Alibaba Says It's Not Going After Uighurs (At Least Not Yet)

from the let-us-know-when-to-yeet,-chicom dept

Oh my. Be mindful about the suddenly sensitive Chinese government. Let's not accuse them of things they want to do when those things haven't been done yet.

Maybe it's just a Winnie the Pooh meme. Maybe it's the inability of professional athletes to keep their opinions to themselves. Maybe it's an entire landmass who doesn't want to see its independence crushed by a government that agreed to not crush its independence for the next several years.

Never mind the narratives. Here's what the Chinese government has been doing. It wants certain citizens prosecuted, persecuted, and ejected. The Uighur population of China has been a target for years. Nothing will change that. But it can be made worse.

Huawei -- currently the target of misguided or, at least, hypocritical US government activity -- has been whipping up some AI that goes beyond facial recognition. The AI being built by Huawei will identify people based on the their race, sex, and religious proclivities. Never mind the fact that facial recognition still can't reliably recognize faces. The tech being built by Huawei promises to subject millions of Chinese residents to algorithms at least as untrustworthy as those not being asked to suss out people's race or religious leanings.

The Chinese government isn't worried about backlash. But those still doing business in other parts of the world (like Huawei and others) are. You can't increase market share when the rest of the world considers you an extension of an oppressive government.

Alibaba -- the Amazon of the unregulated -- doesn't want to alienate a user base it's attempting to cultivate. It has issued a statement that serves as a somewhat reluctant middle finger to the Chinese government. There's a whole world of marks out there. Why should Alibaba restrict its hunt for rubes to whatever the Chinese government allows?

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has said it will not allow its technology to be used for targeting or identifying specific ethnic groups.

The statement follows reports that the company’s content moderation technology can pick out Uighur minorities.

Alibaba said it was “dismayed' that Alibaba Cloud developed facial technology that includes ethnicity as an attribute for tagging video imagery.

"We have eliminated any ethnic tag in our product offering," Alibaba said.

Fantastic. That's a relief. Alibaba won't help the government target Uighurs for government persecution, at least as far as its statement aimed at non-Uighurs asserts. But does this mean anything? Security researchers say Alibaba tools/algorithms already give the government the go-ahead to target Uighurs for additional oppression. A public statement may distance Alibaba from government oppression, but the fact that Alibaba continues to operate without interference in China suggests the Chinese government can get what it needs even if the online commerce site says it won't do it for all the tea its government is currently taxing.

Filed Under: censorship, china, facial recognition, oppression, persecution, uighur
Companies: alibaba

CD Projekt Red Heaps Bullshit Via Tweet After Removing Game To Appease China

from the pooh-pooh dept

One of the more delightful oddities of 2018, a year that was at least a zillion times better than this one, was the emergence of Chinese President Xi's razor-thin skin when it comes to being compared to Winnie the Pooh. This all got spotlighted here in America when John Oliver dove into Chinese political leadership, mentioning the Winnie the Pooh thing, and got his name and HBO's site effectively banned from the Chinese internet. It's all rather funny until you realize both that this is a symptom of the horrifying restrictions on freedom the Chinese government has put in place and when you consider that the subsequent two-plus years has seen China supercharge its own thin-skin and exert pressure on spineless Western companies to do its censoring for it. All of the sudden, the laughter falls away.

Which brings us to GOG, the video game online store run by CD Projekt Red. At 4am on December 16th, Red Candle Games, makers of the well reviewed horror video game Devotion announced on Twitter that the game would be published to GOG on December 18th. By 9:14am the same day, GOG announced that the game in fact would not be released on GOG, citing "messages from gamers."

Just so everyone is clear, that tweet is bullshit. Unless, that is, the gamers being referenced are devoted gamers that also happen to work for the Chinese government. See, Devotion has something of a history, specifically because of the whole President Xi and Winnie the Pooh thing.

Devotion is considered one of the finest horror games of the past decade, but it has proved a controversial one. Following its release in the spring of 2019, Devotion was found to contain an unflattering reference to China's president, Xi Jinping. The discovery sparked an outcry among Chinese players, leading to the withdrawal of Chinese distributors, the closure of Red Candle's account on Weibo, one of China's largest social media platforms, and the removal of the game from Steam in China.

