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Economic zone, state-run paper admit to China govt spy scheme

Thousands of dollars spent to monitor smart phones in Wenzhou city
Economic zone, state-run paper admit to China govt spy scheme

Two men look at smart phones outside an apartment (AFP Photo/Greg Baker)

Published: January 08, 2015 09:59 AM GMT
Updated: April 22, 2015 01:05 AM GMT

The website of an economic zone in China has made a rare admission that local state security spent thousands of dollars on virus software designed to spy on mobile users.

About US$24,000 was spent on Trojan software to monitor smart phones in Wenzhou, it said, a large port city in Zhejiang province where authorities have demolished hundreds of churches over the past year.

Wenzhou Economic and Technological Development Zone removed the notice from its website on Wednesday afternoon after bloggers started posting screen grabs on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

The software, which monitors messages, conversations, photos and other information on iPhones and Android smart phones in real-time without users’ knowledge, was supplied by a state-owned company in Hubei province.

The notice represents rare public acknowledgement of how China’s vast state security apparatus spies on its own citizens, a revelation that became yet more surprising on Thursday when the state-run Global Times published an article on the issue.

“It seems very unusual that they are openly admitting this,” said William Nee, a Hong Kong-based China researcher for Amnesty International. “The whole point with a Trojan virus, the reason why it is effective, is that the person or community being spied on doesn’t know that they’re being spied on.”

Although rights groups have previously known that Chinese state security officials use Trojan software to monitor dissidents, this is thought to be the first time use of the virus by state security has been acknowledged and documented, added Nee.

In response, some Weibo users commented that the government was essentially violating its own rules: according to Chinese law, anyone found deliberately distributing a computer virus faces up to five years in prison.

Few were surprised to hear they were being spied on, however. 

“In fact, our phone is always being monitored, it is not a secret!” one Weibo user wrote on Thursday.

Smart phones have been used as a key tool by Christians in Wenzhou in their ongoing fight against government efforts to destroy churches deemed to have fallen foul of building regulations.

In July, Christians used smart phones to document and post images of protesters battling police who were trying to remove a cross at a church on the city’s outskirts.

Authorities reportedly switched off mobile-phone coverage around the multi-million dollar Sanjiang Church before security officers and bulldozers forced their way into the compound to destroy the building in April.

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