Tag: Surveillance of Citizens by Government

Book Review: ‘Means of Control,’ by Byron Tau; ‘The Sentinel State,’ by Minxin Pei

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MEANS OF CONTROL: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State, by Byron Tau THE SENTINEL STATE: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China, by Minxin Pei In 1975, the French philosopher Michel Foucault published “Surveiller et Punir” — “To Surveil and Punish” — a book popularly translated into English as “Discipline and Punish,” about how societies keep their populations in line with minimal violence. At the center of his argument lay the panopticon, a prison designed by the 18th-century political reformer…

China’s Hacker Network: What to Know About the I-Soon Document Leak

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Leaked documents posted online last week show how the Chinese government is working with private hackers to obtain sensitive information from foreign governments and companies. The hackers worked for a security firm called I-Soon, part of a network of spies for hire working closely with Beijing. The leak showed how China’s top surveillance agency, the Ministry of Public Security, has increasingly recruited contractors to attack government targets and private companies as part of a cyberespionage campaign in Asia. The leak is likely to stoke fears among leaders in Washington who…

Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Are Breaking Up With China

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DCM Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, began investing in China’s start-ups in 1999. The move reaped such blockbuster returns that in 2021, DCM said it planned to “double down” on its strategy of investing in China, the United States and Japan. Yet when DCM set out to raise money last fall for a new fund focused on very young companies and promoted its “cross-Pacific” expertise, the firm described plans to invest in the United States, Japan and South Korea, according to a fund-raising memo that was viewed by…

A.I. Giant Tied to China Under Scrutiny

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A U.S. congressional committee has asked the Commerce Department to look into whether a giant technology company controlled by the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates should be put under trade restrictions because of its ties to China. The company, G42, specializes in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, and is overseen by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the national security adviser of the Emirates and a younger brother of the country’s ruler. It has signed recent agreements with prominent American technology companies, including Microsoft, Dell and OpenAI. A Silicon…

‘Total Trust’ Review: Under Surveillance

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Partway through the documentary “Total Trust,” the Chinese journalist Sophia Xueqin Huang diagnoses the readiness of Chinese civilians to comply with expanding surveillance measures. “It’s just like the story of the boiling frog,” she says; the ceding of small privacies gives way to the surrender of larger freedoms until — before you know it — every facet of life is monitored and controlled. “Total Trust,” directed by the Chinese filmmaker Jialing Zhang (“One Child Nation”), offers a persuasive picture of this Big Brother system in action. Filmed largely during the…

Warnings Emerge Over Emirati A.I. Firm G42’s Ties to China

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When the secretive national security adviser of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, visited the White House in June, his American counterpart, Jake Sullivan, raised a delicate issue: G42, an artificial intelligence firm controlled by the sheikh that American officials believe is hiding the extent of its work with China. In public, the company has announced its staggering growth with a steady cadence of news releases. They have included agreements with European pharmaceutical giants like AstraZeneca and a $100 million deal with a Silicon Valley firm to build…

A Poet Captures the Terror of Life in an Authoritarian State

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Tahir Hamut Izgil watched as parks emptied of people, naan bakeries boarded up their windows and, one after another, his friends were taken away. The Chinese government’s repression of Uyghurs, the predominantly Muslim ethnic minority to which he belonged, had gone on for years in Xinjiang, the group’s ancestral homeland in China’s northwest. But in 2017, it morphed into something more terrifying: a mass internment system into which hundreds of thousands of people were disappearing. Millions lived under intense and growing surveillance. Izgil, a prominent poet and film director, feared…

Defecting From North Korea Is Now Far Harder

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The North Korean software engineer was desperate. He had been sent to northeastern China in 2019 to earn money for the North Korean regime. After working long hours under the constant watch of his minders, he found an email address on a website and sent a harrowing message in 2021: “I am writing at the risk of losing my life,” pleaded the engineer. A young woman who had been smuggled by human traffickers from North Korea into China in 2018 contacted the owner of the same website early this year.…

After China Arrested Her Husband, A Wife Discovered His Secret Dissident Blog

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It wasn’t as if Bei Zhenying didn’t know that her husband was unusual, or even that he had some secrets. He was a talented computer programmer, and she fell for his inquisitive intelligence and playfulness when they met at university in Shanghai. But he was also proudly nonconformist — refusing to use social media or buy new clothes — and intensely private, disappearing into his study to do work he wouldn’t discuss. Ms. Bei, 45, accepted those quirks as the habits of a professional geek, someone engrossed in a world…

Ex-NYPD Detective Accused of Stalking Americans for China Goes on Trial

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A landmark case by federal prosecutors against three men accused of stalking and harassing people in the United States at the behest of the Chinese government is set to begin in a Brooklyn courtroom on Wednesday. It is the first trial related to what the Chinese government calls Operation Fox Hunt, a global effort that they say is aimed at fugitives. U.S. prosecutors say it is a scheme to stamp out political dissent using extortion and intimidation against its targets and their families. The three defendants whose trial is beginning…