Red Candle, which is based in Taiwan, has apologised at length for what it says was a placeholder asset, accidentally transferred to the final release. These comments were not enough to stem the backlash, however, and a week after sale, the developer pulled the game from Steam in all territories to perform unspecified fixes. It never returned.

It is unclear at the time of this writing whether the Xi dig, previously blamed laughably on a stock asset mistake, was in the version to be released by GOG. Still, given the previous freak-out by the Chinese government over the game, that may not even matter. What is clear, however, is that GOG and CD Projekt Red is facing swift backlash over its decision to deplatform the game, its pathetic attempt to hide the reason behind that deplatforming, and for generally shitting the bed on this whole issue.

And there's plenty more after that.

What's obvious is just what a self-own this is on the part of GOG and CD Projekt Red. GOG didn't have to work out a deal to publish Devotion on its store, but it did. Once it did, it didn't have to bow at the altar of Chinese censorship, but it did. Once it did that, GOG didn't have to try to obfuscate its reason for doing so in a way that treated its own customers as though they were massive idiots, but it did.

And now it has a backlash on its hands, all of its own making.

Filed Under: china, devotion, streisand effect, winnie the pooh, xi jianping
Companies: cd projekt red, gog

Huawei Is Crafting Facial Recognition Tech That Will Make It Easier For The Chinese Government To Target Citizens It Doesn't Like

from the be-as-evil-as-possible dept

The Chinese government's war against its own citizens continues. The repression and persecution of China's Uighur population has been well-documented. The Chinese government is fighting a surveillance war on multiple fronts, beginning with its own citizens, who must maintain a positive "citizen score" to live life without too much government harassment. Its attempt to hold Hong Kong to the same oppressive standard has been met with significant resistance. But, in the end, China will consummate its takeover of Hong Kong with a removal of its independence.

Uighur Muslims have been the focus of the government's unmitigated wrath for years. China wants these residents either locked up or living in another country entirely. And it's pressuring tech companies to assist in their oppression. Far too many have complied. Documents seen by the Washington Post show Huawei has decided to be the Chinese government's posse, helping the government locate and target Uighur residents.

The Chinese tech giant Huawei has tested facial recognition software that could send automated “Uighur alarms” to government authorities when its camera systems identify members of the oppressed minority group, according to an internal document that provides further details about China’s artificial-intelligence surveillance regime.

The tech Huawei is developing attempts to determine a person's age, sex, and ethnicity using only facial shots. Given that this tech hasn't proven itself able to reliably recognize faces, it seems unlikely it will perform these extra tasks with better accuracy. False positives are guaranteed. And a false Uighur positive in China means citizens will be detained and subjected to a lifetime of brutal punishment just because they happened to trigger a Huawei "alarm."

According to Huawei, this proposed system has not gone live.

Both companies have acknowledged the document is real. Shortly after this story published Tuesday morning, Huawei spokesman Glenn Schloss said the report “is simply a test and it has not seen real-world application. Huawei only supplies general-purpose products for this kind of testing. We do not provide custom algorithms or applications.”

Maybe this is true. But it's also the sort of statement a company would release when being pressured by a government to avoid revealing ongoing surveillance programs.

Even if the system isn't live at the moment, that doesn't change the fact that it will be live at some point in the future. And the Chinese government will have a tool it can use to target a small percentage of its population -- a tool whose ability to recognize faces alone is already questionable. Adding in other factors only increases the possibility of false positives.

Then there's the mission creep. If it "works" for China, other countries looking to target people for their sex, race, or age will have a tool that's been field-tested and ready for deployment. China's not the only authoritarian regime looking for exciting new ways to persecute certain citizens. Following through with development of this tech means Huawei will be the go-to source for countries looking to add to their human rights violation rap sheets.

