Travel warning: Chinese border guards secretly install spy software on tourists’ phones

Border guards are forcing visitors to unlock and hand over their devices when they arrive from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. Xinjiang is the location for a number of highly controversial detention camps, part of a huge surveillance operation targeting Uighur Muslims. IPhones are plugged into a reader which then scans the device.

Meanwhile, Android phones have an app installed which scans and extracts its data – contacts, text messages, pictures, call history and other files as well.

After harvesting the data, the app – known as Fengcai – then generate a report which is uploaded to a server, the joint investigation involving The Guardian, Vice’s Motherboard, The New York Times and Suddeutsche Zeitung in Germany suggested.

People using the remote Irkeshtam border crossing, regularly used by traders and tourists alike, are being regularly targeted.

The analysis suggests the app, which was designed by a Chinese company, scours devices for files against a wide-ranging target list centred on Islamic material.

How the material recovered is used is unclear, as is whether there have been any detentions as a result of information gathered in such a way.

Maya Wang, China senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Motherboard: “This app provides yet another source of evidence showing how pervasive mass surveillance is being carried out in Xinjiang.

“We already know that Xinjiang residents – particularly Turkic Muslims – are subjected to round-the-clock and multidimensional surveillance in the region.

“What you’ve found goes beyond that: it suggests that even foreigners are subjected to such mass, and unlawful surveillance.”

Uighurs are a Turkic ethnic group who live in East and Central Asia who speak a language closely related to Turkish. 

The vast majority of them – estimated to be more than 15 million – live in Xinjiang, which is an autonomous region of China.

They are one of the country’s 55 officially recognised ethic minorities, and predominantly practise Islam.

Speaking in March, US ambassador for religious freedom, Sam Brownback accused China of “waging a war on faith”.

He added: “It is a war they will not win.

“The Chinese Communist Party must hear the cries of its own people for religious freedom and act to correct its wrongs.”

Addressing the subject of the camps, Mr Brownback spoke of rights violations including torture, political indoctrination and forced labour.

He said:  ”The Trump administration is deeply concerned and considers this oppression a deliberate attempt by Beijing to redefine and control members of these Muslim minority groups’ identity, culture and faith.

“I would like to have the opportunity to go, but not to just to be given a show. 

“I want to get into the actual camps themselves and talk to people and interview them freely.”

source: express.co.uk