Chinese Government Tenders AI-Based Software To Monitor Its Citizens, Violating Human Rights?

Dozens of Chinese companies have built software that uses artificial intelligence to sort through the data collected about residents. (photo: doc. pixabay)

JAKARTA - Dozens of Chinese companies have built software that uses artificial intelligence to sort through the data collected about residents. This comes amid high demand from authorities looking to improve their surveillance tools. This was reported by Reuters after viewing government documents.

According to more than 50 publicly available documents examined by Reuters, dozens of entities in China over the past four years have purchased such software. This software is known as "one person, one file". This technology improves existing software, which not only collects data but leaves it up to people to organize it.

“The system has the ability to learn independently and can optimize file creation accuracy as the amount of data increases. (Face that is) partially blocked, masked, or wearing glasses, and low-resolution portraits can also be archived with relative accuracy,” according to a report published last July by the public security department of Henan, China's third-largest province by population.

Henan's public security department did not respond to requests for comment about the system and its use.

The new software is claimed to enhance Beijing's current approach to surveillance. While China's existing systems can collect individual data, law enforcement and other users are left to regulate it.

According to Jeffrey Ding, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, another limitation of current surveillance software is its inability to link a person's personal details to real-time locations except at security checkpoints such as airports.

“One person, one file is a way of sorting information that makes it easy to track individuals,” said Mareike Ohlberg, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

China's Ministry of Public Security, which oversees regional police authorities, did not respond to requests for comment on one person, one file, and its use of surveillance. In addition to the police unit, 10 bids were opened by Chinese Communist Party bodies in charge of political and legal affairs. China's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission also declined to comment.

The tenders examined by Reuters represent a small part of efforts by Chinese police units and Party bodies to enhance surveillance networks by harnessing the power of big data and AI, according to three industry experts interviewed for this story.

According to government documents, some users of the software, such as schools, want to monitor unfamiliar faces outside their compound.

The majority, such as the police unit in Sichuan province's southwest Ngawa province, which is mostly inhabited by Tibetans, ordered it for more explicit security purposes. Tender Ngawa described the software as "maintaining political security, social stability, and peace among people."

Beijing says its monitoring is critical to fighting crime and has been key to its efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19. Human rights activists such as Human Rights Watch say the country is building a surveillance state that violates privacy and unfairly targets certain groups, such as the Uyghur Muslim minority.

A Reuters review shows that local authorities across the country, including in densely populated districts in Beijing and underdeveloped provinces such as Gansu, have opened at least 50 tenders in the four years since the first patent application was made. A total of 32 of them are open for tender in 2021. Twenty-two technology companies, including Sensetime, Huawei, Megvii, Cloudwalk, Dahua, and Baidu's cloud divisions, are now offering the software.

Sensetime declined to comment. Megvii, Cloudwalk, Dahua, and Baidu's cloud divisions did not respond to requests for comment.

Huawei said in a statement that a partner had developed a one-person, one-file app on its smart city platform. But they declined to comment on the patent application.

"Huawei does not develop or sell apps that target specific groups of people," the company said.

The documents reviewed by Reuters cover 22 of China's 31 main administrative divisions, and all levels of provincial government, from regional public security departments to Party offices for one neighborhood.

The new system aims to understand the gigantic datasets these entities collect, using complex algorithms and machine learning to create custom files for individuals. Files update themselves automatically as the software sorts the data.

However, various challenges can complicate implementation. Bureaucracy and even costs can create fragmented and disjointed national networks, three AI and surveillance experts told Reuters.

Reuters also found announcements for successful bids for more than half of the 50 procurement documents analyzed, with values between several million yuan and nearly 200 million yuan (IDR 451 billion).