Filed Under: china, civil liberties, civil rights, facial recongition, surveillance, uighurs
Companies: huawei

Beijing Tightens Grip On Hong Kong With Arrest Of Pro-Democracy Lawmakers

from the seeing-red dept

Literally everyone saw this coming. On the heels of a rushed through resolution out of mainland China that ousted four pro-democracy Hong Kong lawmakers, leading to the resignation of every other pro-democracy lawmaker as well, the question was when, not if, Beijing would continue to tighten its communist grip. The answer to that question appears to be "almost immediately", with China announcing the arrest of three pro-democracy former lawmakers, likely a signal to any other opposition forces who might want to make any noise.

Posts on the Facebook accounts of Ted Hui, Eddie Chu and Raymond Chan said they were arrested in relation to the incidents in the legislature’s main chamber. The trio separately disrupted legislative meetings by splashing pungent liquids and other items on two occasions.

Hong Kong police said in a statement that they arrested three former lawmakers on charges of contempt in the legislature and intent to cause harm to others. Police did not identify them by name.

The information offered up by Beijing is made to make all of this sound like it is arresting lawmakers for putting other legislators in danger. Given the source, that accusation should be taken with a grain of salt. For example, Chi-Fung (Ted) Hui's antics in disrupting the legislature were very much about the disruption and nothing to do with putting anyone in danger. For Christ's sake, the "weapon" for his intent to cause harm to others appears to be some rotted plant material.

On 28 May 2020, Hui disrupted the second reading of the National Anthem Bill in the Legislative Council by dropping a container containing rotten plant matter inside the chamber. A fellow lawmaker was taken to hospital after being exposed to the smell. On 4 June 2020, Hui and two other lawmakers, Eddie Chu and Raymond Chan, were alleged with hindering the business of the Legislative Council and violating the Powers and Privileges Ordinance, with Hui having dropped foul smelling liquid during the LegCo session on that day.

For this, apparently, Hui is under arrest. But what should really be striking you about all of this is the complete absence of international pushback generally and the dereliction of American leadership in promoting democracy specifically. Our government is all but absent on the international stage at the moment, with the gears of government mostly churning out a plan for COVID-19 vaccination while senior leadership is focused on promoting nonsense conspiracy theories over an election it lost and otherwise sulking.

It appears that China views the remaining few weeks of the current administration as its window for the takeover of Hong Kong. And, given the absence of leadership at the present, it's not hard to see why. The only remaining question is just what the state of affairs in Hong Kong will be when Joe Biden is sworn in as President.

Filed Under: arrests, china, democracy, eddie chu, free speech, hong kong, protests, raymond chan, ted hui

Commerce Department Remembers It Was Supposed To Ban TikTok; Says It Won't Enforce For Now

from the oh,-right,-that dept

Yesterday we noted that TikTok had made a filing with the government asking what the fuck was going on with the supposed ban on their application that was supposed to go into effect this week. While a court had issued an injunction saying the Commerce Department couldn't put the ban into effect, the Trump administration basically hadn't said anything since then, and the ban was set to go into effect yesterday.

Late yesterday, the Commerce Department put out a notice basically saying that it's complying with the injunction issued by the court, and therefore not implementing the executive order and the ban:

However, on October 30, 2020, the District Court issued an Order granting the Plaintiffs' renewed motion for a preliminary injunction. This Order enjoined the Department from enforcing the Identification and the prohibition on transactions identified in Paragraphs 1-6 above.

The Department is complying with the terms of this Order. Accordingly, this serves as NOTICE that the Secretary’s prohibition of identified transactions pursuant to Executive Order 13942, related to TikTok, HAS BEEN ENJOINED, and WILL NOT GO INTO EFFECT, pending further legal developments

Of course, the Commerce Department saying it won't enforce the order doesn't answer the larger question of whether or not the US government is still demanding that it sell off all of its US assets -- or even whether or not the grifty non-sale to Oracle will suffice.

Basically, highlighting how much of a joke this whole thing was, it seems that the supposed "national security" rationale behind all of this was complete garbage, and since Trump has his hands full trying to pretend he won the election he very clearly lost, everyone's just going to let this slide until the Biden administration comes in and likely drops the executive order altogether. But kudos to Larry Ellison for getting a lucrative hosting deal.

Filed Under: ban, china, commerce department, donald trump, executive order, injunction, wilbur ross
Companies: bytedance, oracle, tiktok

Beijing Ends Democracy In Hong Kong By Ousting Pro-Democracy Lawmakers

from the game-over dept

In the aftermath of our recent election, with all of the exuberance on one side and the laughable claims of stolen elections on the other, one underlying concern discussed before the election seems to have gone by the wayside: what happens in the last days of the Trump presidency if he loses? You heard the most prevalent concerns in the immediate runup to election day, which typically amounted to wondering aloud what unhinged or corrupt shit Dear Leader would get up to when his Dear-Leadership suddenly carried an expiration date? It was, frankly, a fair concern to have.

But there is a flip side to that fear: what will other countries do in the final days of the Trump presidency, particularly those that have gotten used to his lax attitude towards authoritarianism, human rights abuses, and most of the goings-on around the world? Would Russia attempt to gobble up more previously-Soviet territory, a la Crimea? Would Saudi Arabia carry out more brutal attacks on journalists critical of the Saudi Royal Family? Would China give up its slow-crawl dismantling of democracy in Hong Kong and just try to take over?

Well, on that last one at least, we now know the answer is yes. In fact, it was only in the wake of the election in America being called for President Elect Biden that China rushed through a resolution to oust four pro-democracy members of the Hong Kong government, seemingly for being too anti-Beijing.

The Chinese Parliament on Wednesday adopted a resolution that pushed out four pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong, prompting more than a dozen of their colleagues to resign en masse.

According to The Associated Press, China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee passed a directive stating that any lawmaker may be removed from their position if they support Hong Kong’s independence, refuse to recognize China’s authority over the city, threaten national security or call for external intervention in its affairs.

Pay no mind to that language in the directive. As with all things mainland China, one must look at all of this through Orwellian eyes. The language in the directive is meant to sound just reasonable enough to remain full vague, which allows Beijing to yank away any lawmakers that say things the Communist Party doesn't like. Those sorts of utterances include anything pro-American, anything pro-democracy, or anything that promotes independent governance of Hong Kong. That the ouster of four members of the government immediately prompted fifteen more assembly members to resign, leaving literally zero assembly members that are not Beijing sycophants should tell you everything you need to know.

It's hard to overstate how brazen a ramp up of aggression this move represents. It was only months ago that protests in Hong Kong were raging and Carrie Lam pretended to back off from the mainland's odious new laws over the island city. What changed?

Well, between the COVID-19 pandemic gobbling up all the world's attention for a good chunk of the year combined with the vacuum left by a man-baby refusing to leave office gracefully, the Chinese government has probably determined that now is the time to make a move before the new administration sits in power. But if Beijing thought Hong Kong would go quietly, it hasn't been paying attention these past few years.

During the news conference, the lawmakers reportedly held hands and chanted, “Hong Kong add oil! Together we stand!” According to the AP, the phrase “add oil” is a direct translation of a Chinese expression of encouragement.

“My mission as a legislator to fight for democracy and freedom cannot continue, but I would certainly go along if Hong Kong people continue to fight for the core values of Hong Kong,” one of the disqualified members, Kwok Ka-Ki, told reporters, according to Reuters.

The protests will rage once more. And, whereas the American government as it currently stands once gave lip service to those protests, now the Chief Executive for the next several weeks is far too busy golfing and raging at election results to concern himself with democracy abroad.

Filed Under: china, democracy, donald trump, hong kong

Trumpland Apparently Just Forgot About Its Manufactured TikTok Hysteria

from the whoops-a-daisy dept

We've repeatedly made it pretty clear that President Trump's effort to ban TikTok is little more than a performative, xenophobic, idiotic mess. For one, the effort appears more focused on trying to get Trump-allied Oracle a new hosting deal than any serious concern about consumer privacy and security. Two, banning a teen dancing and lip syncing app does jack shit in terms of thwarting China or protecting U.S. consumer privacy, since the U.S. telecom, app, and adtech markets are largely an unaccountable privacy mess making it trivial to obtain this kind of data elsewhere.

