British police are leaving themselves open to spying by Beijing because of their reliance on Chinese-made cameras, according to a report from the government’s independent watchdog on surveillance. Most forces across England and Wales use camera equipment that is either made in China or contains important Chinese components, the biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner has warned. Fraser Sampson, the publicly appointed commissioner, warned that such equipment poses both security and ethical concerns, at a time when tensions with Beijing are already high. The report comes a day after the prime…
Tag: Police
Can a Police Officer Accused of Spying for China Ever Clear His Name?
Now that he is no longer accused of being a secret agent for China, Baimadajie Angwang can start asking hard questions. The hardest: How could he — a naturalized U.S. citizen, New York City police officer and Marine Corps veteran — have been jailed for months over what he says were misunderstood phone calls and classified evidence that not even his lawyer could see in full? When federal authorities arrested Officer Angwang in September 2020, they accused him of reporting on other Tibetans to a handler at the Chinese consulate…
U.S. Drops Case Against Police Officer It Had Called an ‘Insider Threat’
In September 2020, when federal authorities charged Baimadajie Angwang, a Marine Corps veteran and New York Police Department officer, with acting as an illegal agent of China, the head of New York’s F.B.I. office called him “the definition of an insider threat.” The government has quietly changed its mind. On Thursday, in a brief and subdued hearing in a Brooklyn courtroom, a federal judge granted prosecutors’ request to dismiss the charges against Officer Angwang. The swift unraveling of the case — which had been hailed as a signature example of…
US Asks to Drop Case Accusing NYPD Officer of Spying for China
He came to the United States at 17 on a cultural exchange visa and later applied for, and was granted, political asylum, court filings show. He joined the Marines in 2009, spent seven months in Afghanistan, became a U.S. citizen in 2010, was honorably discharged in 2014 and then enlisted in the Army reserves, court records show. In 2016, Officer Angwang joined the Police Department, where he was a patrol officer and, at the time of his arrest in September 2020, a community affairs officer with the 111th Precinct in…
How China’s Police Used Phones and Faces to Track Protesters
On Sunday, when Mr. Zhang went to protest China’s strict Covid policies in Beijing, he thought he came prepared to go undetected. He wore a balaclava and goggles to cover his face. When it seemed that plainclothes police officers were following him, he ducked into the bushes and changed into a new jacket. He lost his tail. That night, when Mr. Zhang, who is in his 20s, returned home without being arrested, he thought he was in the clear. But the police called the next day. They knew he had…
Migrant Workers Fuel Protests Over China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Restrictions
The Haizhu District of Guangzhou, where the clashes took place, is a center of garment production, and tens of thousands of migrant workers from rural China make a living in small factories, shops and diners that cram its streets. But there and across much of China, Covid restrictions on work and travel have added to a wider economic slowdown and pushed many small businesses into closure or bankruptcy, leaving migrant workers struggling to make a living. “People don’t have anywhere to vent their frustration,” said a local resident surnamed Hu,…
What China’s Covid Protesters Are Calling For
As he crossed a small road in Shanghai, the man held up a bundle of flowers and issued a rallying call to a crowd of excited onlookers. Within minutes, he was surrounded by security officials and wrestled into a police car. It was one of the more dramatic moments in several days of protests in China that captured the boldness of young Chinese demonstrators as well as the risks they face in challenging the country’s authoritarian leadership. The protests have been fueled by anger over an apartment building fire in…
Proud, Scared and Conflicted. What the China Protesters Told Me.
They went to their first demonstrations. They chanted their first protest slogans. They had their first encounters with the police. Then they went home, shivering in disbelief at how they had challenged the most powerful authoritarian government in the world and the most iron-fisted leader China has seen in decades. Young Chinese are protesting the country’s harsh “zero-Covid” policy and even urging its top leader, Xi Jinping, to step down. It’s something China hasn’t seen since 1989, when the ruling Communist Party brutally cracked down on the pro-democracy demonstrators, mostly…
At a China Covid Protest, a Mix of Giddy Elation and Anxiety
BEIJING — The crowd was hard to make out at first, a dark mass huddled along the Beijing riverbank after sunset. They stood quietly, almost nervously, dozens of people bundled in thick coats beside yellowed willow trees. At their center was a small altar, strewn with candles and flowers, for the 10 people who died in a fire in western China last week. Two hours later, that crowd had swelled into the hundreds, a mass of people marching and chanting for freedom, rule of law, an end to the three…
Chinese diplomat involved in violence at Manchester consulate, MP says
One of China’s most senior diplomats in the UK was involved in the violence against pro-democracy protesters at the Manchester consulate, a British MP has said. Alicia Kearns, a Conservative MP, told the House of Commons that Beijing’s consul general in Manchester, Zheng Xiyuan, was seen “ripping down posters” before a Hong Kong campaigner was attacked on Sunday. Footage posted online shows a person, believed to be Zheng, who is a veteran Chinese Communist party (CCP) official, kicking down a poster and pulling the hair of a protester, who was…