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China surveillance of foreign nationals

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2026-08-02 23:32 UTC → 2026-08-05 03:38 UTC · added removed

Researcher Marc (Mark) Hofer uncovered Hofer, based in Amsterdam, has repeatedly exposed China’s extensive monitoring of foreign residents. In Zhangjiakou, a Chinese surveillance system, former 2022 Winter Olympics venue, he uncovered an unsecured police dashboard – the “Dynamic Dynamic Control Platform for Foreign Persons,” which aggregates data from facial‑recognition cameras, hotel Personnel – that listed more than 700 foreign residents and roughly 12,000 individual records, travel itineraries, medical histories, fuel payments including fugitives, Hong Kong and payment‑app activity to build detailed profiles of Taiwan citizens, and over 300 foreign residents. journalists, some of whom had never visited the city. Entries contained passport numbers, contact details, birth dates, marital status, occupations, religious affiliation and even camera sightings at traffic intersections, markets, malls and a mosque. The platform showed recent logins from multiple police stations and was demonstrated linked to Beijing‑based surveillance firm Origin Dynamic, which filed a 2023 patent for use in Zhangjiakou and a similar interface. The site was taken offline in May 2024 after Hofer downloaded the data and shared it with international media. 2024. A related separate breach later revealed an unsecured public‑security bureau webpage in Jiangjiao that provided granted direct access to a massive database containing similar personal information on thousands of foreign residents from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a range of other countries. additional countries such as Israel, Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Pakistan and Sudan. Pre‑filled login fields allowed Hofer was able to download large volumes of records over several months before the page was removed in May. May 2024. Both disclosures illustrate the extensive scope breadth of China’s internal domestic surveillance of foreigners and have sparked raised international concerns about privacy and security for the affected individuals.

Versions

  1. 2026-08-05 03:38 UTC China surveillance of foreign nationals
  2. 2026-08-02 23:32 UTC China surveillance of foreign nationals

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