Further highlighting the performative nature of the proposed ban, TikTok this week effectively stated that Trumpland appears to have forgotten about the proposed ban entirely. TikTok filed a petition this week in a US Court of Appeals calling for a review of actions by the Trump administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), pointing out that the deadline for ByteDance to sell off its US assets over national security concerns came and went this week with no action from Trumpland or word on any extension.

Apparently the whole TikTok thing fell off the radar as the administration focuses on pretending it didn't lose the election. Whoops:

"For a year, TikTok has actively engaged with CFIUS in good faith to address its national security concerns, even as we disagree with its assessment,” TikTok says in a statement to The Verge. “In the nearly two months since the President gave his preliminary approval to our proposal to satisfy those concerns, we have offered detailed solutions to finalize that agreement – but have received no substantive feedback on our extensive data privacy and security framework."

This is, of course, because the TikTok ban was largely performative bullshit and cronyism, designed to drum up some hysteria over China and provide Trump with leverage in his harmful trade war while driving some additional cash and influence to his U.S. allies.

If the Trump administration and GOP genuinely cared about U.S. consumer privacy and security, there's a laundry list of more pressing issues it could do something about, including shoring up vulnerable U.S. telecom infrastructure, passing even a baseline U.S. privacy law for the internet era, better policing the widespread abuse of user location data (by corporations and the government alike), attempt to shore up security in the internet of broken things sector, secure election integrity, and stop, you know, trying to destroy encryption.

Neither Trump Inc. nor the Trump-allied GOP does any of this because it's more interested in bad faith posturing and bullshit than serious governance or public welfare. If the folks fanning their face over TikTok truly cared about consumer privacy and security, we'd do something about the broader, unaccountable mess that is adtech, app, government, and telecom data privacy. Instead we get a giant pile of bullshit and a mountain of billable legal man hours over something that was never serious adult policy to begin with.

Filed Under: apps, ban, cfius, china, executive order, social media
Companies: bytedance, tiktok

UK Wing Of TikTok Swears It Isn't Helping The Chinese Government Oppress Uighur Muslims

from the but-would-you-swear-on-this-stack-of-little-red-books? dept

China doesn't have a problem with censorship. By that, I mean the Chinese government sees no problem with its ever-expanding censorship of speech it doesn't like. While China appears to have embraced capitalism, it hasn't embraced the democratic accoutrements that normally accompany a move towards a more free society.

The government doesn't like to be criticized, so it has engaged in several efforts to censor speech by people arguing for less censorship and a better government. These efforts have been greeted with some creative responses by citizens, but the government flips the internet kill switch on and off as needed, denying citizens access to something most people around the world consider to be as essential as tap water.

As if that weren't enough to keep speech in line, American companies and… um… sportsball concerns have cooperated with censorship efforts to appease the Chinese government with the end goal of accessing China's billion-strong user base.

The crackdown on speech is far more pronounced in one region of the country, where the government has targeted certain citizens -- more than one million Uighur Muslims -- with ever-increasing censorship, along with the killings and disappearings China has historically deployed against those on its expansive persona non grata lists.

A number of US companies have helped the Chinese government oppress Uighur Muslims. Unsurprisingly, a Chinese company is doing the same thing. TikTok, the social media upstart that has irrationally angered the Trump administration, has admitted its contribution to the government's persecution of its least favored citizens. This includes efforts made by TikTok's moderation teams located in other countries where one would (very hopefully) assume the Chinese government's demands are free to be ignored. Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to be the case.

At a UK parliamentary committee hearing on Wednesday, Elizabeth Kanter, TikTok's UK director of public policy, was asked by Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani whether the app had quashed content about the Uighur crisis in Xinjiang, where at least 1 million Uighur Muslims and other minorities have been detained in so-called "reeducation camps."

According to TikTok's UK director, it's policy of China-appeasing censorship in other nations is no longer a thing. But the explanation isn't very convincing.

