Skip to content

Discerning Data

  • About Us
  • Additional Resources
  • Contact Us

DISCERNING DATA

A Faegre Drinker Blog Covering the Latest in Privacy, Cybersecurity and Data Strategy

  • Privacy
  • Cybersecurity
  • Data Strategy
  • Disruptionware

Human Rights Watch Denounces China’s Big Data Policing

Share

An international human rights organization is urging the Chinese government to stop building big data policing technologies that aggregate and analyze citizens’ personal information.  Though governments collecting information about its citizens is not new, China has begun pursuing newer and ambitious technologies, such as big data analytics, facial recognition, and cloud computing, to better and more quickly aggregate, mine, and leverage personal information.

Chinese police are using different systems to analyze large volumes and types of data, including text, video, and images, to monitor and predict the behavior of certain targeted groups, including terrorists, activists, dissidents and ethnic minorities. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), a global nonprofit, nongovernmental human rights organization based in New York, these systems “also enable the police to arbitrarily gain unprecedented information about the lives of ordinary people, including those who have no connection to wrongdoing.”

HRW China director Sophie Richardson said in a statement, “[i]t is frightening that Chinese authorities are collecting and centralizing ever more information about hundreds of millions of ordinary people, identifying persons who deviate from what they determine to be ‘normal thought,’ and then surveilling them.”

According to HRW, one such endeavor, named “Police Cloud,” is a system that the Chinese government currently uses to collect a wide variety of information regarding citizens, including medical histories, supermarket memberships and delivery records.  The system then employs big data analytics to track people’s movements, activities and associations.  More concerningly, HRW also believes that China is using this information to predict future behavior, or “predictive policing.”

China’s lack of any enforceable protections for citizens’ privacy rights against state surveillance makes the government’s use of these advanced technologies particularly troubling.  Unlike the privacy frameworks in many neighboring countries, including Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, China does not have a central privacy or data protection law that defines, regulates, and protects the collection, use, and handling of personally identifiable information from data subjects.

To the contrary, China has promulgated several laws and regulations that authorize state actors and private entities to collect, retain, and use personally identifiable information, including the State Security Law and the Cybersecurity Law.

Though HRW admits that preventing criminal activity is a legitimate state interest, it questions whether the use of these advanced big data policing technologies are the right solution. It notes that “predictive tools often point to the same old patterns, making it likely for policing to replicate old mistakes or biases … [t]his throws into doubt whether the use of these predictive tools adds much new, and whether they are either a necessary or proportionate intrusion on the rights of individuals.”

Receive Email Alerts to New Articles

SUBSCRIBE

December 5, 2017
Written by: Discerning Data Editorial Board
Category: Privacy
Tags: Big Data, China, data subjects, human rights watch, International

Post navigation

Previous Previous post: California’s First 2017 Health Care Data Breach Enforcement Results in $2 Million Settlement
Next Next post: Agenda and Panelists Announced for FTC’s Information Injury Workshop in December

Search the Blog

Sign Up for Email Alerts

PODCASTS

Faegre Drinker on Law and Technology

©2022 Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP. All Rights Reserved. Lawyer Advertising.

  • About Us
  • Additional Resources
  • Contact Us
We use cookies to improve your experience with our website. By browsing our site, you are agreeing to the use of cookies. For more information about how we use cookies, please review our privacy policy and cookie policy. OK
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT