China Snoops Using Social Media: Hackers Reveal Data from Surveillance Firms

China is notorious for its public surveillance strategies. The nation’s politics known for imposing complete surveillance on its citizens, something that has always attracted criticism on grounds of going against fundamental rights of privacy. Now, a team of hackers named CCP Unmasked has claimed to have ‘hacked’ at least three Chinese companies, which they have claimed in interviews to be social media surveillance agencies. While the claim itself is not particularly shocking, it is interesting to note how government-aligned or selected social media companies are using increasingly invasive tactics to snoop on citizens of a nation. Additionally, documents revealed from the CCP Unmasked hack further claim that these firms also have working social media surveillance models for Facebook and Twitter – both platforms that are banned in the Chinese cyberspace.

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The three companies noted in the hackers’ documents include Hong Kong-based Knowlesys, Guangzhou-based YunRun Big Data Service, and Beijing-based OneSight. Each of these companies appear to offer similar services, including a whole suite of cyber espionage tactics. According to reports on the internet, Knowlesys is a noted social media firm, which has claimed to be working with intelligence, security agencies, national militaries and police organisations for over eight years. Some of its previous, documented work that is indexed in public domain include monitoring of messages, social media profiles, geolocation data and public opinion via behavioural analysis on social media, and scraping of private data include relationship status and more. Knowlesys has also offered demonstrations to monitor public opinion during elections – a contentious topic that has seen giants such as Facebook come under check.