"At that time we took a decision [...] to not allow conflict on the platform, and so there was some incidents where content was not allowed on the platform, specifically with regard to the Uighur situation," she said.

Supposedly, things are better now. All you have to do is trust TikTok's UK rep and your own eyes, I guess.

"If you look at the platform now and search for the term 'Uighur' on the TikTok app, you can find plenty of content about the Uighurs. There's plenty of content that's critical of China."

Sounds good. Or, at least, better. But requests for more detail by the UK government were greeted with vague reassurances that the new, more permissive policy has been in place "for at least over a year," but that as recently as "a couple of years ago," the UK wing of TikTok was still acting as an extension of the Chinese government.

ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, has attempted to distance itself from the Chinese government and its censorship for a few years now. It operates a completely different social media service in China, putting a firewall between users located elsewhere and the Great Firewall the Chinese government has erected. But its home base is problematic. It's impossible to please both the Chinese government and its non-Chinese users who expect their content to be exempt from China's censorship efforts. The end result is, far too often, something that errs on the side of the Chinese government's demands.

TikTok isn't the security threat the Trump administration has frequently imagined it to be. (Well, it's no more of a threat to users and their personal info than several American companies…) But it is still a problem for users located outside of China, who expect their interactions to be unmolested by laws they're not obligated to follow.

Filed Under: censorship, china, content moderation, free speech, oppression, uighur, uk
Companies: bytedance, tiktok

China's Hong Kong Protester-Targeting 'See Something, Say Something' Hotline Is A Big Success

from the local-tiktok-officials:-oh-um-noooo-i-guess dept

The protesters in Hong Kong have a point: the Chinese government is supposed to stay the fuck out of managing Hong Kong's day-to-day governance for 50 years after its securing of this profitable market sector from the British in 1997. We all love to see colonialism dismantled, but when the recipient is China, caution should be deployed. The Chinese government agreed to not turn Hong Kong into China 1.5 for fifty years.

The clock runs out in 2047 but the Chinese government isn't interested in letting the good faith agreement remain in place. It has directly targeted pro-democracy protesters and government critics in Hong Kong, leveraging its "national security" law to create life sentences for people who rightfully think the Chinese government should back off for at least another seven years.

Throw enough oppression at people and you'll unearth the percentage of the public that would rather lick boot than support their fellow Hong Kong residents. "See something, say something" works everywhere, even in a free market paradise like Hong Kong. As the BBC reports, the snitch hotline set up by Hong Kong's subservient quote/enquote "public servants" has proven popular with those attempting to ingratiate themselves to their new overlords.

Hong Kong's new hotline to report breaches of the controversial national security law has received more than 1,000 calls within hours of going live.

Residents can anonymously send in images, audio and videos if they suspect someone has violated the law.

The law, introduced earlier this year, criminalises secession, subversion and collusion with foreign forces.

It has already led to several arrests of activists, and has silenced protesters.

The maximum punishment under the law is life in prison.

It has gotten no less popular as time goes on. A report by the Guardian says it's as least twice as popular as the BBC's early report indicates.

A police spokesman told the Guardian that by Friday morning the force had received more than 2,500 pieces of information. The hotline can accept audio, videos, photographs and texts, and contributors will remain anonymous and receive no replies once they have submitted their tips, police said.

And, while it seems like the protesters have the upper hand and represent a majority of Hong Kong residents, there is, of course, a ton of insults and latent threats to be found on local social media.

The police post on Facebook had more than 700 comments on Thursday afternoon, with some welcoming and others condemning the initiative.

“Great! Now the cockroaches have nowhere to run,” wrote one user, using a pejorative term for democracy supporters.

A certain percentage of the public will always welcome the cool touch of a jackboot to the neck. We see them here in the United States -- citizens waving the Gadsden and Thin Blue Line flags with maximum cognitive dissonance. In this eventual Chinese holding, citizens are already ingratiating themselves with a foreign power that isn't supposed to take control for another seven years.

In China, the threat isn't existential. It's real. Overseas companies helping the government shut down dissent is making things worse.

Filed Under: china, hong kong, see something say something, snitch, snitchline, surveillance