Chinese police are investigating an unauthorized and highly unusual online dump of documents from a private security contractor linked to the nation’s top policing agency and other parts of its government — a trove that catalogs apparent hacking activity and tools to spy on both Chinese and foreigners.

Among the apparent targets of tools provided by the impacted company, I-Soon: ethnicities and dissidents in parts of China that have seen significant anti-government protests, such as Hong Kong or the heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang in China’s far west.

The dump of scores of documents late last week and subsequent investigation were confirmed by two employees of I-Soon, known as Anxun in Mandarin, which has ties to the powerful Ministry of Public Security. The dump, which analysts consider highly significant even if it does not reveal any especially novel or potent tools, includes hundreds of pages of contracts, marketing presentations, product manuals, and client and employee lists.

  • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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    9 months ago

    Comments like this are so odd. People (rightfully) get all worked up about surveillance in the West like the US and UK, but then kinda shrug off the same stuff when it’s China.

    China is no longer weak and isolationist. It’s been flexing its muscles around the world, with 102 overseas police stations in 53 countries, including Italy, France, Canada, Britain and the Netherlands for example.

    • fastandcurious@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Idk if we are misunderstanding each other or am I doing something dumb, but that’s what I am trying to say as well, that China and US both are pieces of shit and both deserved to be called pieces of shit, that’s all my original comment said, ig it maybe due to the context that it comes across that I am supporting china, in which case I am at fault probably, my frustration stems from the fact that some people here shit on china but when the US does something like this they come with some lame excuse (which is not the majority here I will accept)

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        I’m frankly surprised if you’ve been on lemmy any significant amount of time and haven’t seen people expressing privacy concerns regarding the US or other western governments (most recently the UK with their bullshit), and western private companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.

        The reason you come off as some crazed lemmygrad sinophile when people decry China’s spying is because you reply “but whattabout muh westernz” while this site (or rather group thereof that constitutes “lemmy,” and frankly the entire fediverse,) is also constantly complaining about the western governments and companies that pushed us to be on places like lemmy to begin with, but we aren’t talking about them in this article/comment section, we’re talking about China. It’s frankly just an off-topic whataboutism. Go to c/privacy and see just how wrong you are that western based spying isn’t a concern of people on lemmy.

        • fastandcurious@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          You are right, but also a lot of people here blindly support what the US is doing while shitting on countries like China, middle east and some south Asian countries (specifically about immigrants from there), ig I have been riding waves of emotions lately just seeing peoples blind support for the US, even if not directly done (instead by shooting down any criticism of the US)

          You are right about me being off-topic though, I think this entire discussion doesn’t belong here, it is neither about digital privacy nor about China