqi is the capital, into a laboratory for high-tech social controls that civil-liberties activists say the government wants to roll out across the country.

It is nearly impossible to move about the region without feeling the unrelenting gaze of the government. Citizens and visitors alike must run a daily gantlet of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras and machines scanning their ID cards, faces, eyeballs and sometimes entire bodies.

When fruit vendor Parhat Imin swiped his card at a telecommunications office this summer to pay an overdue phone bill, his photo popped up with an “X.” Since then, he says, every scan of his ID card sets off an alarm. He isn’t sure what it signifies, but figures he is on some kind of government watch list because he is a Uighur and has had intermittent run-ins with the police.

He says he is reluctant to travel for fear of being detained. “They blacklisted me,” he says. “I can’t go anywhere.”

All across China, authorities are rolling out new technology to keep watch over people and shape their behavior. Controls on expression have tightened under President Xi Jinping, and the state’s vast

(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Philosophy; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: china; chinasurveillance; dihua; dungan; hightech; hui; huitsu; huizu; islam; redchina; rop; sinkiang; surveillance; surveillancestate; tihwa; uighur; urumqi; urumtsi; uyghur; wulumuqi; xinjiang
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1 posted on 12/19/2017 7:40:16 PM PST by bitt
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To: Whenifhow; null and void; aragorn; EnigmaticAnomaly; kalee; Kale; 2ndDivisionVet; Art in Idaho; ...

p


2 posted on 12/19/2017 7:40:39 PM PST by bitt (The first to squeal gets the best deal.)
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To: bitt

Why bother to post WSJ articles that can’t be read because of their paywall?


3 posted on 12/19/2017 7:41:39 PM PST by bigbob (People say believe half of what you see son and none of what you hear - M. Gaye)
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To: bitt

Who would ever believe that WE are right behind them..?

The thought is ridiculous.

ALAS.....


4 posted on 12/19/2017 7:42:03 PM PST by gaijin
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To: bigbob

One used to be able to google the headline and get the article, but it doesn’t work anymore (at least not for me)


5 posted on 12/19/2017 7:45:10 PM PST by PGR88
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To: bitt

One word: Uighurs


6 posted on 12/19/2017 7:47:27 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (<img src="http://i.imgur.com/WukZwJP.gif" width=800>)
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To: PGR88; bigbob

maybe clean your cache - sometimes I get in and sometimes I don’t....sorry..

I’ll FR mail you the rest if you want..


7 posted on 12/19/2017 7:50:58 PM PST by bitt (The first to squeal gets the best deal.)
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To: bitt

I wanted to send this to a friend of mine who travels to China - if you can FR mail it, thanks.


8 posted on 12/19/2017 7:52:52 PM PST by GnuThere
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To: bitt

This is what James Comey and the Obama administration were pushing for here when they tried to force Apple to provide a backdoor.


9 posted on 12/19/2017 7:55:09 PM PST by Fedora
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
One word: Uighurs

Nope. Islam

10 posted on 12/19/2017 8:06:06 PM PST by LoneRangerMassachusetts (Behind enemy lines)
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To: bitt

At least they paid American companies to set it up for them.


11 posted on 12/19/2017 8:06:08 PM PST by PAR35
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To: gaijin

We really are not that far behind.


12 posted on 12/19/2017 8:16:12 PM PST by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here of Citizen Parents-Know Islam, No Peace-No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: bitt

This Democrat Party admires Red China as an ideal society.


13 posted on 12/19/2017 8:17:17 PM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: LoneRangerMassachusetts

Correct.
Islam is a threat to the Communist Party and in China they take threats seriously.
I don’t want to live like that, but that would be how you control the jihadis.


14 posted on 12/19/2017 8:18:27 PM PST by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here of Citizen Parents-Know Islam, No Peace-No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: BenLurkin

The Bush League of the GOP are just as enamored of China.


15 posted on 12/19/2017 8:19:25 PM PST by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here of Citizen Parents-Know Islam, No Peace-No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: bitt

The globalist financier oligarchy is trying to do to China with various separatist and religious movements what they did to us with the hippies. I approve of the methods they are using to protect their sovereignty from a metaphorical Opium War. Google “BRICS” and you’ll see what this is all about.


16 posted on 12/19/2017 8:24:28 PM PST by Yollopoliuhqui
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To: gaijin

Google is building a new AI system in China and can use it’s population to refine its “work.”


17 posted on 12/19/2017 8:31:31 PM PST by ransomnote
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To: Lurkinanloomin
> We really are not that far behind.

Thanks to Google, we are already there, but we voluntarily bring the monitoring equipment with us ...

18 posted on 12/19/2017 8:32:38 PM PST by SecondAmendment (Restoring our Republic at 9.8357x10^8 FPS)
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To: SecondAmendment

Yes.
That’s why I use a Nokia 3585.
No software.


19 posted on 12/19/2017 8:36:43 PM PST by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here of Citizen Parents-Know Islam, No Peace-No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: GnuThere; bigbob; All

You’ve got mail

anyone else? It’s ready to send.


20 posted on 12/19/2017 8:43:15 PM PST by bitt (The first to squeal gets the best deal.)
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