China forces spyware onto Muslim’s Android phones, complete with security holes
If you’re a member of the Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang, you’re probably used to China’s high level of surveillance that many other countries would find Orwellian.
Whereas many of us are concerned that law enforcement agencies might seek to weaken or open backdoors in secure messaging products running on our smartphones, the Chinese have gone one step further demanding that some eight million Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group, install a spyware app known as JingWang Weishi their Android smartphones.
JingWang (“clean internet” in Chinese) doesn’t just block access to specific websites. It also searches your Android phone for “illegal” images, audio recordings, and videos, and can upload them to an external server – alongside identifying details of your phone such as its IMEI number, model, phone number, and manufacturer.
